Yes. Yes you are.
It is often claimed that dreams are morally neutral—a theater of the mind where actions are divorced from ethical responsibility. The standard view holds that because dreams occur outside of full conscious control, they cannot be used to assess a person’s character. Yet this assumption neglects important continuities between dreaming and waking cognition. A closer examination reveals that what one does in dreams—especially lucid ones—may indeed reflect and reveal the deeper moral structure of the self.
Dreams originate from the same mind that governs waking behavior. The continuity of self across states suggests that dream behavior is not random noise but a form of expression shaped by memory, desire, and personal disposition. When a person acts cruelly or selfishly in a dream, particularly with consistency, it raises the possibility that such impulses exist within them even if suppressed in waking life. The absence of external consequence in dreams removes many social constraints, leaving internal values more exposed. In this sense, dream behavior can be interpreted as a stress test of character: what one does when no one is watching, and when nothing is at stake.
Lucid dreaming
This line of reasoning becomes more pointed in the context of lucid dreaming. Lucid dreams allow for varying degrees of awareness and control. When a dreamer knows they are dreaming and acts deliberately, moral responsibility becomes more applicable. Choosing to harm or exploit others within a dream world, knowing it is a consequence-free environment, implies a willingness to suspend ethical norms when risk is absent. This suggests that ethical behavior in waking life may be based not on principled regard for others, but on fear of punishment or retaliation.
Indeed, when people experience accidental or rare lucid dreams, some begin to engage in their carnal or violent impulses: including acts such as sex, rape or murder of dream entities. These behaviors reveal the unfiltered nature of impulse when external constraints vanish. Dream characters, though lacking physical reality, represent aspects of the self or others, and harming them in such lucid states may indicate a troubling alignment with immoral desires.
This becomes clear in hypothetical reversal. Imagine mistaking waking life for a dream. If the dreamer’s lucid dream behavior involves unchecked immorality, similar behavior would occur in reality. The only thing preventing harm to real others, in this case, is not recognition of their intrinsic worth, but fear of retaliation. This reflects a fundamentally instrumental view of others—not as ends in themselves, but as sources of threat or reward.
Moral character includes not just actions, but also the desires, thoughts, and dispositions that underlie behavior. If dreams consistently reveal a mind that is indifferent to harm, prone to selfish pleasure, or quick to abandon moral restraint, this is not ethically neutral. It is diagnostic. The dream state becomes not an escape from morality, but a revealing mirror of it.
In conclusion, there is reason to treat dreams—especially lucid ones—as morally relevant. They expose what remains when the usual barriers fall away. And what remains may be closer to the truth of a person’s character than the carefully curated actions of the waking world.