The Waking Life

A Reaction Paper

As I watch the movie and know the story, my mind opened up to some deeper

life philosophies that most of us rarely think about on a daily basis. The story leads the

audience to explore different people’s views on life and our world and relate to them in

one way or another.

Waking life is all about dreaming, and how we can sometimes lucidly control our

dreams. Yet it's also about some broad philosophical issues, including one of the oldest

philosophical conundrums, the distinction between appearance and reality. The diverse

collection of characters in film ask the question what is more real, dreams or waking

life? Yet they ask it not just in a literal sense, but also as a metaphor for the nature of

modern culture and for the human condition as a whole - in what ways do we fall asleep

even while awake? How can we lead a life that is more awake, more aware of people

and things, more authentic? (Dough Mann, 2001)

The Waking Life started with a boy playing with a young girl and the game lead to

a phrase which stated that dreams are destiny. The boy dreamt that he can float but

could not hold on. The idea recurred as he grew up.

During the first part of the story, the driver of a boat car said that his car has been

an extension of his personality and the open windows of his transport were his windows

through the world. Everything could be seen through it. Either one may understand
things or how it was acted upon by society or one may not understand but chooses to

accept and glide along with it. This focuses in the idea that as a person we just follow

what our society dictates even though we have random choices to choose from. It is

how we accept what is being thrown to us or how we keep up with the norms. This boat-

car scene seems to be a discussion of personal identity. In addition, the man driving the

boat-car tells us that it’s the ride – which can be taken as a symbol for life – “does not

require an explanation, only occupants.”

The scene upholds to the philosophical concept of Taoism, Buddhism and the

Reality of now vs. Dreams. The self has no fixed identity. Buddhism, it's constantly

changing, constantly flowing. We should live in the moment, and not be overcome by

our desires. Too much attachment breeds unhappiness. Taoism declares that there

must be balance in nature.

The scenes of a discussion about existentialism where presented. I believe in

what the one character said that: “it's your life to create.” According to Jean Paul Sartre,

freedom is something that takes with us responsibility. We must not view ourselves as

victims rather we must take the consequences that resulted from our own decision in

life. He had given a concrete example that it is just you and me making decisions and

adhering to the consequences. The point is it is always our decision of who we are.

From the scene of a girl talking about language showed that language is used to

be a tool of people wanted to transcend their isolation. Words were designed to

transcend our alienation from each other, but are in reality dead and inert symbols. Yet

if we can use them to truly communicate, to achieve spiritual communion, we can free
our consciousness. She says that this sense of spiritual communion is what we live for.

It is weird to know that people understand the words they spoke yet most of the words

they tell are abstract and intangible.

Furthermore, there was a scene when one guy set his self on fire which became

one of my favourite parts. He was particularly pointing out about human self-destruction

and the media making us passive observers. Media uses images of death and

destruction to turn us into passive observers and how the only real freedom we're

offered is the purely symbolic act of voting. Human beings want chaos: we want strife,

riots, murder, and war. The trick used by the media is to paint a sad face on all these

catastrophes, to pretend that they're avoidable tragedies. Media is actually making the

people accept the idea and go on with life. We became puppets of society and we got

hard time to overcome it.

Then there was a scene of the couples talking about reincarnation and it was

interesting because the girl does not really deny the existence of reincarnation but she

only believe that it was a collective memories that people drawn from their experiences

so one thought of it as reincarnation. It is like dreams are product of the unconscious.

The things we experience in dreams were the things we most often give attention to by

our unconscious state. Again, in the movie, dream was compared to death as to

opposed to life is not a dream. A person dreaming is not really the same person a wake.

The unconscious part was the one working. It was like not seeing the other view of the

situation a person is in and so the unconscious part was the only one which perceives it

then leads to dreaming. Also, people might just be telepathic because one might be

doing the same action done by another in a different place as investigated by science.
 The existentialism concept of Philosophy had been playing its part of the movie.

When the prisoner wanted revenge on his captors, he wanted these people dead. It like

being existentialist from the perspective of Jean Paul Sartre, Hell is other people. There

is an absence of God so there was no place for the essence of humanity to be before

human existence. To him, existence comes first. The essence comes later. Indeed, the

essence is whatever we decide it is going to be. So, from our point of view things are

just the opposite of what they would be for people who believed in God. Now it is

"existence precedes essence." A world without purpose, value, or meaning is literally

senseless, worthless, meaningless, empty, and hopeless and that is existentialism.

Another was one of the character showed that he wants us to be free from nothingness,

to say Yes to one instant, and thus to all existence.

Lastly, the movie showed that actions done by people were just for survival.

Everything else is plastic therefore one should create a special one because a life lived

is a life understood. One must create a special bond with another. Being a stranger

should not control our communication with an unknown person hence we could make it

more special. We must attempt to be not the same with ants that just know how to meet

and go again. We can actually have authentic, meaningful encounters with others.

Everyday life can be a cathedral of our own making, if only we try hard enough. It is a

holy moment when one makes choices because it is one’s life that is being created.

Theories are not much working because self is like soap operas. Things happen and it

is like whirl wind of situations.

Hence, the idea of the need to realize the unity of all things, the Taoist call to live

naturally and spontaneously, the Buddhist sense of mindfulness and rejection of

attachments to a hard unchanging ego, and the existentialist reminder that we are

responsible, free beings who should live in good faith with our decisions. Natural,

mindful, responsible thinking can also help us to dissolve at least in part the spell of the

society of the spectacle, to emerge from our immersion in false needs and the spider's

web of illusion spun by advertising and the media. Waking Life thus does good service

not just as a sort of proto-philosophy class for the faint of heart, but also as presenting

us with a triad of wake-up calls for the self and its relation to society and the world as a

whole. Its didacticism aside, it reminds us that dreaming is something higher than

everyday life - something that causes us to emerge from a common sense into a

sharper awareness of the human condition. (Doug Mann, 2001)