Waking Life Analysis

Dina Laurine Chokr

SOAN 203

10/04/2016

Waking life is a film written and produced by Richard Linklater. The film focuses on the nature of dreams and consciousness. The title, Waking Life, is of great reference to the philosopher George Santayana 's maxim in ‘Sanity is a madness put to good use’ which suggests that the waking life is a dream controlled. The nameless main character shuffles through his life in a persistent lucid dream-like state. He starts by observing people, scenes, and conversations and later actively participates in philosophical discussions of issues such as reality, free will, the relationship of the subject with others, existentialism, anthropological theories of evolution, language, and the meaning of life.

These interactions

The young woman thinks that her waking life might be the memories of an old woman in the last moments of her life.” As theories about dreams arise, the man suggests that recent studies of the brain activity of sleeping or dying people show that a lifetime of experiences can could be condensed into a few actual minutes of activity. If this is true, does this make the “all is a dream” hypothesis any more compelling?” Throughout the film We become the nameless main character. His dreams becomes our dreams. As he asks question about life and death, we begin to question ourselves, and where we come from and where we are going. Lucid dreaming challenges the Western philosophical worldview, where they are ignored by most mainstream philosophers and scientists. The film uses real scientific and cultural evidence from research in parapsychology. Parapsychology is a field of study concerned with the investigation of paranormal and psychic phenomena which generally validates the waking life consequences. Other cultures, such as the Shamans have a different notion of reality and provide evidence that is in harmony with parapsychological information. There is no set worldview about lucid dreaming or Parapsychology, but the the film helps us understand it by linking it to big ideas that

I think the film’s audience was directed to the Millennials or Generation Y. This Indigo generation, is in doubt of many ‘universal’ concepts. This film approached notions such as freedom in a chaotic system, and science to prove individuality and free will. To take an example, generation Y is interested in a new form of evolution which this movie greatly addresses. The evolution we all know of is the evolution of population, which looks at biology (neanderthals), anthropology (place and culture), and cultural(human expression). Evolutionary anthropology is concerned with both biological and cultural evolution of humans, past and present. The new evolution manifests itself in the new generation, it has informational roots that come from both digital (artificial intelligence) and analog (clones), and now no longer uses biology as it was but as a new form of neurobiology. As this new generation is in constant search for individuality, the evolution becomes individualistic and not collective or passive. The neo-humans with their new intelligence and ability have a new speed and a new potential, the individual is now amplified and is no longer restricted by time and space. This addresses very important issues within anthropology. The waking life looks at the old evolution