ryochiji's blog

Waking Life

I just finished watching "Waking Life", which must've been the most thought provoking and artistically inspiring movie I've seen in a long time, if ever. In fact, yesterday's random act of creation was inspired by watching just the first 20 minutes. Anyway, the movie's very interesting from a purely aesthetic perspective (it's an animation, but computer generated based on live action footage), but the plot (if it could be called that), which is based on the question of whether we live reality and dream dreams or we live dreams and dream reality (or something along those lines), is intriguing as well.

Read on for some rambling on some of the issues I thought were rather interesting.
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Free will- One of the chapters is about free will, in a modern sense. Augustine (which we just read in one of my classes) talks about whether or not free will can exist if there's an all-knowing God. If God already knows every choice that we will ever make (and, I guess, set us up for whatever he wants), could there be free will? Ultimately he also talks about justice being the virtue of serving God's will, so I guess that answers that to a certain degree, but in the movie, they talk about whether or not free will can exist if the universe is governed essentially by rules of physics. If our thoughts and actions are, at the end, merely controlled by laws of physics (in a pre-string/quantum theory way), and thoughts are mere electronic impulses, how much "freedom" do we have? I thought that was rather interesting, but, personally, it seemed like a case of looking too far into the mechanics of a question and losing sight of the fundamental aspects. Yes, our brain is essentially a physical existence, and therefore our mind is grounded (and bound) to a physical world. But, I don't think that necessarily is in direct opposition to "freedom", if you define "freedom" in a purely social/human framework. Augustine talked about "God's will", but there's no "will of physics" because physics is just our interpretation of reality, and reality just is (no will, as far as we're concerned). In other words, what we mean by "freedom" is really "freedom" in a social construct. It's a question of whether we're allowed to follow our own inpulses (whatever they may be and however they may be formed), and to what degree such impulses will be limited. Naturally, therein lies a contradiction. Where and how are such "impulses" or "desires" formed? How, why and who represses them? Dostoevsky would argue (well, at least he did in the Underground Man) that it's the desires that make us human, while rational thought only makes us inhuman and machine-like. On the other hand, there's a strong argument that the rational mind is what makes humans humans. Okay, I'm going nowhere. That's enough rambling for that.

Remembering vs Living Perception - Apparently our brain has a mechanism for suppressing memory of perception, otherwise "we'd pee in our pants every time we had a scary thought" (rough quote). That brings forth the idea that there really is no difference (at some level of our minds) between remembered perception and live, actual perception, and that's why dreams seem real to us. I thought that was an interesting idea, and it's making me think of the "record" feature that AppleScript has. I'm sort of thinking of a mechanism that stores perception while processing, and then later somehow feeds the exact same signals back into the circuitry. I really should study neurosciences one of these days...

Ant - There was a line that went something like "I don't want to be an ant..." which reminded me of an email I wrote while in Japan. I can't remember exactly what I said (I'm sure it's in my archives, if I bothered to look) but one of the things I absolutely hated about Tokyo was that it inevitably made me feel like an ant. Walking down the street, going to a store, whatever I was doing, I felt like a member of a collective. Homogenous, and dead. You go to McDonalds in Japan and you'll get the exact same service no matter where and when you go. They'll say the same things, ask the same questions, get the same sterile smile, and they bow at the same angle (because this is Japan). Now, you might say the same thing happens at McDonalds anywhere, but that's definitely not true. As corporate and sterile as McDs can be here, you can tell that the people behind the counters really are people. They'll be in a bad mood, scatter-brained, rude, happy, or simply forget to ask you if you want fries with that. Oh, and they'll also screw up your order. Personally, I would much rather live in a country where fast food chains are manned by humans, than humanoid robots (or robotoid humans), even if it means they mess up your order every other time you go.

Who are those people in our dreams? - That's another question posed in the movie. I mean, really, who are those people? When I see my mom in a dream, that's not really my mother, even though it seems like her. Is it a memory being replayed? Possibly. Or is it really us? Maybe. Or some combination? They quite convincingly appear to be whoever they are, but they're also definitely a figment of our imagination (or whatever department is in charge of making up dreams). Here's a funny story: I once fell in love in a dream with a real person, then fell in love with that person in real life. Yup.

false awakenings - Yeah, I hate it when that happens, although I can't remember the last time it happened. But I can still remember one really bad one I had when I was a kid (maybe 5 or 6 years old). I was in a dream and was about to get hit by a steam locomotive. At the last moment, I realized I was in a dream, so I willed myself to wake up. I woke up in a hotel room with my family, and the TV was on. I realized I was still in a dream so I, again, willed my self to wake up. Instead, the TV flipped channels. So at the end, I pried open my eyes with my hands. True story. Well, true within the limitations (and error prone nature) of my memory, of course.

instance vs time as a continuum - What is time? What is "now"? I think Wolfram puts forward the theory that time might not be continuous at all, but might actually be incremented in discrete units. Of course, we have no way of knowing, because during those discrete increments, absolutely nothing happens (i.e. we're in a totally suspended state). The question I have is, whether time is a stack or a plane. If reality is a state, then it makes sense from a programming point of view to store it in a stack. That way, you can just pop things off and revert whenever you want. On the other hand, time could conceivably be like swirly patterns on a bubble; the pattern changes, but you're still on the same surface of the same bubble.

and not related to the movie, but.... I haven't done much work this weekend (you know, the stop frame animation, this movie and all) and people keep telling me I should work. That's interesting because I define my self in the work I don't do. Or rather, the things I do while not working is what makes me who I am. That also means I need work to not do, in order to do the things that I do while neglecting work. And I don't understand why that seems like a contradiction to some people. I also need to do laundry, but that's admittedly a separate issue... and has been for about 2 weeks. Like, I think I've lost track of how many times I've worn each of my shirts... and forget my socks. Phew. I should really be burning them. Um. Yeah.