Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Waking Life

There is a film that was made in 2001 called Waking Life. It is directed by Richard Linklater and most of the film is shot in Austin. It is about a young man who is searching for purpose and meaning. He has many philosophical discussions throughout the film. In fact, many of the people that are discussing in the film are professors here at UT. For those of you who enjoy thinking deeply about important questions, I highly recommend this film. I hope you enjoy these clips from it.

In the following scene, one of our professors here at UT discusses free will and determinism. This is something that has come up quite a bit in our class, especially in Vas. I strongly agree with the last few statements he makes.


This next scene talks about language.


When you watch this scene think about D-503 and the rest of the One State. The One State is just a sophisticated ant colony.

5 comments:

Crista Beck - Dating Coach and Matchmaker said...

I don't want to be an ant either!!!!!

I think it is so cool that you like Waking Life. It is one of my favorite films.

Maybe we can tie this message into our paper somehow.

Kyle Caffey said...

I think that is a good idea. There are alot of angles that we could look at. One interesting thing is that the One Staters, D-503 included, are just going around like ants. Even though they have faith in the Benefactor they are acting as if there is no higher purpose for humanity. However, belief in God, in many instances, gives poeple a sense of purpose. So this is one way that peoples belief in God differs from D-503's belief in the Benefactor.
I don't know... just some thoughts.

emma said...

the language scene really caught my interest. it makes me wonder, what about all the abstract perceptions and ideas that don't have words assigned to them yet? are they categorized as abnormalities? or are they even truly acknowledged by anyone other than the people experiencing them? if it's not a part of our language, do people have a harder time accepting it as part of our culture?

Ana said...

I love waking life! You posted my favorite scene! Where they're talking about how language affects us physically. As in when we hear the word love it triggers something in our brains that we associate to our memories of love and that's what we each understand to be love. I always thought it was so interesting that society as a whole agrees on the meaning of emotions when they're so abstract and impossible to define, but we all just have this inherent understanding... I love that movie!

christo said...

this blog reminds me of the scene towards the end of a waking life where the main character is just finding out he's in a dream and he's talking to a guy who tells him about an essay by philip k. dick (how to build a universe that doesn't fall apart 2 days later). The essay basically talks about events in dick's life and previous books he wrote that were very similar to the book of ACTS in the bible. His theory was that we are all living in the time of the bible and that all of what we see is an illusion.