Waking, Prosaic Life

“Which is the most universal human characteristic: fear, or laziness?” (Waking Life)

My reaction after watching Waking Life is centered on one compound word—pseudo-intellectualism. The movie contains the normal banalities of its genre: discussion of reality, exploration of the meaning of life, and such. As usual per these “philosophers,” they find a need to characterize everything that they see, including human nature itself. In the movie they make the assumption that humans are either suffering from fear or laziness—a sweeping and uninspiring comment at best. What is worse, it makes no sense, as we could easily argue that neither is characteristic of a majority of humans, let alone all of them. Fear stems from two things: premonition based on prior experience (e.g. you are frightened when a red hot poker is flying straight at you), or premonition based on no experience (e.g. you are frightened when you see a stranger in a dark alley in the Bronx). Yet neither of those fears is universal. Fear only comes from the two situations if panic is also involved. A more collected and brave person would not feel the same fear as a more meek and cowardly person. And as for laziness, the human need to remain occupied is far greater than his need to remain lazy. The lazy people among us do not sit around all day, but rather they are more easily occupied by activities that interest them, activities that do not relate to our definition of “work.” If laziness is the blissful paradise of humanity, then we should all go to jail. Frankly, even the idea of basing the universal characteristic of humanity on a few adjectives is laughable. The only characteristic of humanity is that there is never a characteristic of humanity.

"Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled."(Santayana)

Aside from this, there are plenty of other quasi-philosophical diatribes about the pursuit of individuality, identity, and, of course, the usual ubiquities about reality of existence. The movie is pretty obvious about its take on this quotation: it is filmed entirely in abstract animated sequence for a dreamlike effect. However, the idea that life is a controlled dream and sanity is a “good” madness seems to suggest that to the human being, dreams and madness are the only constants. I find this perspective limiting. If madness and dreams are the constant, then they must also have no meaning—the basis of existence, in my belief, has no meaning. We are born a tabula rasa, and nothing around us have any meaning until we give them meaning. Yet, neither madness nor dream, used in the context of Santayana’s quotation, is meaningless. I interpreted this quotation as a statement that the human condition is entirely coincidental—our actions are like the flip of a coin: we do not know what we do is right or wrong. In my mind, I believe the human is far more proactive than this prosaic, hapless state. Humanity actively brings meaning to things, and whether if a thing or event is considered “right” or “wrong” is entirely dependent on the view of the human. Our actions are not based on chance: we could simply interpret them in different ways.

Truth?

Truth is objective, according to philosophers. However, truth is subjective, according to the individual. This disparity is revealed in Anderson’s I Know the Moon, Gaiman’s Wolves in the Walls, O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story”, and Dickinson’s three poems. In Anderson and O'Brien, both authors suggest that truth depends on the viewpoint of individuals, while in Gaiman and Dickinson, truth is seen as more absolute--in Gaiman as beyond human meddling, and in Dickinson as part of divinity. In other words, there is no consensus on "truth." But I am in general more inclined to agree with the individual approach to truth. The objective truth is irrelevant to life, but absolutely central to thought, and thought depends on the wishes and needs of the individual. Thinking is only relevant where thinking has relevance.

Truth to be told, I liked none of the pieces of literature. They were all very well-written; however, none of them were of my "taste." I never read children's stories when I was a child, so I cannot form any sort of connections with them. Dickinson's poems were too religiously charged for me to accept them, and O'Brien's war story was too forbidding; it spoke of nothing in particular, yet seemed to convey a powerful point that was all to elusive to me.

This assignment was difficult, to say the very least.

Asimov was prophetic in his speech. He mentioned an extraordinary number of problems that we face today in his speech, including global warming, the Malthusian Catastrophe, and the aging population. It was clear from the speech that Asimov was a polymath synaptic philosopher. His expertise ranged from science to politics to philosophy, which quite impressed me. The world that he envisioned, while stood on firm logical and theoretical footing, was however unrealistic. Population growth rates are already down in many parts of the world—mostly in the developed countries, with the U.S. being the only major developed country with a significant natural population growth rate—and this kind of population rate is not achieved through eugenics or any sort of population-control schemes. However, the population in the developed countries are growing quickly, and it is almost impossible to check this growth, owing to the fact that there is no effective world government to enforce any sort of universal population regulation. Population will continue to grow until child rearing costs (usually stemming from a higher level of education) increase significantly as the developing countries emerge from poverty.
Asimov also fails to mention one major factor in the changing demographics as population decline and the old increase their share of the population—the unaffordable welfare bill that will inevitably be saddled to the world’s governments. Less population means fewer younger men to generate tax revenue, and an aging demographics mean more expenditure on a variety of elderly necessities—health care, recreation, retirement funds… and this problem is already straining many of the governments in the developed world. Tax rates inevitably becomes more extortionary (Sweden, for example, pays 55% of its GNP into taxes), which in turn stifles development. This system at a long term is unsustainable, in other words. The only viable solution is to keep a stable population while the developing world emerge from poverty. One viable solution is to keep population growth at a stable level while the developing world emerges from poverty—this may mean the goodbye of the suburbia, but the City is very capable of supporting population—the mega-conglomerate of Tokyo (pop. 25,000,000+)exists on a plot of land the size of Connecticut (pop. 3,000,000). Meanwhile, we should work on genetically-modified agriculture, hydroponics, and the use of salt-resistant crops that will raise the output of our land and reduce agriculture’s resource intensity. Eventually, when the gap between the developing world and the developed world closes, we will have a stable population and the quasi-utopia of Asimov (and really, Karl Marx) will finally be reality.

Sophistry without Meaning

I suppose what Kristol means is that humans cannot survive without “purpose” in life. I think that comment colludes well with Socrates’ conviction to follow his purpose as a gadfly willing to question and change “normalcy.” But do we all need an absolute purpose to live, and can the definition of “purpose” be welded? Few alive today could state, with absolute conviction, “this is what I am born to do and I will do this for the rest of my life.” Just as a ubiquitous example, the procurement of material comfort (i.e. money) occupies the life of most living creatures. To many, this kind of life has little to no “purpose.” But who is to say that materialism is “meaningless,” per se? Only the individual may make an accurate judgment on the meaning of his “purpose” in life, and really, I think few of us get a chance to even ask this question, in this fast-paced and self-centered world where intellectualism in the traditional sense has little relevance. Think of the 1984 scenario—the idea of rebellion did not even cross the mind of the impoverished and neglected “proles,” the huddled masses oppressed by the Party, when they were struggling to eke out a miserly existence. In reality, we live in a relatively similar scenario: often, the nitpicky details of our lives occupy almost all our attention (Why did so-and-so say this to me? Why do I have to do this work? Why does lunch suck so much today?), and self-reflection of the higher magnitude simply never occurs to us. In fact, this kind of reflection often requires the individual to inspect himself from a third-person view—in other words, to judge oneself with all the impartiality of a bystander (Socrates was brilliantly successful at this in Apology). But how often can we really get past that barrier of “self” that Russell considers such a barrier to enlightenment? The truth is, rarely, if one’s not a temple-dwelling, celibate, and teetotal Buddhist monk whose leisure time in a year exceeds the amount of leisure we have in perhaps a lifetime; we simply do not have enough time to closely scrutinize our so-called “purpose.” Thus, what is its importance to us? I do not need to find a “purpose,” or perhaps, my purpose is to do what I am doing right now in, to me, the best possible way. As long as I am satisfied with the plethora of mundane things that I do (e.g. making a ton of dough, if that is what I want, or maybe to enjoy the movie that I’m watching right now), I see no reason for having self-reflections. Be and let be.