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.