Frank Harrison Midterm #1: Waking Life (section 9)

For my midterm project, I have decided to do several pieces on Waking Life, a movie that has been the source of quite a few philosophical conversations amongst my friends and me over the years. Filmed back in 2001 by Richard Linklater, Waking Life is not so much a story as it is a series of profound conversations that shape the main character’s mind in a way that causes him to question the very nature of his consciousness. So without further delay, here is the first of several scenes I consider to be amongst the most interesting in the film…

Since we spent a considerable portion of a couple classes discussing evolution, I felt this would be the perfect place to start my project. Here we have Dr. Eamonn Healey who is a chemistry professor in Austin, TX. His views of the past, present, and future of the evolutionary process are certainly intriguing.


The “telescoping nature” of evolution, as he describes it, is an interesting theory. I agree that it seems we are making discoveries with increasing regularity, but does that really constitute evolution? I’m not sure it does, as I feel true examples of evolution must entail major changes to a species such as possibly an extra arm or a whole new means of communication, but let’s say for the sake of argument that every major leap forward for mankind can indeed be classified as a form of evolution.


When you lump biological, anthropological and cultural evolutions into the same category, then our ability to observe these changes is only limited by our means to communicate. Could it be that these changes just seem more frequent as the result of mass media allowing us to witness and better catalogue them, or do we change more frequently as the result of increased communication? I feel that it must be the latter of the two. We live in a society that is connected in a way that I can literally observe someone’s thoughts from halfway across the world at nearly the moment they have the idea as long as they put it on the internet. While I don’t necessarily agree this in itself is a true form of evolution, though I can see how it would be defined as so, I do believe that it does open the door for significant changes to our species in the near future.


This leads to the next main point of the video: have we truly reached the point where we can witness evolution manifest within our lifetimes? Absolutely. If evolution is the specie’s ability to adapt to the environment, whether it’s physically or culturally, then we are certainly on the path to be able to wield this power ourselves. It’s true that many of the modifications that we can make to the body are at this point more like fixes than enhancements, but in the very near future these enhancements will far exceed our current capabilities. Dr. Eamonn refers to this entity as the “neo-human.” There is little doubt in my mind that we will gradually evolve into a race that is both physically and mentally superior as the result of biological and genetic engineering, but will this indeed result in the de-emphasis of our violent and selfish tendencies?


Unfortunately, I do not think so. As society exists, materialism and unwillingness to share the viewpoints of others locks us in a cycle of hate and conflict. In order to break free from this, we must either break free of this current civilization altogether (the “enlightened” simply leaving everyone else to start a new colony) or separate ourselves from our tendencies (cold, logical rationing like that of a robot). In either case, the current generation of humans do not factor in. Whether we destroy ourselves through war or give way to new beings, in either case we simply cease to be, but I guess that’s evolution…