In this scene, Ethan Hawk and Julie Delpy reprise their roles from an earlier Linklater film, Before Sunrise. First and foremost I want to address their stance on the concept of time and how we perceive it depending on what state of mind we’re in. The saying fact that the phrase “time flies when you’re having fun” is so widely accepted as a simple truth would lead me to believe that time is in fact not so much a constant as it is a result of how we perceive the events unfolding around us. This scene goes further with the idea and proposes that an entire lifetime could be the just the “life flashing before the eyes” moment of someone who is about to die. This exponentially increases the problem of perspective and what it means to our personal reality.
If both time is a variable and our consciousness is the result of what we perceive as happening to us, then how can we define what is actually “real”? I suppose the simple answer would be to not think about it and just embrace life as we can experience it, allowing our environment to define us rather than the other way around, but where’s the fun in that?
What if the reality we are participating in was actually the result of or our own perspective? Time moves slowly when you’re bored and bad days seem to feed on themselves, creating worse days; when it rains it pours and such. The opposite also being true with time flying and good days and all. Of course, this does not bode well for any of you reading this, as you must all be figments of my imagination. Sorry. Why then am I writing this? I can just simply will a good midterm grade into existence, right? Well, probably not, but can we (or I if none of you really exist) ever be 100% sure?
I admit that’s a little far-fetched but fun to toy around with nonetheless. The second half of the scene, after some interesting math relating to reincarnation and eternal souls, goes on to talk about a way in which everyone can passively influence the entirety of the world and manages to present it in a pretty believable theory. The supposition here is that we are all taking part in a collective memory; once a person knows something, it is somehow telepathically available for everyone to know. This sounds like its own little slice of crazy, I know, but they actually give some pretty good examples that lead to its plausibility. So given that this may exist, what are the implications of our thoughts manifesting themselves in the subconscious of everyone around us?
I’m not terribly concerned with the sharing of information and technological advances aspects of collective memory that the film deals with but instead far more worried about the emotional fallout that could result from a jaded society. Many would say that the world is going to shit, and it’s not hard to see why. Every news channel is a constant loop of terrible happenings the world over: war, theft, rape, disaster, etc. These are of course intermittently punctuated with political slander and the mind-numbingly awful morning shows (yes, that’s opinion, but seriously, what do they really offer?). If humanity really has the ability to project its thoughts amongst itself, then the unending bombardment of negativity will surely take its toll the world over. It’s true there are a number of ever optimistic people out there, but they are by far the minority.
I’m not sure how it happened, but there seems to be an emerging theme that humanity is destroying itself emerging from this midterm. I am not an inherently negative person, but I guess I have to call it as I see it. The silver lining to this dark cloud is that in each instance, humanity can save itself; there just needs to be a complete overhaul in the way we interact with the world around us.
I really wish the Solomon scene had not been removed from YouTube!
ReplyDeleteYeah, That was a pretty good scene. I was able to find the transcript for what he said though. I suppose it's the next best thing...
ReplyDeleteRobert Solomon
I’m afraid we’re losing the real virtues of living life passionately, sense of taking responsibility for who you are, the ability to make something of yourself and feeling good about life…the more that you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as fragmented or marginalized, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when Sartre talks about responsibility, he’s not talking about something abstract. He’s not talking about the kind of self or soul that theologians would argue about. It’s something very concrete. It’s you and me talking. Making decisions. Doing things and taking the consequences.
It might be true that there are six billion people in the world and counting. Nevertheless, what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms. Makes a difference to other people and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off and see ourselves as the victim of various forces. It’s always our decision who we are.