15/2/11

Richard Linklater

Waking Life; Richard Linklater 
An animation film to stimulate the thoughts and questions of life. The actual animation is distorted, representing that life is not perfect and distorted itself. The characters in Waking Life bring up matter's in a simple way to understand philosophy. It gets you asking yourself questions about what is life? Who and what should we believe? etc.
Asking all of the questions is the building blocks to postmodernism. It's about questioning the things we usually do and interpreting it from a different perspective. We try to make things different, using unconventional media. For example, instead of the usual writing in blogs, we add urls. Instead of urls, images. Instead of images, movies and so on. We try to think outside the box, which is what IB tries to drill in our minds all the time. THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX! You don't want to be doing what these people are doing..just a quick side note; you need to show sources, but how are we meant to show sources on an image with a URL longer than the blog itself?

Google Images; Outside the Box

All of this questioning leads to deconstruction of an idea. That is, how do we know that the American's landed on the moon? This is where deconstruction comes into play. We pick apart the evidence, negative and positive, and make a judgement on the evidence.


In the animation, Waking Life, the characters talk about how language was first formed. It was first formed to connect to one another, communication. Then the sounds turned into words, which are just representative symbols. I mean, how do we know if our communication is clear? How do I know, that you understand what I'm trying to convey?


When we are listening to someone speaking about love, subconsciously, our brain brings together our knowledge and understanding of love, to piece together what that person is talking about. So, how does memory represent knowledge? Our senses, trigger a recollection of memories that make us remember certain knowledge we have learnt. This is why studies say when making notes for exams, use colour! Because colour, visual aid and stories are a way for our memory to link back to our knowledge for future need. Watch this clip for a visual understanding!

And this leads onto, if we have no memory or experience of something, do we have knowledge of it? The answer is for you to find out! But I figure, without experience, how can you learn? Because even googling knowledge, is an experience in a way. We may also mix up our memories, so then how can we be sure what we remember is real? For me, I mix up my dreams and reality all the time, sometimes i'm unsure if my dream was real or if my reality was a dream. In simple terms, for example, if I have a dream that I've told my best friend that I secretly still believe in santa, when I wake up, or even an hour later, I'm unsure if it actually happened.

Knowledge can also get a little bit fuzzy when it comes to people's memories because of course, everyone has different experiences. This means there are a wide variety of opinions and perspectives, which is why it's always good to keep an open-mind, because you may learn something from their experience!

In Waking Life, an odd character says,

"No matter how many colour crayons you have, it's what you do with them."

'The Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost is a poem, that expresses a similar meaning. That is, TO TAKE THE UNTAKEN ROAD.

Jean-Paul Sartre; You'll learn about him in a paragraphs time..

This is a belief called existentialism. People who follow existentialism believe that the road, path, choice etc. untaken usually turns out to be the most interesting and beneficial. However, the world would end in a disaster if everyone followed this way of living, because our world would be a mess if everyone is living in the now and not the future. A french philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, believes in existentialism. He looks pretty wise, does he not? [Above image]


I'm just going to through this word in here: Paradigm; used to describe distinct concepts. I'm not entirely sure what this word means or relates to yet, but hopefully in the future it will make more sense.


Important name to remember, NOAM CHOMSKEY. He is a US philosopher who commentates on social political life. Once again, my understanding is not clear, but will develop [so I hope].