Ryu Reblog

Authors@Google: Kyle Johnson ‘Inception and Philosophy’ (by AtGoogleTalks)

A great explanation. I learned so many things I didn’t catch in the movie. Eye-opening (ex. it doesn’t matter if the top fell or not, Cobb’s totem is backwards, he’s more of an unreliable narrator than we think, you can’t trust anything he says, he could be in anyone’s dream). Check it out.

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Very cool exposition on “Inception.” I thought it was another great Nolan film that didn’t get enough credit (check out “Memento”). Even when I was watching it I didn’t fully understand it, but I knew such a great story was hinting at something more than just a thriller that takes place in dreams. I’m glad such a film was finally made. Watch this whole lecture through.

Spoiler: The whole movie is a dream. Once you see behind the red herring of whether the top actually fell or not, the movie becomes straight-forward, it also becomes a better movie. Short answer, Cobb’s totem is backward and he’s an extremely unreliable narrator. The whole thing takes place in Cobb’s head.

Hence all the “real world” characters being one-dimensional (they’re simply figments of his imagination or expressions of his personality, like the Freudian superego, id, and ego) and the physically impossible feats that sometimes occur in Cobb’s “real world” (i.e. the maze like world of Mombasa with the “mobs” (shorthand for “mobiles in Minecraft and other games) or dream projections that seem to “spawn” from nowhere, just like in a videogame).

Better yet the tension between whether Cobb, a fictional character, is in a dream raises metaphorical and metaphysical questions that we in the actual real world may be uncomfortable to answer. The “real world” implications are immense and fun to ponder.

How much of the real world is actually real? Is reality and dreams more connected and more similar than we think? If real life is a level in a multi-layered dream, a “dream within a dream”, when we die, do we, like the characters in the film, just go “one level up?” Are we reincarnating our way through each level of the dream, much like reincarnating as a different being in a Buddhist or Hindu religious framework?

Are we living in what Buddhists call “samsara,” an endless cycle of reincarnation, constantly moving through the levels of our “dream” of reality? Maybe there is no final layer, no “real world” and there is no way to wake up from this “dream.”  Do we take a “leap of faith” when we believe this world is real and not a dream? Raises as many as or perhaps even more interesting questions than “The Matrix”

- Ryu

My essays on Minecraft, video games and the nature of the internet (how it is very much like dreaming)

http://www.scribd.com/doc/57739897/A-Vision-for-the-Internet-%E2%80%93-Memes-Irony-Disembodiment-Religion-and-Authenticity#fullscreen:on

http://www.scribd.com/doc/57740235/Minecraft-%E2%80%93-On-the-Frontier-of-Today%E2%80%99s-Gaming-s-Experience#fullscreen:on

http://www.writingsofryu.com/search/label/the%20internet

http://www.writingsofryu.com/search/label/video%20games

Other articles from this lecturer on “Inception”

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/plato-pop/201111/inception-and-philosophy-it-was-all-just-dream

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/plato-pop/201112/inception-and-philosophy-taking-leap-faith

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/plato-pop/201111/inception-and-philosophy-did-the-spinning-top-fall

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/plato-pop/201102/inception-wins-plato-s-academy-award