I watched Waking Life today. I know I’m a late comer to this film; I’ve been hearing about it for years but never gave it a chance.

If you haven’t seen the movie, it follows a guy around a series of dreams that contain existential theories, and philosophical questions. Question upon question presents itself to this guy and his response is admirable, he listens. I believe him to be the wise-man of the film.

Some may question me by labeling what the passive character of the piece as a wise-man. He has no theories; very little of what he adds is relevant. Well that may be true, but very little of what anyone has to say in the film is relevant.

There is gravity to the questions, but none of them contains relevance. Philosophy is fun, I enjoy listening to such discussions, but it’s doomed to remain in the land of the theoretical, it solves nothing, it answers nothing. “Where’s the milk” will always be a more relevant, and important than “Are we all just part of a dream?”

At some point in the film, I thought about the differences between philosophers and scientists. Scientists work on explaining the absolutes. They want concrete, proven answers, they want formulas. Philosophers work in areas where science cannot create formula or workable theory. Is this foolish? I don’t think so. Scientific knowledge is a temporary thing. If you want to write truth down don’t do it in the form of scientific law, the next scientific revolution will prove your law folly.

If you want to write truth, the closest you can come is writing about the human experience of here and now. A good philosopher would ask me to define truth for them. To them I would say that it’s something you have to define for yourself =) .