Many critics of Nolan might point to Inception as an example of how most of Nolan’s work is overblown
and over-hyped. And the movie is. Despite the reputation the movie has garnered
for being complicated and confusing (or maybe all my friends are just idiots…) Inception is just an action heist movie
wrapped up with a neat little twist. It’s Ocean’s
Eleven in dreams.
But there’s still one scene that really catches my
attention, and it’s a scene that the movie does not give much attention.
Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) walks into the basement
of an alchemist, who will give him a drug strong enough to knock him and his
comrades into the needed level of unconsciousness. The basement is full of cots,
each of which supports the body of a dreaming man, whose arm is connected to a needle
which feeds him anesthesia. Cobb is told that these men are no different than
addicts, who cannot find joy without indulging in these artificial dreams.
The reactions from Cobb and his crew are barely audible
grumbles, which amount to not much more than a collection of pitying scoffs.
What immediately comes to my mind, when I see this scene, is
a philosophical thought experiment penned by Robert Nozick in the 1970s. In his
book Anarchy,
State and, Utopia[i],
Nozick discusses The Experience Machine. It was an effort to refute
unrepentant hedonism. Nozick proposes a scenario in which you have the
opportunity to experience an event by connecting yourself to some machine,
perhaps similar to the machine Leonard DiCaprio carried around with him in Inception.
However Nozick argues that, despite being able to completely
experience whichever event you desire to experience and despite being able to
derive any and all of pleasure from the experience of this event, you will not
find the experience satisfactory. You fail to actually do things, you just experience them. Instead of being someone and constructing an
identity, your being is just a collection of experiences.
The third and final argument Nozick makes against the
experience machine:
“Plugging
into an experience machine limits us to a man-made reality, to a world no
deeper or more important than that which people can construct. There is no
actual contact with any deeper reality, though the experience of it can be
simulated.”
The lack of “actual contact with any deeper reality” precludes
any possibility for the experience to be deeply satisfying. Sounds pretty good.
His counterargument is anchored in an appeal to this vague
unsatisfactory feeling a person is left with when confronted with The
Experience Machine scenario. Just as Leo scoffed at the dreamers in the
basement, Nozick scoffs at those who would consider that a life dominated or
augmented by The Experience Machine to be a satisfying or worthy life.
I want to return to the above quote from Nozick. He believes
that most human beings would find this lack of a deeper reality to be
unsatisfying. Merely indulging in pleasurable experiences, especially
artificially simulated experiences, deprives human beings of any deeper
reality. Therefore, these indulgences are undesirable.
This concept pervades science fiction. We see it in the
basement of Inception; we see it
throughout The Matrix. There is the
real and there is the unreal. Within the Matrix, within the dream, within the
experience machine, we can find pleasure. We can find enjoyment. But we cannot
find any meaning. We can’t get any satisfaction from such artificial, albeit
enjoyable, experiences.
I like Nozick’s concept of “deeper reality.” I also like
that Nozick suggests that “deeper reality” exists. It’s real. It’s tangible. It’s
something with which I can have contact. Most importantly, at least to him, it’s
something that I cannot, or do not, create.
But is it? Again, I fall back to the oft-used questions of
science fiction stories. What if it’s all fake? I could be nothing more than a projection
your subconscious just as much as you could be one of mine. And we don’t know. We
really know nothing. We just perceive a whole bunch of stuff and then
categorize it and compartmentalize it and build a nice and neat narrative out
of it. Even if there is an objective “deeper reality,” it only exists because I
can perceive it. And its existence is limited by my ability (or your ability)
to perceive it and make sense of it and make use of it.
So why couldn’t I find a deeper reality within The
Experience Machine? If I can construct a suitable sense of reality out of the
experiences I have had during my current life, why couldn’t I construct an
equally suitable sense of reality out of the pleasurable dreams fed to me by
some machine?
There’s a chance I’m already hooked up.
Once
Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around,
happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi.
Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he
didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a
butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi.
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