Waking Life Page #2

the time scales that's involved here...

two billion years for life,

six million years

for the hominid,

mankind as we know it...

you're beginning to see the telescoping

nature of the evolutionary paradigm.

And then when you

get to agricultural,

when you get to scientific revolution

and industrial revolution,

you're looking at 10,000 years,

You're seeing a further telescoping

of this evolutionary time.

What that means is that as we

go through the new evolution,

it's gonna telescope to the point we

should be able to see it manifest itself...

within our lifetime,

within this generation.

The new evolution

stems from information,

and it stems from two types of

information:
digital and analog.

The digital is

artificial intelligence.

The analog results from molecular

biology, the cloning of the organism.

And you knit the two together

with neurobiology.

Before on the old

evolutionary paradigm,

one would die and the other

would grow and dominate.

But under the new paradigm,

they would exist...

as a mutually supportive,

noncompetitive grouping.

Okay, independent

from the external.

And what is interesting here is that evolution

now becomes an individually centered process,

emanating from the needs

and the desires of the individual,

and not an external process,

a passive process...

where the individual is just

at the whim of the collective.

So, you produce a neo-human with a new

individuality and a new consciousness.

But that's only the beginning

of the evolutionary cycle...

because as

the next cycle proceeds,

the input is now

this new intelligence.

As intelligence

piles on intelligence,

as ability piles on ability,

the speed changes.

Until what?

Until you reach a crescendo in a way...

could be imagined as an enormous

instantaneous fulfillment of human,

human and neo-human

potential.

It could be something

totally different.

It could be the amplification

of the individual,

the multiplication

of individual existences.

Parallel existences now with the individual

no longer restricted by time and space.

And the manifestations

of this neo-human-type evolution,

manifestations could be

dramatically counter-intuitive.

That's the interesting part.

The old evolution is cold.

It's sterile.

It's efficient, okay?

And its manifestations are

those social adaptations.

You're talking about parasitism,

dominance, morality, okay?

Uh, war, predation, these would

be subject to de-emphasis.

These would be

subject to de-evolution.

The new evolutionary paradigm will give

us the human traits of truth, of loyalty,

of justice, of freedom.

These will be the manifestations

of the new evolution.

That is what we would hope to see

from this. That would be nice.

A self-destructive man feels completely

alienated, utterly alone.

He's an outsider

to the human community.

He thinks to himself,

"I must be insane. "

What he fails to realize is that

society has, just as he does,

a vested interest in considerable

losses and catastrophes.

These wars, famines, floods

and quakes meet well-defined needs.

Man wants chaos.

In fact, he's gotta have it.

Depression, strife, riots,

murder, all this dread.

We're irresistibly drawn

to that almost orgiastic state...

created out of death

and destruction.

It's in all of us.

We revel in it.

Sure, the media tries to put

a sad face on these things,

painting them up

as great human tragedies.

But we all know the function

of the media has never been...

to eliminate the evils

of the world, no.

Their job is to persuade us to accept those

evils and get used to living with them.

The powers that be want us

to be passive observers.

Hey, you got a match?

And they haven't given us

any other options...

outside the occasional,

purely symbolic,

participatory act

of voting.

You want the puppet on the right

or the puppet on the left?

I feel that the time has come

to project my own...

inadequacies

and dissatisfactions...

into the sociopolitical

and scientific schemes,

let my own lack of a voice

be heard.

I keep thinking about

something you said.

- Something I said?

- Yeah.

About how you often feel like

you're observing your life...

from the perspective of an old woman

about to die.

- You remember that?

- Yeah. I still feel that way sometimes.

Like I'm looking back

on my life.

Like my waking life

is her memories.

Exactly.

I heard that Tim Leary

said as he was dying...

that he was looking forward

to the moment...

when his body was dead,

but his brain was still alive.

They say that there's still 6 to 12 minutes of

brain activity after everything is shut down.

And a second of dream

consciousness, right,

well, that's infinitely longer

than a waking second.

- You know what I'm saying?

- Oh, yeah, definitely.

For example, I wake up

and it's 10:
12,

and then I go back to sleep

and I have those long, intricate,

beautiful dreams

that seem to last for hours,

and then I wake up

and it's... 10:
13.

Exactly. So then 6 to 12 minutes

of brain activity,

I mean, that could be

your whole life.

I mean, you are that woman

looking back over everything.

Okay, so what if I am?

Then what would you be in all that?

Whatever I am

right now.

I mean, yeah,

maybe I only exist in your mind.

I'm still just as real

as anything else.

Yeah.

- I've been thinking also about

something you said. - What's that?

Just about reincarnation and where all

the new souls come from over time.

Everybody always say

that they've been the reincarnation...

of Cleopatra

or Alexander the Great.

I always want to tell them they were

probably some dumb f*** like everybody else.

I mean, it's impossible.

Think about it.

The world population has doubled

in the past 40 years, right?

- So if you really believe in that ego

thing of one eternal soul, - Mm-hmm.

then you only have a 50% chance

of your soul being over 40.

And for it to be over 150 years old,

then it's only one out of six.

So what are you saying then?

Reincarnation doesn't exist...

or that we're all young souls like where

half of us are first-round humans?

No, no. What I'm trying to say

is that somehow I believe...

reincarnation is just a...

a poetic expression of what

collective memory really is.

There was this article by this

biochemist that I read not long ago,

and he was talking about how when

a member of a species is born,

it has a billion years

of memory to draw on.

And this is where

we inherit our instincts.

I like that.

It's like there's, um,

this whole telepathic thing going on

that we're all a part of,

whether we're

conscious of it or not.

That would explain why

there's all these, you know,

seemingly spontaneous, worldwide,

innovative leaps in science, in the arts.

You know, like the same results poppin'

up everywhere independent of each other.

Some guy on a computer,

he figures something out,

and then almost simultaneously, a bunch

of other people all over the world...

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