Waking Life and Dreaming Death

As we began The Epic of Gilgamesh, it became apparent that perhaps the most defining characteristic of the human experience is not love, beauty, ethics, or sacred space, but the fact that life itself must end. In Waking Life, however, the idea that the expanse of infinite time is filled in a dream state after death is curious, to say the least. If the afterlife does continue in a series of moments without context or familiar characters, why are we as humans desperate to continue the linear lives we lead?

Gilgamesh struggles to find the secret to immortality from Utnapishtim (also known as Noah for those of us playing it Old Testament style). As Horace, and so many other individuals will acknowledge after the oldest written story ever found, the written word is what preserves the memory of men, and sometimes women, who make their mark beyond their own time. With the invention of writing in many ways came the creation of the individual, and thus the isolation of each existence from every other one. I would argue, however, that the only thing that divides human beings into individuals is what they have no control over, such as dreams. In dreaming states, people are more themselves than anywhere else because the mind is unhindered by the constraints of linear time.

While I would like to think that I am different than everyone, and that I am extraordinary, like Raskolnikov, I see that none of us will ever conquer life as Utnapishtim has, and that is what makes the human experience. Utnapishtim might live forever with his wife, but what is the value of existence if it never changes? Whether the afterlife is just a series of REM from the grave or a slow, harmless decaying of the flesh, there must be something we cannot see until we are not humans anymore. Waking Life suggests that we are merely on the precipice of understanding until the eternal descent into whatever is out there. Gilgamesh or not, there must be something extraordinary in being able to extinguish the flame and finally become the smoke.