I watched The Truman’s Show, a really great film that was worth to see, last night. The film attracted and touched me in various ways: the evil and horrible director, Truman with unswerving determination, the people around the world who all cares about his life…… However, the film not only makes me think about what humanity and ethic are, but also brings to a further question about the world: how could he notice the world he lived was not true? How can we know whether the world we are living is true?
To begin with, it is quite clear that Truman had noticed something in his daily life. An appliance used to shoot the film dropped onto the group accidently. A woman he met told him that all the stuffs he had seen were made up, but she was caught by “her father” and taken away. The radio was repeating all the actions he did by accident. All these scenes made him notice that something strange happened to his world. Well, from my previous description, you may claim that we can determine if we are living in the real world by judging whether everything we meet is strange, or in other words, not illogical. I am sorry to tell you that it is still not perfect. That is no all because you may get cheated by yourself.
And this may explain why Truman had noticed nothing for most of his life. He never drove across the bridge because he was told that it was forbidden by the police. He did not doubt the appliance dropped onto the group because he was told that it was just a component fallen from a plane. Everything seemed logical because the people who made the film made it logical. This told me that we could be easily cheated by “the surface”, by the “logic” that “we” think is logical, and we will never doubt that! If we doubt everything, then we have to doubt the entire world we are living, which is very difficult. We could not easily judge whether the world is true or not because from our own perspective, we have already accepted that the world is true since we were born.
But this does not mean that we do not have any other solution. Do you remember how Truman found out the truth? I remember a scene very clearly when he and his wife was on the car, he successfully predicted the scenes and their orders that would happen in the next minute. He noticed that the cars and the people are just going around and around, and he proved it. And this may be the key to the truth. How can we predict the world? How can we tell what is going to happen? Is it too perfect if everything goes in the way that we want? This makes me think of something interesting called “lucid dream”, a dream where you can notice that is a dream when you are dreaming, which is a skill that is only known by a few people. Fortunately, I am one of those people who have this skill, and I am now able to share my experience. When I am dreaming, I can quickly notice the world is fake by doubting. If I imagine that I can go to the moon by just passing through a door in my house, and I successfully do it (Yes, I go to the moon!), then I can tell I am dreaming.
Well, how are lucid dreams connected to my topic? When I am dreaming, I can judge the world by whether everything can go in the way I imagine. When I am awake, why can’t I judge the world in the same way? Truman found the truth because he noticed that the world he lived was following a kind of rules, which is impossible. By observation, he could finally predict everything that is going to happen! The only feature the true world different from the fake one is that it is disordered and unpredictable. The fake world is made by yourself (dreams) or by others (Truman’s world), which unavoidably have some rules to follow. When Truman finally found the truth and was leaving the fake world, the director asked him to wait and think. He told Truman that the fake world he made for Truman was perfect, comfortable and innocent, while the real world outside was full of lies and misfortune. Truman chose to leave the fake one and went into the reality. I think he made the right decision. Yeah, the true world might seem “fake” for him because it is crueler and less predictable. But he embraced the reality. I believe, for him, the true world was much more exciting and interesting because he would never know what was going to happen in the next second. And this why we live. Though cruel, the real world makes us feel alive. “The fake world is full of real stuffs, but the real world is full of fake stuffs,” I said.