What Is

What Is

September 19, 2004

> The Lathe of Heaven vs. The Matrix. (Game vs. Reality and Dream vs. Reality)


Both The Lathe of Heaven and “The Matrix” play with the idea of truth or fiction. They raise the question of Dream vs. Reality and, as they are both in the science fiction genre, they propose what could be. I find that science fiction is the “what if” factor in our thought process of reality. Both of these science fiction stories bring up the idea that our dreams maybe a major portion of what we see to be the real world.

The Matrix refers to a dream world that can be entered and altered by using technology in the “real world”. People in general prefer to perceive that our world (here and now) is real; The Matrix claims that in reality, it is only dream world created by dominating machines of artificial intelligence. Could this happen? Could machines eventually take over and create an alternative world? Could we just be a part of a dream? Are we just unaware and blindly going on worrying about our own daily problems (which seem hardly important when compared with the problems of Neo who must face saving the human race completely)? Which is real, and what should we believe? This movie causes us to question our own existence of what is. Everything that we have come to know could be part of a dream that could be simple erased/discarded by the minds of the machines and their creator (the architect).

In The Lathe of Heaven Dr. Haber utilizes Orr’s power and knowledge of controlling and changing dreams to design the world in his own image. Dreams are something that can be changed because they are supposed to remain in the subconscious, in the dormant and non active states of life. However when they are able to be somehow connected to the real world, both the dream and real world can clash and lead to destruction. Dr. Haber creates such an perverted world using Orr’s dreams that it is unclear which is the original/real world and which is not. Is the whole story just a dream of Orr? Or Haber? Perhaps the story of The Lathe of Heaven was just a dream of one of the characters and when he/she wakes up he/she will return to reality.

My first Blog entry is based on the idea that “the idea of reality will remain unknown”. Perhaps these stories are correct; that dreams aren’t just a thought process that goes on in our sleep, perhaps we are changing details of life through them.