Real reality

I watched Inception for the second time last night and loved it every bit as much as the first time. The great thing about sci-fi movies like that is their ability to ask deep questions in an entertaining way. The question that came to mind last night was, How do we know what's real? And do we really care?

Spoiler Alert: Skip the next paragraph if you haven't seen the movie, since it will ruin it for you.

When Cobb and his wife Mal are lost together in a dream world of their own making, Cobb realizes that eventually they need to wake up. But Mal has left the real world behind, and the only way to get her to go back is to implant an idea in her mind--the idea that this life she's living isn't real. From within the dream world, only death can cause a person to wake up. So Cobb has to implant in her subconscious mind the idea that they must escape this world through death. The plan works, only too well. After they commit suicide in the dream world, they wake up in the real world; only Mal hasn't lost the idea planted in her mind. She refuses to accept the world around her as real. She insists that the two of them still need to wake up. This leads to a second suicide--only this time she is gone, never to wake again.