As a civilization, we have never been more connected or moving at faster speeds. All the information that man has ever archived is now readily available at our fingertips. We can send videos to friends on our cell phones, all the while fielding e-mails and talking to friends halfway around the world.

Life is moving at the speed of light - all that expense of our internal clocks. When was the last time you sat down to read a book in the middle of the day? Or took time to listen to the silence? When was the last time you went to a park for a picnic, or napped away the afternoon?

Buried underneath all of the other themes in "Examined Life," is the notion that we need to reconnect to the bigger questions of life. Yes, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages and e-mail are important, but when was the last time we allowed ourselves to think beyond the computer screen? Beyond our day-to-day?

Astra Taylor’s documentary attempts to build a bridge between today’s most inspiring philosophers and the average citizen. Taylor inserts her subjects into the most routine and commonplace of locales (parks, airports, backseats of cars, landfills, shopping districts) as they casually, though headily, discuss a variety of topics, Taylor delivers an engaging defense for the idea that this type of thinking is exactly what the world needs right now.

What better place to start than with philosophical preacher, professor, author, lecturer, and rapper Dr. Cornel West. West brings a musical influence to his intellectual pursuits, but it isn’t just the blues, jazz, and hip-hop; it’s classical, it’s 1960s pop, it’s everything and then some.

And while he stresses that philosophy needs to go to school with music, not just poetry, he certainly doesn’t dismiss that form of art, unleashing a flurry of references and actual quotes that makes one think, "Just how big is this man’s brain of reference?"

Taylor questions West as she drives him around Manhattan. Sitting in the backseat, he bursts forth with enthusiasm. One imagines this is exactly how he would act if he had just hopped into a random taxicab.

To West, the life of ideas is deeply connected to our appreciation of life and acceptance of death. Without it, we aren’t really living.

Early on, one comes to understand that Taylor’s structure and style isn’t overly rigid and formal. Because of this, "Examined Life" doesn’t feel like a lesson at all; it feels like a conversation (albeit a smart one).

As he strolls Fifth Avenue and mocks materialism, Peter Singer (author of the seminal "Animal Liberation") points out that our moral obligation as citizens is to help as much as to simply "not harm."

In a Toronto airport, Kwame Anthony Appiah acknowledges the difference between the notions of global versus personal care, but stresses that we must find a way to simultaneously take care of both.

Strolling through a downtown New York City park, Ativa Ronell states, "The responsible being is the one who thinks they’ve never been responsible enough." These three examples are more proof that Taylor isn’t forcing an agenda down her subjects’ throats. She would rather let them make their own points about a variety of modern ethical and moral dilemmas.

And so it goes. "Examined Life" could have been yet another work of non-fiction that preaches to the choir, yet Taylor has done her part to inject some much needed energy into her potentially stiff material. By doing this, she hasn’t made yet another forgettable talking heads doc. Rather, she’s made a genuinely relevant work of walking brains, a film that challenges us to think big, and go forth into the great mystery that is life.

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