The human ant colony

This is a section of the script from the film Waking Life. 

              A guy and a girl pass on the street.  

Girl:         - Excuse me.  

Guy:          - Excuse me.  

Girl:         Hey. Could we do that again?
              I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant. You know?
              I mean, it's like we go through life...
              with our antennas bouncing off one other,
              continuously on ant autopilot,
              with nothing really human required of us.
              Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there.
              All action basically for survival.
              All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along...
              in an efficient, polite manner.
              " Here's your change." " Paper or plastic?" "Credit or debit?"
              "You want ketchup with that?"
              I don't want a straw. I want real human moments.
              I want to see you. I want you to see me.
              I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be an ant, you know?

Guy:          Yeah. Yeah, I know.
              I don't want to be an ant, either.
              Yeah, thanks for kind of, like, jostling me there.
              I've been kind of on zombie autopilot lately.
              I don't feel like an ant in my head, but I guess I probably look like one.
              It's kind of like D.H. Lawrence had this idea of two people meeting on a road...
              And instead of just passing and glancing away,
              they decided to accept what he calls "the confrontation between their souls."
              It's like, um-- like freeing the brave reckless gods within us all.

Girl:         Then it's like we have met.

Following a lead from a film analysis: 

Martin Bauber

Ich-Du

Ich-Du ("I-Thou" or "I-You") is a relationship that stresses the mutual, holistic existence of two beings. 

Ich-Es  

The Ich-Es ("I-It") relationship is nearly the opposite of Ich-Du. Instead, the "I" confronts and qualifies an idea, or conceptualization, of the being in its presence and treats that being as an object. All such objects are considered merely mental representations, created and sustained by the individual mind. Therefore, the Ich-Es relationship is in fact a relationship with oneself; it is not a dialogue, but a monologue.

Buber argued that human life consists of an oscillation between Ich-Du and Ich-Es, and that in fact Ich-Du experiences are rather few and far between. In diagnosing the various perceived ills of modernity (e.g. isolation, dehumanization, etc.), Buber believed that the expansion of a purely analytic, material view of existence was at heart an advocation of Ich-Es relations - even between human beings.