I Am A Strange Loop

I Am A Strange Loop
By Michael Hofstadter

How real is X to you...the moment you start taking X for granted, then it would seem you would consider X's reality highly dubious.

This, a book of analogies and metaphors, presents a plethora of academic notions in a down to earth way, spinning science subjects such as physics, mathematics at the logical level, chemistry, psychology, humanities, and a touch of theology, to describe the human experience, which Hofstadter calls a Strange loop. He brings in a lot of his humble personality and subtle sense of humor to help the reader feel like his best friend is telling you about a crazy dream he had the night before. In keeping with the spirit of the book I recognize that every reaction or review would carry the bias of the reviewer’s life experience, whether that be one of science, business, art, sports, spiritual, or just a plain ordinary person…most of us. I am going with the human experience henceforth. With regard to the human experience Hofstadter suggests that in order to perceive our universe, you must have a soul, described in the book as that with the capability to interpret the symbols of the universe.

From small to large, while there is a DNA make up that begins things, Hofstadter puts forward the notion, backed with enough thought to be the foundation of a thesis, but not enough to make a boring academic read, that DNA must be capable eventually through development in chemical communication of powering enough energy to a.) Interpret symbols, b.) Share these symbols with other beings, and c.) Care about the other being. Please understand not I did not state the possibility of a soul to be strictly the domain human beings. Hofstadter, in no way suggests the human being as the center of thought but in many ways implies that souls are not dependent on the human form. This is clearly in sync with Emerson, and Jesus to name a couple souls, but is scientifically based in the 21st century.

What you come to more fully appreciate as a result of reading this book is not ABC as I described in the above paragraph, but CBA in that a soul cares about others, if for no other reason than because what symbols you project, are the symbols you receive. In other words the definition of You resides within the essence of You; a strange loop when looked at it from almost every scientific vantage point. These ideas, while they come into my life from a totally different direction, coincide with to the teaching in Unity’s Course In Miracles, where coincidences are noteworthy, or maybe a strange loop.

In my first reaction to the book I draw a question. Is the quest for power merely the expression to be immortal, to live on through the expressed patterns of your mind, the liaison and ambassador of your soul, by touching the souls of the multitudes? Is this the treasure beyond the deepest chest of gold? Hofstadter begins his answer to this by describing famous people who have left legacies behind. For example he uses Johan Sebastian Bach’s music; not just his music that was heard in the present but in his sheet music notes, patterns of his soul, composed to live in the lives/souls of many others for centuries to come. The notes are experienced again and again, not just buy the performers but the listeners producing moods and reactions that then manifest themselves with a life of their own to be transmitted through other souls. He recognizes that with each “knowledge transfer” there is a degree of separation, but the life pattern of Bach lives on in the mind of man well beyond the expiration of his body.

Using physics metaphor Hofstadter makes up a cranium to illustrate the expansion and more importantly the reduction of thought as a person interprets reality. In the Craniem box there are large balls and there are real small beads sized balls all moving and vibrating in the box. The beads size balls represents reality at microscopic DNA/molecule/atomic level. That is how things are!! Given that the human brain cannot interpret this with any level of survivable efficiency, it begins the process of categorization or distilling small sims (the beads) into larger simballs reducing a multitude of input into a symbolic (large ball) interpretation of reality. We at human level live life at the symbolic "large ball" level, which in society one must clearly appreciate that misunderstood symbols can be very apt at twisting the story in the way things really are. Hofstadter calls this Epiphenomenon, which can be said to be a large-scale illusion created by the collusion of many small and indisputably non-illusory events.

After Hofstadter busts your brain with a short foray in Principia Mathamatecia and logical equations only to prove that it is purely logical to define yourself using variables within your self, (Goedel), he spends the last half of the book bringing physics and logic to simple human. He begins this by applying his personal experience in the loss of his wife. His bereavement was not for his loss but for what his deceased wife is missing. He describes the entwinement of souls as the experience he had with his wife as the reason he can contemplate that she (her patterns/symbols) in fact do live on at least through him. The term he discusses is Entwinement where dualism in consciousness is at work. Where Hofstadter settles on right/left brain at a scientific level, I would prefer brain/soul and wonder why Hofstadter cannot do so in the book.

Hofstadter accepts the notion of soul mates as though very plausible but more occult in nature as opposed to science, so he cannot support it. He suggests, “If souls are patterns then “I” can exist outside (separate from) a body. I think Hofstadter’s only hang-up is his sole experience in life is through academia. When Hofstadter writes: There are shallower aspects of a person and their dependant aspects, and the deeper aspects are what imbue the shallower ones with genuine meaning. If our souls have a deep resemblance, then our beliefs will be the same, and we will intuitively resonate with each other.” I am convinced academia is his only hang up with regard to this subject.

On the heels of this personal subject Hofstadter explores the “I” or the “I’ness” experience. He springs into it with a quote from The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. '' Late the next morning he sat sewing in the room upstairs. Why? Why was it that in case of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved and commit suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rises that must be fulfilled after death? Because it is as though the one who is left stays for a time on stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he is watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or perhaps, when there is leave, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time in the soul of the living?'' In his discussion on this excerpt he says not only do we find us individually an “I” (one person-one soul or caged bird) but as social beings a dependency to live on in each brain contains multiple strange loops of one another. We are all One. I think Jesus was quoted as saying that and John Lennon wrote a song on and in the same spirit.

To make his ideas really stick Hofstadter speaks on Love. To summarize: “in death of a body, though the primary brain has been eclipsed, there is, in those who remain and who are gathered to remember and reactivate the spirit of the departed a collective corona that still glows. This is what human love means. The word love cannot, thus, be separated from the word “I”, the mere deeply rooted the symbol for someone inside you; the greater the love, the brighter the light that remains behind in humanity.” In this, one should find sufficient meaning to make the next choice and every succeeding choice one with an elevated conscience. I was recently challenged with the question; why would I care if my spirit lives on, I want to be here now. After writing this review my answer to this person is; if you could find comfort in a way to live beyond death or outside your body, you would first transcend the fear of death and then fear itself. With this transcendence you would live your "here and now" in a much more satisfying way.



I Am In A Strange Loop
By Paul Murphy

THE DANCE OF SYMBOLS IN YOUR BRAIN...to spot the gist
The dance of I and we flow with the grist
To symbol’s tune on the grand universe's ballroom floor
Time made in eons of mankind locked behind a door
Or seconds of fleeting thought the footsteps in unison
Exchanged at a glance in love of which there is no comparison
Whispering breaths of intimacy in a spirit of feelium
Waltzing souls of universal One
We, under halo of midnight's son