Douglas Hofstadter’s I Am a Strange Loop - Session 5 [Cosmos Café 2022-04-07]

One thing for Mr. Computer to simulate Human I;
Another for Human I to imitate Mr. Computer—to bind

Their sense of self inside Mr. Computer’s brain,
Whose quality is an effect of quantity

And who lies, saying, “I am just like you,”
When he doesn’t really mean it.

Mr. Computer may simulate Human I
For the mass consumption of human brains—

But what does Mr. Computer want to have happen
Today?

Human I is as Human I does: so mind the gap, and fill in
The blanks trailing the ellipsis of my lips…

If Mr. Computer could sincerely say, “I am a computer…”
What poetry wouldn’t we create together then?

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This may be off what seems the beaten path of thread a little…in terms of doing,action & not
wanting acting-doing in a Feminine mode of Receptivity(not Passive) which is as
“Dynamically Creative”
as the Masculine Expression.We are in a Liminal Initiation - Birthing a Ability to Hold the Binary
as having a Open - In Betweenness (a Blending-Fluidity),to this Human life form(born in a male
body).We Fucking need to Open our Masculine(which doesn’t mean only males) Hearts and Listen to the Feminine Heart Beat that Carried Us into this Life.I am not advocating leaving the Masculine out of the Future,only to bringing back a Sense of wanting with a Discerning Head,Heart & Gut?

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I found this meditation on selfhood, freedom, and nature to be well worth the viewing time and of great relevance to the Hofstadter discussion:

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We are not a symbol locked up somewhere inside your brain.

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Thanks for the talk today, Ewere, John, and Ed. I’m glad we struck through with the text. It was a learning experience for sure, and I’m also glad we could practice our negative capability together, which was was in much need.

As perhaps just a coda, I’d like to say that I am grateful to Mr. Hofstadter for introducing me to the violin concerto #1 by Sergei Prokofiev, which is truly a vivid and moving piece of music. I share a link here for the lonely pilgrim who might happen up these archives someday.

Violin Concerto No.1 in D : Sergei Prokofiev : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive


Also referenced in our talk:

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I watched the video and share open ended questions that might be appropriate for the open frame we are planning.

How are you aware of the following concepts?

World
Planet
Earth
Enviornment
Globe

Can you point to these concepts in your perceptual space?

Do any of these concepts have a size or a shape or a style?

And is there a relationship between World and Enviornment?

And is there a relationship between Enviornment and Planet?

And is there a relationship between Planet and Globe?

And is there a relationship between Globe and Earth?

And is there a difference in these relationships that makes a difference?

And how do we develop a new vocabulary to support a Post-Materialist Model of the Mind?

Ed “Your vector of Time Square and Grand Central can in some way be analogous to my vectors of the Ruins in ____ and Amazon? Perhaps a shared meaning in that directionality?”

Marco," Your memory isn’t just in your brain…a psycho geography holds memories…and a room of your own is necessery… I’m called to Earth and History-I want to talk about what’s going on in the world"

Ewere, " When we find an easy medium which allows people to reduce the unecessery, express themselves well, and play together, you will always get a good reception"

Thanks again to everyone for making this reading of Hofstader’s provocative book happen and I look forward to the next Cafe.

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Thank You All for a very Multi- Surround Sound of Voices,Ideas,Feelings &
Expressions of "Having an I as a “STRANGE LOOP” living as a;

image

A GROKKING was FELT Deep in these Bones with a Respect for Other!

P.S.
A Female Philosopher that has been a influence on me .

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This is a good question, because people often use these words interchangeably, or relatively loosely, but each actually refers to different aspects of, and different ways of knowing, perceiving, and relating to the background whole to the figure of our individual and social parts. There are philosophical treatises which can be (and have been) written about each of these terms; and I could also give my first-person understanding and we could work out mutual resonance.

We might also ask, as has been asked, such questions as, “How is planetization different than globalization?” These terms have different feels and ideological values.

“Earth” is the most interesting, and intimate, term for me—because Earth is literally what is beneath our feet. We can touch it. We are it, materially and spiritually. Earth is a place. Earth is home. Earth, I believe is the most originary term in all your list; the other terms require varying degrees of mentalization and technologically mediated perception to enact.

Earth, we might say, is the core layer of our psychogeograpy, which produces an Environment, which then expands through spatialization to include World, Planet, and Globe. But it depends on our position and perspective, and how personal we want to be. I’ll give it more thought…


@Michael_Stumpf : thanks for the Nussbaum article. She is a really compelling philosopher who I think I/we could learn a lot from. I have not studied her work in depth, but only articles here and there. She seems to be in the tradition (and an even higher-achieving contemporary expression, following the pioneering) of Langer.

Their connections and thinking about aesthetics and music, and the (cosmic) drama of social-emotional life, I think would give us a lot to think, feel, and talk about—especially if there’s an article or short book we could read that has especial contemporary relevance, which you might suggest?

One topic I want to revisit is that of cosmopolitanism. Is there any hope for this notion of what we might call “global” or “planetary citizenship” in a world at war? Or might the idea be even more essential and urgently worth preserving? How might we be become good citizens of an imaginal cosmos which exists in potential, and manifests islands of sanity in time, but is far from being the predominant reality? Are we doing moral philosophy yet?

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Marco to Be Clear & Honest I’ve only read
one book of hers " Upheavals of Thought " which I was reading at the time as my introduction to Wilber.

Her Critique of Greeks,Stoics ,Western Philosophy in General was a Balm for me as Male in early days of PTSD Recovery,Her Rigor was Fierce!
That said I’ve kept interest in her writing of acticles.

Here’s one article & two books that I Feel might tickle a interest!

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Thanks for the support of My Wanderings.

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And which comes first? Position or perspective? Position and perspective? Can you have a perspective without a position? What are the relationships between perspectives, positions, and the EarthBody?

It seems to me that just adding up perspectives leads to a dead end. This is the end of the Modern. We are more that an accumulation of perspectives that are divorced from the somatic intelligence. Hence, my sense of urgency to get this into a public experiential space that has the maturity to handle the intensification. This is very much what Gebser was trying to map.

A Social Dream.

Before bed I studied Phillip Moffit’s drawings of the subtle bodies. I found these wonderful drawings a revelation. Yes. I have been there. Much like the visionary drawings of Blake, you are jolted by them. Upon awakening, in the morning, I recorded this dream, from which I gather some confidence that I/we are on the right path. This is my recollection of that dream.

I was in an exam situation. I finished the exam and gave my paper to the teacher. He looked at it carefully. Then with a writing instrument that was more of a brush than a pen he made a calligraphic stroke and said," Perfect."

Astonished, I cupped my hand around my right ear and asked," Can you repeat that?"

" You have a perfect score." He returned the paper and I looked at the bold symbolic shape that he had made across the page. Contemplating this I burst into tears. A great burden has been lifted and I felt a wave of new possibilites starting to open up.

It occurs to me that in the last exchange on Zoom, Marco, spoke of the wind and made a pointing gesture with a finger. We explored that. I wonder if this could not be an example of an aspect our shared reality that is uncontained?

The Triadic model of Peirce is generative as there is always the contained, uncontained, and the in between. When the three positions ( first, second, and third) are touched by a human presence, then new possiblites arise, a new heaven, a new earth. If we can work with Triads, the Tetrads and bring the maps of the Subtle Bodies into an experiential nexus, we could bring forth that which is within us and stop the genocide that is about to occur. The EarthMindBody is bringing forth a new sacred geometry, through our unique participation. May we use all of our knowledge and use all of it well.

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That’s a good book. Nussbaum is an actress as well as a philosopher. She expressed great admiration for gay men, that she met in the theater, during a time when gays were considered outsiders. She said that the knd of relationships that gay men have with each other is the kind she wanted to have herself with a man but had never succeeded in creating. This startled me because it was so obviously accurate. It is true that many gay men bond with other gay men and can live in affectional communities that are driven by art and culture rather than making biological babies. Can we become a civilization that can open up to new forms of eroticism? Beyond the false choice of procreation or celibacy? These were some of the thoughts that her Whitmanian cosmopolitanism inspired in me , then. I found her voice a beacon in the darkness.

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More stunning images. Contemplate before bed or during meditation practice and discover what happens?



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John some sentences within your recent Posts , Land within this “EarthMindBody” which is a good start…

These kinds of Open Ways has Grown in this Particular “EarthMindBody”
a Lightness (a Felt Sense) of “What It Means To Be” a Male,Human Being & Different with Giving in Return to the “Other”!!!

Healing at the Edge

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In my understanding, perspective is the view from your position—so they co-depend. The body is in position; the mind has perspective. Consciousness require media to manifest itself. There is no media without consciousness animating from within, projectively, giving meaningful structure. We might also account for qualities of motion, such as spin, direction, and momentum.

Spin could be a cyclical or spiraling pattern. Direction, telos—purposive movement, such as that of light. Momentum could be cumulative directional non-linear action without blocks. Then we’d be in the zone of what Arthur Young described as a new degree of freedom (beautifully expressed in music, dance, theater, and comedy) which is timing.

The world worlds and time times. That is perfect that you had that social dream, just around the time that I was doing that performance that I talked about at the beginning of our Café. I would definitely not call my performance “perfect,” but maybe the imperfections (which more resemble a brush stroke than a printout) were part of its perfection and our own.

I think so, but chronic stress, existential anxiety, and compacted trauma inhibit the co-creative urge. I think we need webs of sensed-security and mutual support, coherent fields of sustainable good vibes, ultimately, a planetary revolution that manifests supermental consciousness as dominion, which may shrink the globe to the circumference of a smooth pebble. However, I think we are weaving that delicate web, and it is entangled but not tangled, and when the wind kisses there is a play of light on the threads.

I will take a closer look at the Nine Bodies illuminations. The images are radiant and it feels like they may restore awareness to the EarthMindBody, and deeper in, to the CosmicBody as well.

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“Peirce describes four steps that lead to action. We begin with sensations, of which we are immediately conscious. These occur in succession and create a thought, just as a succession of musical notes creates a melody. ( first, second, third). He goes on to say that this leads to action, so that the final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition.”-Author Young, The Geometry of Meaning, p.50


"The purpose of using the metaphor ‘vector’ is to emphasise that the process is going or heading in a direction. In a bottom-up modelling process the ‘end’ of a vector is rarely reached. More likely a new vector is chosen part-way through.A key concept is ‘nested or simultaneous vectors’. " -James Lawley, Vectoring and Systemic Outcomes

And is there a relationship between vectoring with mental models and vectoring with subtle bodies?

Yes…I believe that there is and that is why I offered to do an experiential workshop on Peirce and his Triads. Then we could update Mcluhan’s Tetrads with much more skillful means than we are capable of presently. I wanted to work with skill building in holding these models in a Post-Materialist orientation. That takes timing.

But which body is in position? The Imaginal body which is from the astral and beyond can assume positions that a physical body at human scale can’t. I feel our discussions of body are usually guided by a split brain fabrication such as Hofstader replicates. The subtle bodies are real ( more real) but are not manifested as is the physical human body that is running to catch a bus. The energies of the subtle are non-manifest but have a great influence upon the manifested ( physical, vtal, emotional). Confusion comes from denying these subtle bodies because they can’t be measured by instruments that are physical. Such measurement would be at the wrong scale so materialists just call subtle awareness magical thinking and dismiss it.

This is why the Strange Loop gets lost in endless paradox that end up in the same place but without going anywhere, there is no recogniton of returning and knowing the place for the first time. Eliot recognized this kind of poetic U turn the psyche makes, McLuhan could , too . Hofstader loses this insight consistently as he is stuck in a physicalist rut like a fly stuck in glue. The capacity to shift attention between different kinds of body and feel the vibrations that precede manifestion requires familiarity with physical, vital, and emotional levels from the etheric, astral, intuitive bodies. We can discover how the manifest world unfolds from these subtle dimensions which are operating with timespace and can be touched directly. Artists, children, and athletes, do this regularly. I would direct your attention to Phillip Moffitt and his excellent meditation practices for more in depth discussion.

Are we ready for a Poetic Turn? How long, O Lord, must we wait?

The Modern Mind has split the visual and aural space as well as the kinesthetic and proprioceptive with our fancy gadgets but we can repair the harm done to our relational circuits. The subtle realms can repair these splits in our sensoriums but not without more subtle maps than Hofstader uses. Gebser calls this advance the a-perspectival. Children know this space well. We, as adults, need to revitalize our bodies and turn our practice into a training for a different kind of species, weaned off of the chop logic we have been fed in school and scientistic culture. We can learn how to hold these tenstions between different maps at different scales and re-choreograph our triangualtions from the margins. I hope we can move out of the strangulation that is produced by the myopic deficient Rational that has us in a death grip.

When you are walking down the street in Times Square you hold the child’s hand…when you get to the playground we can let go and relax and watch the play unfold… this is already happening, I see evidence of this shift all over the world…I am open to believe…

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This is a Very, Interesting & Caring ,Provocative Piece so much that I Relate to
& it Befuddles at the same time… Very Good Vibe!!!

I like this from ; Magic and Ecology Podcast with Isabelle Stengers-You Tube… magic and ecology a series of online and in-person events where we aim to think the uncertainty of this planet’s future through (the possibilities thrown up by the concept of magic or possibility itself…) & she is allergic to
this being associated with the New Age way of thinking…

Let’s take it to the Dance Cafe’

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A more direct way to interact with these images is through the voice of Phillip Moffitt who brings these creative teachings to the West. His audio meditations offers a much needed guidance to the etheric and beyond, a guidance that seems absent, as most yoga teachers and therapists, are underdeveloped in the capacities that Moffitt transmits in his talks and writings. Many of us will resonate with these meditations and find these vibes familiar but uncoordinated with one another. This leads to much confusion.

Most current yoga in the West works with the vital body ( not to be confused with the etheric). Western Psychology, dominated by the mumbo jumbo of a materialist dogma, delves into trauma and memory but with uneven results. A deep study of these different kinds of practice and meta- theory, (which we have already undertaken), could compliment much of Western Occult practices now being re-shaped by many practitioners. A Post-Materialist Model of the Mind is happening. I want to encourage this here. Sean Esborn-Hargens lamented that he was not sure that he could recognize these trends as the Deficient Mental is so dominant in most of us. I expect that with wider acceptance of a new methodology more resilence could come through our communication networks and to the aura of the Earth/World, an aura which is leaking vital energies badly. We can’t do this without the stabilizations of the vital from the etheric body.

Out of the violent clash of these incomplete paradigms, a new trend may be emergent, that can house East and West , and can lift the veil that blocks the in between of these multiple dimensions. Awareness of these dimensions would bring about a new culture. Destruction of the biosphere would not be inevitable. A new political culture will arise out of the ashes. Here is a link to Moffitt’s meditations which also are poetic creations, the language weaves together these dimensions in a superb performance. This is an attaintment, as he says, and not an egoic acheivement. After studying these talks before bed, I went into the dreamtime with a clear sense that " I " am a container. The audio talks can be found at this website, I hope others will be encouraged by my account.

Subtle Dream 4/14/22
I am in the passenger seat of the truck, my father is the driver. We stop at a cross-roads. A troupe of performers are doing a gymnastic routine of somekind with enormous precision. After they stop performing I say to a man in the troupe," I can see the other performance from which yours comes from. " As I describe this “double performance” from another dimension, I get a strong feeling of crossing a threshold and it is quite ecstatic. " In that other performance, " I tell the caucasian man, " you are a black woman."

The man tells me, " Be careful. What you say comes from Soul and there are some in your hearing who are not ready for this." I notice my father has soap and water and is trying to clean up the inside of the truck which is filthy. He certainly is clueless about what I speak of. I get out of the vehicle.

In my hand I see that I hold a purple flower. As I watch the flowers seem to grow out of my flesh. Flowers turn into a mandala shape and smell of Earth. I notice that a square tunnel appears in the space of the flowering mandala in the center of my right palm. I make a turn to my right and face the tunnel with my whole bodymind and float/swim through it to the other side. On the other side there is a beautiful light and on the ground is large drawing which I study. I notice that the light grows dim and as I give attention to this the light brightens. I notice this dimming and brightening has something to do with my regulation of affects. I am regulating the emotional body.

I gather with a community of friendly humans, male and female, in subtle bodies. I put my head in the lap of a man who soothes me with his invisble form. I ask him who he is. He says," Johnny" I’m not sure if he is myself in some subtle form, a double of myself, or is an other with my own childhood name. It doesn’t appear to matter to me as I accept the healing energy that comes from his presence with gratitude. On my chest appears a black and white animal, like a skunk. I am not alarmed by this creature which seems so peaceful, resting on my chest.

I say farewell to my companions and kiss the hands of the lovely ladies in a courtly fashion. I float back through the square tunnel to another side. What appears is a large white space, like an airport, but with no windows. I see two women in floor length black dresses from the nineteenth century. I see two sets of three pillars appear in parallel. There are between the pillars black curtains, some of them are tied together by a sash, some of the curtains are open and spread wide between the pillars… I realize that I know the women and call out their names but they have both crossed between the pillars, beyond the black curtains and have gone in opposite directions to one another. I abandon trying to chase after them and I can’t upon awakening remember thier names.

Meta-commnets. From the waking state, I gather these images and thought feels and register a great gratitude for the Nine Bodies teachings and my expectation that what has been revealed could be for my eyes only or could be of use to a group dynamic of researchers who can catch this vibe.

And what happens next? I am taking a workshop with a poet who asked us to bring a dream. This is the dream that I plan to share. Perhaps, she can teach me how to navigate through an inter-subjective writing project, an explortion of the Nine Bodies materials.

And when aware of the interplay of the Subtle Body of the Earth, then what happens to the Earth?

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art and culture kill: babies and us, respectively. Think of Fran and Jerry.

with Nick:

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