Conspiracy Advocates

I've been wondering what is the fascination of conspiracy theories for some people.
Could it be that they have a sense that the world isn't real?
Then conspiracy would be an attempt to rationalize this underlying sense of unease about reality.

Literature of the Fourth Way

The remarks about Many "i"s below were elicited in part from a recent re-reading of Ouspensky's "In Search of the Miraculous."

From a literary view point, I noticed his fore shadowing of the publication of the discussions in his "Fourth Way."  He said he would discuss the details of the centers that he had learned from Gurdjieff later.

Many i's

Yes, small "i" vice Real "I", capitalized.

I was talking with a friend. I told him that I was on the edge of an experience of more than one "i"...distinct from remembering actions of more than one "i".  My friend thought this was ridiculous. "It's all the same 'I'. You were frustrated and just overcome by a desire for chocolate!"

To come to some of these ideas requires doing the experiment, not just reading or talking about them. The flavor cannot be conveyed by description or analogy.

Strange Loop Wrap Up

The book was disappointing because he couldn't explain what he thought a "Strange Loop" was.  His example from Gödel sounds like a confusion of levels of abstraction.

Other western scientists have done much better work on this problem. Some of them, such as António Rosa Damásio have publications preceding the date of Douglas Richard Hofstadter book, Strange Loop.  Why write something that is not current?

Most of the ideas Douglas Richard Hofstadter presents were well covered by Aristotle, so why re-hash them now?

I'm done with Douglas Richard Hofstadter.

A Woman's Work is an absorbing account of Ethel Merston

A Woman's Work is an absorbing account of Ethel Merston's association with many of the spiritual leaders of the early 20th century. Ethel Merston left her descriptions and impressions of Gurdjieff, Ramana Maharshi, Anandamayi Ma, Pak Subuh, Edgar Cayce and many others.

Mary Ellen Korman has researched all the available records and woven a wonderful story that provides a detailed sense of Ethel Merston's life long spiritual search. I found clues to the contrasts between life with Gurdjieff and life with spiritual leaders in India. My own insights are refined by having access to Ethel Merston's accounts and Korman's descriptions of her life.

Merston tells of the changes and conflicts experienced by Gurdjieff's students after his death: The search for another teacher. How students found or forgot what they were looking for. The breaking apart of communities of seekers. She recounts her search after Ramana Maharshi's death.

Many of these people that Ethel Merston worked with were major influences on the "Age of Aquarius." The book helps me understand the culture that I grew up in.

Coding and Thinking.

I'm spending some time today looking at refactoring a java application that was written in a more or less procedural style!
Reclassifying the classes and methods into 3 tiers: Presentation, business and data layers .

This process is interesting because it encourages abstraction from the very beginning of coding (recoding) a method.  It is a good exercise in preparation for larger issues in the daily world, I hope.

The tendency in the daily world is to allow abstractions to 'float' free of the facts and details that they are based on. I hear people reasoning by non-essentials, whimsical association, or emotional connotation all the time.  
(See Ayn Rand's discussion of floating abstractions -
http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/conceptformation.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYahVMMxTwY   // Talking head, but he has a great joke about post modern thinkers.
)

I can't just use a compiler, or an IDE to show  the problems in design of daily use abstractions: rights, obligations, duties, freedom, responsibility, liberty, justice, happiness, money, inflation, prices, costs, health insurance, etc.  

We have to use our own reasoning as the 'compiler' of the concepts (abstractions) that are the tools of our consciousness.  This is part of the value of writing and talking. As I write and talk, my thoughts become clearer, more organized, and errors of logic or design clearer.

My thoughts and feelings begin to step out of the shadows and reveal themselves to me as long as I am a clearing for them.  But how do I become a 'clearing?'

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It's time to go back to school! Get the latest trends and gadgets that make the grade on AOL Shopping.

Attention is missing?

Hofstadter doesn't list attention in the index of his book  "I Am a Strange Loop."  He doesn't discuss attention in the book so I wouldn't expect to find it in the index. But it seems strange that an investigation into what is meant by "I" would leave out attention.  It is as if the entire issue of the book is an academic examination of ideas ignoring the process and effort of bringing these ideas to awareness.  I suppose a computer scientist has to look at it this way because his computers run by predefined programs i.e. recorded ideas.  If Hofstadter were to move beyond the domain of recorded ideas he wouldn't be a computer scientist then?  Yet he includes his chapter "On Magnanimity and Friendship." 

Hofstadter, a Friend

The best chapter of "I Am a Strange Loop" is 24, "On Magnanimity and Friendship." This chapter in isolation -- out of the context of the rest of the book, shows Hofstadter's profound spirituality. It is as if a "different I" wrote this chapter!

Indexes

It looks like Hofstadter's index was computer generated. Probably using the MS Word feature. I had assumed that this was the way that most people do it in the last decade or so until I read David Applebaum's "The Stop." I had to make almost as many pen and ink additions to his index as I have to Ouspenski's "In Search of the Miraculous" over the last 20 years. Some people still index by human labor and not with a computer! But there are some things that a computer can't catch. For example: a computer program such as MS Word would not make the link from "compulsive" to Karen Horney's neurosis in page 123 of Applebaum's "The Stop." Even the author himself may not have been aware of the literary connection. In this case he gave no credit to her, or any other other early scientists.

Hofstadter has it Right!

It came to me as I was busting my gut running up hill through the woods that Hofstadter does have it right, but at a much deeper level than he talks about in his epilogue. (My first impression is that he has dualism and non-dualism completely mixed up but I'm willing to ponder his interpretation further before final judgement.) 

Feedback is another term for self-awareness.  With self awareness, feedback, we begin to integrate, consume, digest, introject, the previously unknown (consciously) parts of our selves and we become a bit freer and less constrained in our life, awareness and ability to live!  For another view point with specific examples from real life read "EATING THE  'I' A DIRECT ACCOUNT OF THE FOURTH WAY -- THE WAY OF USING ORDINARY LIFE TO COME TO REAL LIFE"  by William Patrick Patterson.

  (http://www.lightworks.com/MonthlyAspectarian/2001/February/Conversation%20.htm

  http://www.gurdjieffstudiesprogram.org/patterson.htm)

Strange Loop and Fourth Way

I've had some additional promptings from my subconscious since the last entry on Douglas Hofstadter. There are added key names that I would expect to find in a study of feedback as the structure of human identity: Gurdjieff, Elmer Green.

Elmer Green is a western scientist and the pioneer of clinical biofeedback.

George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, teacher of the Fourth Way, showed us how to use conscious feedback to come to real life.

Why would Hofstadter leave these names and other associated resources out of his investigation? Is he trying to present a view point based only on his own technical research, yet he lists many others in his bibliography, Rudy Rucker, Dennet, Dawkins, Ambrose Bierce?

Perhaps he is trying to present a 'Western' viewpoint, but then why would he leave out Elmer Green?

I suspect that his work is more autobiographical than it is a serious argument. I will read further and find out more about what he has to say.

How do I know I'm real?

        I've been reading "I Am A Strange Loop" by Douglas Hofstadter.  The development of his theme is slow, so I read the epilogue to find out if he was coming to anything other than where he seemed to be going.  The epilogue seems to be about the same as the first few chapters.  

        I skipped around the book a little and found this intriguing discussion on page 322 called 'Two Daves.' He presents a mental experiment of two universes, identical in every detail except that universe Q has the stuff of consciousness, and universe Z (zed, zombie) is missing the stuff of consciousness. In both universes Dave talks about his possession of consciousness but in universe Z he is lying without knowing it, (sound familiar?). His next section is titled 'The Nagging Worry that One May Be a Zombie."  This is a promising title but he detours into fluff on this issue and dismisses it. 

         I would suggest that with careful work, he could learn to observe both universes in his own life and experience. I know I do. I have occasional moments of consciousness that make me aware of the long intervals of unconsciousness that I suffer.  

         I suspect that Mr. Hofstasdter has not done the experiment, followed the procedures, practiced the practices, that allows one to approach an awareness of the Self.  Yet as a scientist he must have the habit of experimental verification of results.  Results have no meaning without the formula, procedure, recipe, for generating them.  In the index to his book the word 'meditation' is not listed, neither is 'yoga.'  On page 297 his characterization of Zen 'They resent words,...' sounds more like someone who read the lab report but didn't bother to do the experiment.  I would have been surprised to find Gurdjieff listed in his index. 

See: www.gurdjieff-legacy.org.

          I look forward to reading the remainder of the book and perhaps finding a few nuggets of value.  But I'm afraid it is too soon to go beyond Ayn Rand's statements of the fundamental axioms of philosophy: Existence exits, and I am conscious.  

See: www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_pobs