Strange Loops and other tails
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,
We had the delightful opportunity to attend the opening of the new season of the Las Cruces Symphony Orchestra last night. The performance was just delightful. The guest performer, the lovely 21 year old Violinist, Lindsay Deutsch, was just spectacular in every way. She lived the music of Saint-Saens Concerto Number Three. And the Orchestra's performance of Tchaikovsky's last completed symphony, "Pathetique" was haunting.
I spent much of the performance with my heart dancing to the sections of he orchestra. Fred Bugbee on the timpani drums was wonderful. As I listened I was brought back to my childhood where I played percussion for three years in my school's concert orchestra. I loved the timpani drums and can still to this day feel their deep resonance in my mind's eye. Just a very special evening with My Little Honey and lots of our friends.
I have been caught in some reading that took me off on a tangent. Its about mirror neurons. These are a relatively new discovery in neurobiology with implications for many disciplines, but in particular our culture and our understanding of it. Mirror neurons have the ability to basically mimic the action of what we observe, without our actually doing the action. These neurons can go a long way, I suspect, in explaining how we learn, but more, they allow us to "absorb culture directly, with each generation teaching the next by sharing, imitation, and observation." (Dr. Patrica Greenfield,, UCLA)
This function is located in the insula of the brain. The insula is part of the limbic system which assists with emotions. So, in a very real sense, we have a biological basis for empathy. By witnessing a person expressing a feeling, our "mirror neurons" fire in the same way, mirroring the emotion. We experience the emotion without experiencing its cause.
What does all of this have to do with Zen? Meditation apparently facilitates the development of this mirror neural network. In short, Zen practice may be very beneficial to the development of our ability to understand and relate to one another. My suspicion is that mirror neurons with the help of various aspects of memory make our lives deeply rich.
The paradox is, of course, an offshoot of the Schrodinger's Cat paradox. A cat in a box unobserved is a cat in multiple, but unknown, states. Discovering the actual state of the cat can only occur through the interference of an observer. In Zen we would add, we cannot know cat at all unless we actually interact with cat. Cat in the abstract is not cat.
So which is it, cat or not cat?
My sense is that cat is and is not simultaneously. This brings us to the notion of "strange loops" written about so brilliantly by Hofstadter in Godel, Escher, and Bach. In this work he articulates an eternal golden braid, if you will, a strange loop that moves in time in both directions. Cat---Not Cat is a paradox only because we think in the way we do in a linear time line.
Strange loop theory suggests that we can move between "levels" of a hierarchy (e.g.., time lines, levels of abstraction, or past, present, and future) and arrive at the very same place we started. In a very real sense, I suspect this is actually a theory of now as understood by practicing Zen Buddhists.
More later.
Be well.
Good Morning Everyone,
We had the delightful opportunity to attend the opening of the new season of the Las Cruces Symphony Orchestra last night. The performance was just delightful. The guest performer, the lovely 21 year old Violinist, Lindsay Deutsch, was just spectacular in every way. She lived the music of Saint-Saens Concerto Number Three. And the Orchestra's performance of Tchaikovsky's last completed symphony, "Pathetique" was haunting.
I spent much of the performance with my heart dancing to the sections of he orchestra. Fred Bugbee on the timpani drums was wonderful. As I listened I was brought back to my childhood where I played percussion for three years in my school's concert orchestra. I loved the timpani drums and can still to this day feel their deep resonance in my mind's eye. Just a very special evening with My Little Honey and lots of our friends.
I have been caught in some reading that took me off on a tangent. Its about mirror neurons. These are a relatively new discovery in neurobiology with implications for many disciplines, but in particular our culture and our understanding of it. Mirror neurons have the ability to basically mimic the action of what we observe, without our actually doing the action. These neurons can go a long way, I suspect, in explaining how we learn, but more, they allow us to "absorb culture directly, with each generation teaching the next by sharing, imitation, and observation." (Dr. Patrica Greenfield,, UCLA)
This function is located in the insula of the brain. The insula is part of the limbic system which assists with emotions. So, in a very real sense, we have a biological basis for empathy. By witnessing a person expressing a feeling, our "mirror neurons" fire in the same way, mirroring the emotion. We experience the emotion without experiencing its cause.
What does all of this have to do with Zen? Meditation apparently facilitates the development of this mirror neural network. In short, Zen practice may be very beneficial to the development of our ability to understand and relate to one another. My suspicion is that mirror neurons with the help of various aspects of memory make our lives deeply rich.
The paradox is, of course, an offshoot of the Schrodinger's Cat paradox. A cat in a box unobserved is a cat in multiple, but unknown, states. Discovering the actual state of the cat can only occur through the interference of an observer. In Zen we would add, we cannot know cat at all unless we actually interact with cat. Cat in the abstract is not cat.
So which is it, cat or not cat?
My sense is that cat is and is not simultaneously. This brings us to the notion of "strange loops" written about so brilliantly by Hofstadter in Godel, Escher, and Bach. In this work he articulates an eternal golden braid, if you will, a strange loop that moves in time in both directions. Cat---Not Cat is a paradox only because we think in the way we do in a linear time line.
Strange loop theory suggests that we can move between "levels" of a hierarchy (e.g.., time lines, levels of abstraction, or past, present, and future) and arrive at the very same place we started. In a very real sense, I suspect this is actually a theory of now as understood by practicing Zen Buddhists.
More later.
Be well.