Stringy Loops
Or loopy strings. That’s what I imagine reality to be.
Whether or not string theory with its 11 or 16 dimensions is proven to be the ultimate Theory of Everything uniting general relativity, quantum, and all scientific theories, it is nevertheless a good metaphor. So are loops.
Cognitive Scientist Donald Hoffman suggests that we humans don’t experience the “really real” because evolution gives us just the abilities we need to get along in our environment with competitive advantage. We know we do not see the full spectrum of light. There are sounds, smells, and tastes well-beyond our everyday experience. And who knows how many other senses have not evolved simply because we don’t need them for environmental adaptation on earth.
We also know that there are vast areas within and between atoms, molecules, and cells in our own bodies and in all the bodies of the universe. These spaces are filled with forces we are just beginning to detect and use: e.g. the force fields of gravity and electro magnetism. We do not sense, but often experience through new tools, these forces including the contact forces of air and water related to the energy of the sun.
If we experienced the whole of reality, perhaps it would be like living in the Matrix after taking the red (or was it blue?) pill and waking up in the space ship above it all. And even then, we would have to ask ourselves if we just moved to a higher Matrix.
Don Juan tutored Carlos Castanedato “see” persons as points of luminous fibers stretching out from and back other persons. Neuroscience has affirmed and begun to explain the essential, invisible relationships that constitute the person, so that like all things (res), the person can be understood as nodes or knots of relationships integrating within the world. If we truly could “see” the universe, we would see fibers or strings pulsating while looping back on one another. Strange loop is the metaphor Douglas Hofstadter used to describe consciousness and the personal “I.”
Stringy loops shall be the metaphor I shall use to understand the makeup and process of the universe that we inhabit.
Whether or not it will work for some scientific explanation of the universe, i.e. an explanation put into a formula that can be tested by evidence, I find the loopy string metaphor helpful to guide me in the moral and political spheres. Many of the paradoxes or seeming contradictions in our desire for happiness, which I define with ancient wisdom seekers as fulfillment in life, meaning, and recognition, I find resolved through “stringy loops.”
The first stringy loop is between to be and to know. How reality and knowledge relate is a question that began as far back as we can surmise. Even before Plato began premodern philosophy in his discovery of ideas, tribal shaman and wisdom seekers were asking: What and why do I have to know in order to be? And what or who do I have to be in order to know? Descartes started the modern age in his “I think therefore I am.” Heidegger and friends began the postmodern age with rejection of absolutes and certainty in knowing being. This loop makes reality depend on knowledge and knowledge on reality. To exist is to realize. Reality is discovered and created in one and the same loopy string. It is the relational multi directional link between human organisms and their environment.
All the other stringy loops can be derived from this one: matter and spirit, existence and essence, being and having, faith and belief, thinking and acting, affirming and negating. Then on to religion and politics, myth and religion, science and economy, art and science, good and evil, digital and analog, imagination and experimentation, and loops within loops upon loops. Or you can start with any one loop and move on to all the others.
My nephew, Matt Smith, is a wonderful artist in Cleveland. In viewing his opera, I see graphics that illustrate this loopy string universe and imagine that this is how a super daemon who could see reality as it is in itself would see the universe.
However, I realize that there is no reality as it is in itself. Reality, as information, is always in and to a receiver and that receiver is a part of the reality. As revolutionary particle physicist Max Planck said: Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
I said above that this metaphor of emerging, pulsating, renewing stringy loops guides me in the moral and political sphere. How is that? Since everything is connected, no thing is absolute being in itself unrelated in its uttermost being. Since everything is a mere node of loopy strings, no one is dominant, the greatest, the most. Since everything is in process, everyone makes a difference to where it all goes. Since stringy loops range between extremities, everyone is a bundle of contradictions that requires opposites to moderate and others to exist. Since stringy loops are in transit forming their way, there is, beyond necessity, possibility in the universe. Things might be worse but can get better.
And we should behave personally (morality) and act concertedly (politics) in accordance with reality
The “should” comes from the “fact” that each one of us beings is a string-in-tension feedback- looping between the I and the We, past and future, matter and spirit, real and ideal, and all the other loops of our being.
In morality and politics, the metaphor of stringy loops counsels me to humility (I do not know ultimates or absolutes), love (we are joined to each other and everything else), responsibility (I am with you shaping reality), hope (possibility is always before us), and diversity (unity emerges from differences). It also leads me to a progressive, though unending, search for shared truth, freedom, and power.