We’ve examined, more than once, Douglas Hofstadter’s concept of the “strange loop” - applied, within human beings, as little bits and pieces of the consciousness of those we are close to. Hofstadter’s idea is that these little shards of thought or emotion that embed themselves within our own consciousness are actually the substance of consciousness – that we get our “I” from those in our lives who have contributed the most to our own thoughts and feelings.
This is a powerful idea (though not fully tested as yet), and it leads to a peripheral one.
In his 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop, Hofstadter tells of an older man named Jim, the father of a friend. Hofstadter’s friend has watched his father’s mind slowly fade away, no longer able to retrieve memories, the details of daily living, or even the names of his children. Dementia and the devastation it visits upon its victims is, of course, horrific, but Hofstadter has taken solace in the realization that though Jim’s inner self is evaporating, this spirit is persisting in those he has spent a lifetime loving, via the strange loops he has shared with them. There are little bits of Jim, in varying degrees, in his family members and friends, everyone whose lives were touched by his.
Hofstadter calls this phenomenon a soular corona: “Even before Jim’s body physically dies, his soul will have become so foggy and dim that it might as well not exist at all – and yet despite the eclipse, his soul will still exist, in partial, low-resolution copies, scattered about the globe. Jim’s first-person perspective will flicker in and out of existence in other brains, from time to time. He will exist, albeit in an extremely diluted fashion, now here, now there. Where will Jim be? Not very much anywhere, admittedly, but to some extent he will be in many places at once, and to different degrees. Though terribly reduced, he will be wherever his soular corona is.
“It is very sad, but it is also beautiful. In any case, it is our only consolation.”
Sad, and also beautiful... yes. And what occurs in the midst of entertaining this consolation is that it applies to all minds, not just the fading ones – and that with a foreknowledge of this soular corona phenomenon, we can set about the deliberate design and implementation of our own corona; we can, by intentionally and selectively offering up those bits and pieces of ourselves, establish the sunset that will illuminate our final days...
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