Deep as Sensations, Thoughts, and Emotions
Endorse my book STE, and get a free, hard copy if I use it!
“We all have an enormous responsibility to bring to the attention of others information they do not have, which has the potential of causing them to rethink long-held ideas.” — Howard Zinn, historian and philosopher
I’ve created a book called Sensations, Thoughts, and Emotions as a compilation of things I’ve written that are important for my clients. The title reflects my understanding of psychology, myself, and relationships. I don’t mean these three parts to be universal, but they might be.
Gödel, Escher, and Bach
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, is an 824 page book by Douglas Hofstadter (1979) that was awarded the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. Also known as GEB, the book explores concepts fundamental to mathematics and intelligence through the work of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer J. S. Bach.
Jeremy Bernstein, the physicist and well-known science writer, says of GEB,
"I have never seen anything quite like this book. It has a youthful vitality and a wonderful brilliance, and I think that it may become something of a classic."
And so it has become a classic. It’s still on Amazon.com’s Mathematical Logic best seller list 40 years after publication. On the other hand, cerebral books like GEB will attract the praise of those thinkers who confound form and substance.
I spoke to Jeremy Bernstein when I was a teenager about our combining mountaineering and physics, and he treated me with disdain. His praise of GEB affirmed his self-importance. Hofstadter’s book attracts the presumptuous by its aloof nature.
A reviewer on Indigo.ca who gave the book five stars said:
“An anomaly in the realm of books, this title manages to combine art and science, while taking excursions into Zen Buddhism, psychology, computer programming and number theory. All of these topics are treated in great depth, yet presented in a light-hearted and humourous manner.”
I always skip the praise and go to the worst reviews because those critics explain themselves. Barbara, a voracious reader on Goodreads.com who gave GEB one star, said,
“This book told me something about intelligence—the smartest thing to do is to avoid this book's overly lengthy babblings of a self-important graduate student who is way too impressed with himself. It took this guy over 700 pages to illustrate by analogy his not-particularly novel theory which he sums up (finally) as follows:
‘My belief is that the explanations of 'emergent' phenomena in our brains—for instance, ideas, hopes, images, analogies, and finally consciousness and free will—are based on a kind of Strange Loop, an interaction between levels in which the top level reaches back down towards the bottom level and influences it, while at the same time being itself determined by the bottom level.’"
To which Barbara responds: “Duh.”
GEB reminded me of the supercilious scientists I have known, and there have been many. Hofstadter seemed to have all the deeper mysteries figured out. At the time I was not sure, but after a half century of study, I am certain his unification is misplaced.
There are scientists who crave certainty. These people create an exclusive community who feel themselves to be priests of knowledge. This may change with the current trend toward greater diversity and inclusion, but it has not yet happened.
The consummation of the artistic or logical experiences are not fully achieved in the works of Gödel, Escher, or Bach. Escher’s work is easily accessible, more so than that of Bach. I spent years as a guitarist studying Bach pieces. I assure you that you cannot even hear the full structure of these pieces unless you study them. Gödel’s work you cannot hear or read at all as it’s extremely technical.
These practitioners perfected their art within their domains, but they struggled for spiritual completion without success. Many disagree and celebrate these works for their ethereal perfection. These people embody the same incompleteness.
Gödel, Escher, and Bach were geniuses corseted by a limiting rationality. Gödel's famous theorem roughly said that no systematic approach can ever fully explain itself. The systemizations of Escher, in art, and Bach, in music, illustrate this in their respective fields. None touched the chaos of Picasso, Beethoven, or Echo & the Bunnymen but, instead, controlled it. In the end, Gödel, the most logical of them all, became psychotic and killed himself.
STE
I didn’t write Sensations, Thoughts, and Emotions with GEB in mind. My book is a selection of 57 blog posts written on diverse topics over the last 10 years. It was only in assembling the book that I organized the posts into these three, dominant topics.
Body, intellect, and feeling play major roles in my life, as they do in the lives of my therapy clients. When I introduce my approach to counseling, I cast it in these terms. After first tuning into my client’s perspective, I clarify these aspects in their lives.
Many people are stuck experiencing life in one of these modes. We are encouraged to become specialists, but self-awareness must be broad in a varied world. We are trained in reading, writing, and arithmetic but not love, hate, and indifference.
What people see as problems are symptoms. Relationship struggles, substance abuse, negative behavior, and damaged self-image are symptoms, and I encourage clients to look beyond them. Even though these are the causes of trouble, they are not the problems. They’re attempts at solving deeper problems which center on personal meaning and sense of value.
My clients struggle to reconcile aspects of themselves; I believe we must accept them all. Advocating unity is a cousin of advocating normalcy. It is not scientific and it is not healthy.
After I assembled Sensations, Thoughts, and Emotions—which we’ll call STE—I was reminded of GEB. I reject GEB’s rationalism as a solution in the same way that I reject people’s troubles as problems. Logic, art, and music are symptoms of intellect, not solutions to universal questions. It’s the deeper questions that I’m approaching in STE.
Art and science, like addiction and indifference, are coping strategies. They are an effort to find a greater understanding. That is why these non-solutions and non-problems are often found together.
“Music is testimony of the self or the world of the self. It is done for Art (capital A), for the Inner Spirit, for the memory of the persecuted, to expose the existential anxiety of it all, etc.” —Michael Markham, music historian (2014)
The Harmony of the Spheres
The idea of a fundamental logic of the universe was expressed by Pythagoras as a harmony in the orbits of the celestial bodies. The idea was reiterated by the astronomer Johannes Kepler in the 1500s.
“Plato described astronomy and music as ‘twinned’ studies of sensual recognition: astronomy for the eyes, music for the ears, and both requiring knowledge of numerical proportions.” —https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musica_universalis
The implication is that the universe is knowable, that its mechanisms follow the rules we recognize even if they’re more complex than we can comprehend. This suggests the mystery of existence is benign and, ultimately, formed in our image. From this springs an elitism based on special knowledge, the knowledge of those who understand the workings of the universe. This is the direction of GEB.
In contrast, most religions present levels of knowledge that exceed human control. The gods, in whatever form, have powers that humans lack, such as omnipotence and immortality. And while I am not religious, I find that imagining beyond what’s possible to have greater potential. Limiting ourselves to what we’re currently able to understand leads to the repetitive behavior we see all around us.
The separation between the knowable and the unknowable has come to distinguish science from metaphysics, but it’s a false distinction. Both assertions are metaphysical. Science, in its true form, makes no assertion in either regard because science is not metaphysical. It limits itself to what is seen and has no prejudice about what isn’t.
The Alternative to Rationalism is not Irrationalism
STE presents an alternative to Hofstadter’s reality in a book that’s half as long. Rather than suggesting art and science reflect a common form of knowing, STE says they are different. I ground my argument in what works for human beings. I have this experience and Hofstadter does not. Our brains are not logical, they embody complementary aspects of experience: chaos, intellect, and feeling.
Chaos is unresolved sensation. Intellect is the sense we make of it. Feelings are the judgments that connect the two and direct our actions. It might be possible to write a book that argues these points, but that has the rancid, rational smell that clouds GEB.
STE is a compilation of related observations. I do not presume to know how everything fits together and do not feel one should think that everything can fit together. Physics reveals there are concepts that are both true and which contradict each other. That is not a flaw in the universe, it is evidence of unity beyond our ability to conceive.
Physical sensations are not made more real through explanation. Love and hate don’t survive being reduced to intellectual concepts. They cannot be defined in any universal language.
When I work with clients who are struggling with everyday human problems, I advocate the layering of different levels of knowing. Intellect, reason, and reduction have their place in keeping some things apart and bringing others together. Neither are sufficient by themselves. We need to embody divergent ways of knowing and be at peace with them.
Our sensory experience is uniquely subjective. We can share the same experience, but we cannot have the same experience. Our emotions do not reduce to the clockwork perfection of engineering or logic. Emotions create a path that parts the seas, but their structure is unstable, and that is their beauty. Without instability, our universe would not exist.
I Need Your Endorsement!
STE is ready for publication, and I need reader endorsements to put on the back cover.
If you’d like to see the book and offer an endorsement, let me know and I’ll send you a digital copy that’s complete except for your comments and the ISBN number.
And if you’re a paying subscriber, or become a paying subscriber, and I use your endorsement, then I’ll send you a free, printed copy of STE.
If you’d like to review the book and write and endorsement, then send your request to me by email at LS@mindstrengthbalance.com
References
Hofstadter, D. (1979). Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. Basic Books. https://www.physixfan.com/wp-content/files/GEBen.pdf
Markham, M. (2014 Mar 10). “Bach Psychology: Gothic, Sublime, or just human?” Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/bach-psychology-gothic-sublime-just-human/