I don’t know how to express this idea without sounding like a pretentious twat, an imbecile, or a try-hard. Let’s see if I can go three for three!

A strange loop in formal terms is a cyclic structure that traverses several levels, only to find oneself back where one started. Imagine riding an elevator from the ground floor up to the penthouse level and stepping out onto the ground floor. It's an unending contradiction.

Many optical illusions, like those found in M.C. Escher drawings or on a website I frequented as a kid, feature strange loops. Such visuals go around and around and around without ever finding a landing point.

Another form of strange loop exists in strange circumstances, where a person can’t reach a seemingly reachable state. Take the army man from one of my favorite books. He pleads insanity in order to avoid flying more missions by rule. By doing so, he no longer has any grounds to sanely object to flying more missions. Therefore he's ordered to fly more missions.

Situations and images like these are relatively simple. One can choose not to engage with these strange loops. But the strangest loop is more complex and inescapable. The strangest loop is the individual. That’s you. And me. And nobody in particular. Consider, as one of my favorite movies asks, “who is you?”

“That’s easy,” you may think. “I’m a person with relationships and hobbies and ambitions and all of the other ingredients of a human life. There’s no loop here, you pseudonymous simpleton.”

Right, okay, great.

Although you can’t perceive those aspects of yourself without your brain. You make use of thoughts made up of symbols. These symbols are images, feelings, and memories generated by neuron clusters. The clusters light up when you’re made aware of concepts like “computer” or “song” or “rule of three.”

Notably, you can't pinpoint any of those specific groups of neurons. You don’t know where “computer” is stored in your brain. You’re stuck at the symbol level.

Going from “you,” the thinking person who cannot think without the symbols, down to the neurons which are nothing but chemicals and reactions that create those essential symbols that form your thoughts, is the essence of the strangest loop. On the physical level, “you” are the neurons. But of course you’re not the neurons. But you’re not the thoughts either. “You” are both.

Emerging consciousness. A bridge between the physical and the abstract.

Letting go of an egotistical identity, an “I” that cannot be pinpointed, feels to me like a problem with no solution. A path with no destination. But I think it’s something useful to keep in mind as I go about my days. Nurturing relationships, enjoying hobbies, pursuing ambitions.

Outside of myself, I’m not sure of much. I think there are insights to the idea of the individual as the strangest loop that I have not yet begun to grasp. But I’m on my way.

Once every sometimes I’ll update this website in order to make better sense of my own strangest loop and everything outside of it. I consider the ownership and improvement of one’s own nanoscopic slice of the internet to be fulfilling. So here is my slice. Thank you for reading.

P.S. Ideas from Douglas Hofstadter inspired this essay. For a book elaborating on strange loops and identity, see the first letter of each paragraph.