Strange Loops and Metaphysics

Strange loops are a simple, yet immensely opaque concept that I have come to regard as indispensable in understanding the structure of Elder Scrolls metaphysics. This thread will mostly serve as an outline of what a strange loop is and a few examples of using it as a framework to understand lore.

Defining a Strange Loop

In a nutshell, a strange loop is a hierarchy of sets that winds up containing itself; a bunch of boxes that, as you open them, you find eventually contains the first box that you opened. This is a paradox! Compare it with the Futurama episode entitled "The Farnsworth Parabox" in which Professor Farnsworth manages to make a box that contains a parallel universe; through various shenanigans, the Planet Express crew winds up with a similar box that contains their entire universe within itself. At the end of the episode, Fry sits on it and slightly squashes, well, everything. A great visual gag, yes, but also instructive: Strange loops, properly realized, can serve as methods for an entity to define itself.

The context in which strange loops have been explored most thoroughly is that of human consciousness. Douglas Hofstadter, the person who gave them the name "strange loop," wrote two entire books about this; most of my knowledge about the subject comes from I am a Strange Loop. The essential idea is that a human soul consists of a set of symbols, encoded in neural connections, that reaches back and symbolizes itself, thereby gaining the ability, as mentioned above, to define itself.

There's a lot more to it, but this is the core idea as it applies to this thread.

Where are they in the lore?

Well, when you get right down to it, strange loops (or their structural near-misses) are all over the place. These examples are not intended to be the definitive readings of these texts, mind you, but just ways in which the strange loop concept can reveal quite a lot about how things work. Similarly, I have no doubt that there are many other applications of the concept to the lore that I have missed. With both of these caveats held in mind, here's what I've got for you:

Consider the concept of gradients, especially as outlined in the Loveletter. The gradients, and their subgradients, are the boxes. What do you find when you open the last box? Z. Amaranth. Where did you start? Amaranth. This can be made to work with each of the primary schools of thought on Amaranth. The first, that the Amaranth takes over their own Dream of origin, is pretty simple: The Dreamer contains the Dreamer. The other, which I prefer, is that the Amaranth departs its Dream of origin (which can be seen as both a nesting and a cutting, whichever is most useful). How, then, can a Dream be said to contain itself? Easy: Memory, which departs with the Amaranth and carries with it the concepts and story of the old Dream, to be reborn and referenced in the Amaranth. I have a whole series about that, so I won't get into it too much here.

There's another fun wrinkle to this particular parallel, though: Remember how strange loops might be able to explain human consciousness in our world? As you examine the gradients, from top to bottom, what's the most notable thing that happens? Yep: The beings of each level are more and more capable of self-reflection, of consciousness.

It's not a perfect match-up, in terms of analysis. In the human brain, Hofstadter holds that there's a primary strange loop (the self) and many less-detailed strange loops contained in parallel, those of loved ones and other familiar figures (and, in turn, those loved ones and familiar figures have their own primary loops as well as a halo of less-detailed loops corresponding to their loved and familiar ones). The strange loop there arises by itself, as an accident of physical law and evolution, whereas consciousness in the Aurbis appears to be an overarching project of the universe itself, requiring many iterations to achieve. But few things in literature analysis are perfect match-ups, really. The point is, it's a pretty instructive and useful parallel to draw, even imperfect as it is.

Of course, strange loops can also be found in everyone's favorite metaphysics buzzword, CHIM. Check out Mankar's words on the subject, specifically this bit:

> He that enters Paradise enters his own Mother.

Paradise is Mankar's realm, where his disciples undergo the Razor, which is the process of self-definition via repeated destruction. Here, in the context of CHIM, "Paradise" can be read more broadly as self-definition, which is the entire point of CHIM (according to me), as well as the very idea of taking a mantle, which is something Mankar also talks about quite a lot throughout the Commentaries:

> We mortals leave the dreaming-sleeve of birth the same, unmantled save for the symbiosis with our mothers, thus to practice and thus to rapprochement, until finally we might through new eyes leave our hearths without need or fear that she remains behind.

> ---

> The Tower touches all the mantles of Heaven, brother-noviates, and by its apex one can be as he will.

> ---

> By the Book, take this key and pierce the divine shell that encloses the mantle-takers!

So, if Paradise in this context is self-definition, the taking of a mantle, a Law, for oneself, then entering your own Mother should be taken as being contained by that which previously defined you (the "symbiosis" he mentions). Mankar regards, not incorrectly, the transformation of the self into New Law, independent from all else, as simultaneous to unity with and understanding of the Old Law, which is the entire universe, including the burgeoning New Law itself. Old Law contains New Law contains Old Law contains... ad nauseum.

Okay, one more: The Wheel and the Tower.

The Wheel, and its alternate name, the Tower, is the metaphysical structure of the Aurbis. Some take this as literal physical structure; some don't. For this example, it doesn't really matter. Symbols are what's important here.

When Lorkhan saw the Wheel and the Tower that were the Aurbis, he had an idea. He saw the universe defining itself (the Tower), and saw that he was, at least in part, defined and limited by it (the Wheel), and he wanted to wrest that control for himself (fitting, as a spirit whose domain includes, perhaps, Limit). So he imitated it. He and a bunch of other spirits made Mundus, which was a structural symbol of the Wheel and the Tower: Mortals are beings defined and limited by Mundus (the Wheel), who, as a whole, shape Mundus itself through mythopoeia (the Tower). This has not gone unnoticed on Mundus, which, to Vivec, is also known as the Wheel and the Tower:

> The Scripture of the Wheel, First:

> 'The Spokes are the eight components of chaos, as yet solidified by the law of time: static change, if you will, something the lizard gods refer to as the Striking. That is the reptile wheel, coiled potential, ever-preamble to the never-action.'

> Second:

> 'They are the lent bones of the Aedra, the Eight gift-limbs to SITHISIT, the wet earth of the new star our home. Outside them is the Aurbis, and not within. Like most things inexplicable, it is a circle...'

> ---

> Fifth:

> 'Look at the majesty sideways and all you see is the Tower, which our ancestors made idols from...'

So there's the Wheel and the Tower containing the Wheel and the Tower. Through the metaphysical power of symbols in the Aurbis, this is both literal and figurative! In one sense, Mundus is Mundus and it's inside Aurbis, a small part of a larger stage. But in another sense, equally significant, the Aurbis actually contains itself, just like the Farnsworth Parabox.

If you paid attention to that last line I quoted from Vivec, you know we're not quite done. Check it out:

> Every dawnmaker Tower takes a myth-form. Red Tower is a volcano and its surrounds. Snow Throat a mountain whose apex is only half here. Walk-Brass is appropriately ambulatory, and (most of the time) anthropomorphic. The Aldmeri polydoxes were cosminachs, and the White-Gold project was and is no different.

> Though the Ayleids gave theirs a central Spire as the imago of Ada-mantia, the whole of the polydox resembled the Wheel, with eight lesser towers forming a ring around their primus. To dismiss this mythitecture as being a mockery of the Aurbis is to ignore an important point: this same "jest" gave White-Gold Tower a power over creatia unalike any on this plane(t). It was a triumph of sympathetic megafetish, and the Start of the [Threat! To! Empire!] that brings me to this Council.

> If the Ayleids made their own Wheel within the Wheel, were-web aad semblio, what would happen if they plucked its strings?

If the Wheel and the Tower contains the Wheel and the Tower, then it is fitting that it would contain yet another Wheel and Tower, and that is realized in the form of White-Gold. Once again, through the power of symbols ("sympathetic megafetish"), White-Gold is its own thing apart from the larger universe around it, but it is also the entirety of Mundus, and it is also the entirety of the Aurbis. And that last question is a doozy: What would happen if they plucked its strings? Well... What happened when Fry sat on the box?