Angels All The Way Up

When Tanga walked into the kitchen this morning as I was pouring my hot water for tea, seeing her reminded me of her, but it also made me wonder what she was thinking when she saw me and whether what she was thinking included her wondering what I thought of her and maybe even whether I was wondering, as she might have been, whether I was thinking of her thinking of me as I was thinking of her thinking of me. You see how this could be an infinite regress, sort of like the turtles response reputedly given to Bertrand Russell when after his lecture, a woman said she believed the universe was held up by a giant turtle and when he asked her what was holding up the turtle, she said: “Sir, you are not going to trick me, it’s turtles all the way down.”

This infinite regress issue is also at the heart of the Munchhausen trilogy, wherein an Englishman was said to lift himself and his horse out of a muddy bog, by pulling on his own hair. That is obviously impossible, but then when it comes to picking ourselves up by our own bootstraps, so to speak; most of us will admit to have considerable faith in that.

This is also called the unmoved-mover problem, and it comes about because of consciousness and even beyond that, awareness of awareness. The person who freezes up on the dance floor because she becomes painfully aware others are staring, is aware of what it means for others to be aware of her. She will likely not get hung up on the infinite-regress problem, however; her concern will be closer to what might be called a finite regress problem: being aware others are paying attention to you without locating it in the complete hall of mirrors of infinite awarenesses.

It must be this that suffocated the life out of celebrities such as Michael Jackson and Princess Di, two apparently shy people made to live under intense scrutiny; although, some people apparently relish scrutiny – thus turning the “problem” into a “project.” I have in mind those who go on the show, Dancing With the Stars.  I suspect this might be a temporary infatuation with celebrity and they too might surfeit of it once it became clear that their every move was being scrutinized. If you've ever been stalked by one person, imagine being stalked by everybody.

Of course, the biggest problem we face as humans is not infinite regress or finite regress, it is – no regress. That is, at some point what we do stops being noticed and then we die; or perhaps it is the other way around.  At some point we lose consciousness and our awareness of this inevitability lies at the center of most of our existential angst.

This entire issue is rooted in our fundamental uncertainty, which can be summed up in these questions: where are we, why are we here, what are we supposed to be doing here, and where are we going?

If you never ask those questions, you are probably not overly concerned with infinite regress or related issues. Most of us learn to stop thinking about the hall of mirrors for our own sanity. It’s difficult for me to do my job, be a husband, or a father, or a friend, etc.; if I spend a lot of time on these why questions. I would never bring this up with my wife, for example. In fact, I seldom reflect on it myself. But is there benefit in doing so? I think there might be.

If I contemplate me thinking of you thinking of me as I think of you and so on like that, I am doing about as well as I can in placing our relationship in philosophical, perhaps even phenomenological context.

In fact, this sort of thinking might be a type of salvation for those suffering from the finite regress problem; such as celebrities constantly being made aware of the scrutiny of others by the paparazzi. If the celebrity stops to consider that she too is curious as to what goes on in the lives of others she might have more understanding of those who treat her existence as their entertainment. In fact, is it not amazing how much of what we do appears to be dictated by being a member of our species and not just being conscious.

Apparently, being conscious is not only about being aware of our own existence, but it is also about being aware of our existence in the context of others and aware of the existence of others. Given how curious we are about the lives of others, particularly lives different from our own; we must get some sort of deep meaning from gathering data on the differences and studying the similarities. Most of us love reading biographies or at least learning the backstories of the lives of other people. The human-interest stories are one of the best parts of the Olympic-game coverage.

We learn about ourselves by studying how those similar to us live. If they are terribly different from us, their lives will not be as interesting to us; unless, of course, they started where we are and were able to travel a distance we ourselves aspire to travel in the course of their lives.

I like contrasting my good qualities against the bad ones of others and comparing my good ones to the good ones of others. If I see someone doing something selfless, I will have a little bit of understanding of how she felt if I too have done similarly selfless things for others. If I do good in situations where others are doing bad, or if I succeed where failure is rampant; I feel transcendent and life is by definition, too seldom transcendent.

Sometimes I fix my imagination to the star of someone else and in so doing, I will be hitching my star to a person who has hitched her star to someone else, who has done likewise and so on. Maybe this would be called: infinite progress? I guess if the infinite regress problem is the ultimate misuse of our consciousness, infinite progress might be the ultimate use of it.

The next time you aspire to be like someone else, you should realize you are no doubt part of a long chain. In fact, you might say when it comes to dreaming big and making those dreams come true, it’s angels all the way up.