Use & Abuse: Why can't they Just Get Along

“All Cretans are Fallible,” says
Epimenides, the Cretan,

FALLACIES
can result if
you fail to
distinguish
between
working in
the system
(M mode)
and thinking
about the
system
(I mode)

Douglas Hofstadter
Gödel, Escher, Bach

It’s the same distinction as between
USE/ABUSE and MENTION—a
line some linguistic philosophers
draw in sand & I merely mention
it here.

Use & Useful (on the one hand)

What Works:
Manipulating:
Getting R Done
Fixing & Repairing.
Taking Care of Business:
tending to the Flooded House
Syndrome in States of Emergence;
Rains Driving, Winds Whipping:
M-mode will clean up the kitchen
but won’t fix the roof-holes in mid-
storm; and when the sun’s out: no
problem..


House of Roderick & Madeline Usher
(twins)

For Hofstadter, M-Mode is “machine”
mode & mighty, like magic: any formal
system, algorithmic, procedural, routine-
running, agenda-driving habit, rite, ritual,
tradition, discipline—all easily included
organizations one can be IN but theoretically
& not necessarily: OF.

Properly para-noetic: one might think outside
the box even while boxing & being boxed:
packaging & being packaged, wrapping &
being wrapped, sifting, sorting, & being
sifted & sorted, determining and being
determined by what’s knotty and nice,
sugar and spice assuming I can tell
the standard borders & thresholds
where we draw the lines and have
the sustain ability to ignore them.

That would be I-mode: “intellect,”
a course of a different color; name it
Meta M Mode or MENTION: calling
into question, where one might distinguish
among sustain-abilities, say: those system-
preserving sustain-abilities & those seemingly
terrorist, diabolical un-sustain-abilities that blow
away my bricks of straw & gritty shingle roofing.

Fallacies occur when these 2 modalities
(M & I; Use & Mention) are collapsed,
conflated, and confused & I think I’m
thinking outside the box when I’m
thinking in the box tending to its urgent
housekeeping matters which might could
be moot if I got up on the roof so to speak



“ I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in and stops
my mind from wandering where it will go. I'm
filling the cracks that ran though the door and kept
my mind from wandering where it will go..
And it really doesn't matter if I'm wrong
I'm right where I belong I'm right where I belong
See the people standing there who disagree and
never win and wonder why they don't get in
my door.”

Fallacies I have with me always. Can’t keep
IT straight: differences between Machine &
Intellect. Use & Mention, Exploit & Reflect.
All one to me: unity-loving,
universalist.

Am I aware of my ongoing
fallible & fallacious ways &
means & mentionings? Some
times some what aware I’m
not aware. Damnit.

xxxooo, Presbyter