Now as the Ultimate Cognitive Strange Attractor

A continuing invitation "down the rabbit hole"?

Annex to

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Introduction

The main paper clarifies understandings of "feeling alive" and "feeling dead" in this strange period , and the associated ambiguities, as a means of framing the strange experience of "now". That argument concluded with sections on:

• Quest for life -- and feeling alive
• Quest for death -- and the significance of closure
• Excessive complexity engendering collapse
• Sensing personal "world lines" and identifying with their convergence
• Being alive through centering?

The latter section drew attention to the existence of unusual geometric forms which could serve metaphorically as "containers" for cognitive engagement with "now" -- and to the challenge of their comprehension. This was seen as a key to enabling and enhancing the sense of "feeling alive".

This argument is developed further here by reframing "centre" as a curious form of "hole" which, like the black holes of astrophysics, functions cognitively as a strange attractor. As such, in the moment, the experience of "now" is a continuing invitation to "go down the rabbit hole" -- as framed for children by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865). Dodgson was a mathematician and logician (The Game of Logic, 1887).

Entering a "rabbit hole" has been understood as framing a period of chaos or confusion -- appropriate to the current condition of global civilization and the challenge of individual response to it. The phrase has featured as the subtitle of a DVD version of the much-cited film What the Bleep Do We Know!? (2004), What the Bleep! Down the Rabbit Hole - Quantum Edition (2006), following a book version What the Bleep Do We Know!? Discovering the Endless Possibilities of Your Everyday Reality (2005). This combines documentary-style interviews, computer-animated graphics, and a narrative that posits a spiritual connection between quantum physics and consciousness -- framed as the foundation of future thought.

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