Conclusion: The Last Loop de Loop?

This has been the Fabulous Loop de Loop.

So, we end where we began, with Gregory Bateson invoking the wisdom of Samuel Butler.

Back in 1863, Butler had the foresight to recognise that the adaptability and flexibility of the governor on a steam engine followed the same principle as the adaptability and flexibility of evolution – they were both self-regulating systems which carried news of change through the system, which allowed them to adapt to change. It was Butler who intuited that the line between the organism and its environment was arbitrary and that the essentialist notion of the unity of the “self” was a self-serving illusion. Butler recognised a wholistic system regulated by “vibrations”– messages of difference sent through the system to allow change and adaptation and ensure constancy.

As the loop de loop loops to the end of the 1960s many of Butler’s intuitions have been confirmed by the cybernetic revolution and by the end of the 1960s knowledge of the fabulous loop de loop had transformed culture (art had established self-reflexivity as the grounds of art, we understood ecology and media as structured in the same way).

Bateson, even at the end of his life, was still invoking Butler’s visions, weaving them into the cybernetic innovations of Norbert Wiener and Warren McCulloch (both enthusiastic loop de loopers). He synthesised and recontextualised their thoughts to deliver the message that humans are threatening the very diversity and flexibility that has allowed them to prosper.

To survive we must acknowledge that we do not think the way we think we think; we must find our place in the ecology of mind which extends beyond the individual and into the environment and into the organisms and machines that surround us.

This escape is possible, but by no means certain and because the loop de loop is a negative feedback loop, we do not end where we started, things have change and adapted along the way. We can acknowledge our place in the ecology of mind (which is the privilege of the loop de loop) or we can carry on regardless. If we do the latter, this might be our last loop de loop…