Stepping Over Non-existent Barbed Wire

I suppose I am currently much more aware of links and loops because of current reading matter and also I suppose that Cloud Atlas and I am a Strange Loop share some themes but some of the correspondences are quite strong. The first chapter of I am a Strange Loop, which I read yesterday, talks about units of measuring what Hofstadter calls ‘soul’ though he does allow what he calls the old standby of ‘being conscious’. He gives the name Hunekers to these units after an American music critic who said of one particular Chopin etude, that it should not be attempted by “small-souled men”. Hofstadter also points out that the measurement of soul does not have an upper ceiling rather like IQ and maybe we should say that people tend to a level of 100 Hunekers.

In Cloud Atlas, one section deals with the experiences of a genetically engineered ‘fabricant’ one of many produced to do the dirty work in human society; a central theme of this being the ascendancy of these fabricants from ‘genomed’ stupidity and obedience to genius level – a sort of increase in soul – of Hunekers I suppose. Indeed, the humans or ‘purebloods’ in the story can choose to give fabricants a soul ring which allows them access to areas normally forbidden to them.

In general Cloud Atlas fits together very neatly; each section having several links with the previous one, though some are concrete, rational things such as the existence of material evidence of something from the past while others are mystical Jungian coincidences which as you know always put me on my guard. However, what has struck me is that the links between the sections are entirely arbitrary – from the same starting section you might well choose a completely different set of tales still linked but now in a different way. I suppose that had the links between the sections been stronger I might have been a little dismissive of them but because they just suggest a random path through life, they are much more believable. It all reminds me of Connections where James Burke made seemingly random links through the history of science and technology which always made me slightly uncomfortable with the arbitrariness of his selections. Looking at it now, that is the fuzzy way the world actually is and proof of the interconnectedness of everything. Apologies for the long constructions but they all spell-check happily.