Recursive Identity Modulation

Where do I begin?

Over the past few months — and especially throughout the last year — I’ve been exploring the tension between determinism and free will. Right now, I lean more toward determinism. Why? Because I live with a condition that sometimes hijacks my behaviors, and even when I want control, I don’t always have it. The idea of prior causes makes sense to me: yesterday’s behaviors, and even childhood experiences, ripple forward, shaping who I am today.

As I kept thinking about prior causes, I started to notice loops — patterns that repeat in behavior and thought. But loops are closed; they circle endlessly. So maybe we aren’t circles at all. Maybe we’re spirals. A spiral repeats, but each turn moves forward, never exactly where it started.

If that’s true — if we are spirals — what happens when we finally see the spiral? When awareness turns back on itself, does the spiral begin to change?

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RIM — Recursive Identity Modulation

A self-referential process in which awareness modifies behavior, which in turn modifies awareness — creating a spiral of personal evolution.

When we view life as a recursive process, we notice we repeat many of the same behaviors day to day. Recursive simply means applying a rule, definition, or procedure to its own results — again and again.

Then you have identity, the self, and modulation, the change that occurs in the spiral as it becomes self-aware.

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It’s fascinating to me how this whole process began and evolved. I’m not even sure what compelled me to pick up a book on determinism. Maybe it was because I was uncomfortable with the idea of free will. Living with a condition that sometimes overrides my behavior made me wonder if our actions are more determined than we like to believe.

Still, I’m not a strict determinist. In practice, I believe we can modulate behavior as we become aware of it. I believe we do have a choice — and we can choose to change.

It’s funny, though, when you think about it — every choice is also shaped by prior causes, leading right back into that same recursive process of the original cause.

If that didn’t make sense, that’s okay. Just think about whether what we have is truly our choice and where that choice comes from. As you dwell on it, it may lead you to adopt the thought process I’ve adopted.

The other strange thing that happened to me recently was that I had a dream about my Dad in a library about mathematics, logarithms, graphs, and grids. I wanted to learn from him because he was employed, and I wanted to become his apprentice. I wanted him to train me. He told me not to do it for work, but to do it for yourself. He pointed to a big, mahogany book and told me to read it. I opened it up, and it was something about Darwinism and origins. My Dad did indicate he had dreams like this in the dream, which was pretty wild. I woke up because it was so vivid, and I quickly pulled up ChatGPT to interpret the dream.

That chat conversation led me to a book called Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. It’s a massive book about the very themes of the dream I had — patterns, self-reference, and how awareness might emerge from systems that learn to reflect on themselves.

It felt as though the dream and the book were speaking the same language in different forms.

Pretty freaking cool, right?

The fact that a dream led me to a book with themes that mirrored what I’d been thinking is just wild to me. Something out there is communicating — urging me to understand the deeper complexity of life. Or maybe it’s simply my subconscious redirecting me.

And maybe that’s what RIM really is — a conversation between the dreamer and the dreamed, looping through thought and experience, each turn a little more aware than the last.

I guess I’ve come full circle… or maybe just another turn up the spiral.