All the limitative Theorems of metamathematics and the theory of computation suggest that once the ability to represent your own structure has reached a certain critical point, that is the kiss of death: it guarantees that you can never represent yourself totally. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, Church's Undecidability Theorem, Turing's Halting Problem, Tarski's Truth Theorem-- all have the flavour of some ancient fairy tale which warns you that "To seek self- knowledge is to embark on a journey which . . . will always be incomplete, cannot be charted on a map, will never halt, cannot be described."

--Douglas Hofstadter