What happens when we catch up to ourselves?!

If that ever happens, Aorto, there will be hope for us.

You are such a treat, Aorto. What an infusion of fresh blood! [Himoglobin or Heroglobin - you have been cleverly opaque about that, referring only to your "spouse". Themilum must be tearing his hair out. :) ]

Yes, the extract of some trace [or not even a trace but a facsimile of a trace] which is marketed as the genuine whole [holus bowdlerus], like a perfume. Like "J Lo" perfume. Or the one they named after Elizabeth Taylor. And Britney Spears has her own perfume on the market. I don't know the name because all I see is the face.

Selling a scent with a face. Where is the sense in that?*

In the perfume category, Aorto, the trace is not a facsimile. It's a facesimile.

* Indeed, where is the soul in that? Where is the soul in any of that?

We may have to put the remnants of some of these genuine wholes into zoos, Aorto, so people can go to these zoos to find out what civilization is all about.

Going back to your original question, Aorto:

What happens when we catch up to ourselves?!

T. S. Eliot answered it best, did he not?

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

And perhaps T. S. Eliot also gave us the single word you were looking for, Aorto, when you started this thread.

Does anyone know a word for understanding of something 'to be stripped of meaning'?

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.
--------------------
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

The Waste Land [1922]

http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html

If T. S. Eliot were writing "The Waste Land" today, what cities would Tiresias name after "London", I wonder?

I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—