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As one of the resisters (or, more accurately, not quite engaged-ers), let me suggest that disinterest, rather than fear, might also be a motivator, here: I understand that formal systems have their uses (and am learning more about such uses from our conversations); I also understand that they have their limits (ditto). I feel neither "threatened" by nor "afraid" of them, but rather find myself more interested in the unpredictable complexities of the worlds that lie outside their purview. What more I might learn from a continued working-through of the proofs and argumentation...?
I guess I'll see!

So (just to keep some other spaces in play), here's one place my mind went wandering to this morning, when Alan asked Paul what he meant by "mindless," and Mike asked what alternatively "soulful" activities he had in mind. It occurs to me that the practices of "mindfulness"--which encourage practitioners not to "think" into the past or future, but rather to "stop" thinking--might also well be called "mindless," because they involve letting go of skepticism, of speculation, of thinking "beyond" what is. They might thus be said to be not "soulless," but "soulful": absolutely present, absolutely bountiful. Unbounded. Infinite.