The meta-society

I have been struggling with a concept for which I am sure a word exists, but which I don't know. The concept is a bit like what you get when you place two mirrors face to face in such a way that you get reflections of reflections, but with the difference that these reflections can go on and on to infinity, until your head spins, while in my examples (see the list below) they are usually limited to a single repetition. More like an echo of an echo, in fact.

Humanities (language, art, etc.):

• Songs about music
• Plays about theater
• Books about writing (and blogs on blogs)
• Photos of photos (and paintings of paintings)
• Talking about talking
• Thinking about thinking
• Learning to learn
• Terminology about terminology

Business, IT etc.:

• Maintaining maintenance
• Automating automation
• Investing in investments, betting on bets
• Managing project management (projects about projects)
• Planning to plan
• Estimating estimation, evaluating evaluations, assessing assessments, rating ratings
• Information about information (meta-data)
• Reports on reports (and apparently, there are even reports on reports on reports ...!)
• Politikerpolitik

Other/general

• Having feelings about feelings
• Having opinions about opinions
• Obsessing about obsessions
• Discriminating discrimination (or being intolerant of intolerance)
• Being judgmental about judging
• Being addicted to addiction
• Making lists of lists
• Exceptions to exceptions
• Arguing about arguing
• Friends of friends
• Liking a like (in Facebook etc.)

There are a few exceptions to the "bouncing once" rule: you can actually learn about learning to learn, and you can have feelings about having feelings about feelings, but I try not to think about those things too much, because - like reflections of reflections - they too make my head spin.

Postscript: just now, at work, I gave some input on giving input. It is contagious.