[Note from Brian: I’m changing the day I post these from Monday to Tuesday. I don’t know about you, but my to-do list is packed on Monday morning, and I wouldn’t want to be lost in the shuffle.]
People are pattern-finding engines. It’s our great gift and curse.
Understanding “If X then Y” led to agriculture, industry, science, civilization. It also led to sacrificing goats to appease the rain gods because that one time we sacrificed a goat it rained.
Among my earliest memories is being entranced by patterns. In kindergarten, laying out wood tiles to make roads and railways. Spreading dominoes across the floor, not to play the game but to connect all the numbers in intricate fractals. When my grandmother gave me a bag of clothespins, I’d stay busy and quiet clipping them together in spirals and arches for hours.
Yes, children of the 21st century, this is what kids had for fun in the mid-20th: clothespins. If we were lucky, rocks and sticks.
Peek-a-boo is the prototypical pattern-finding activity. Cover your face and then reveal the same expression a few times in a row. On the next reveal, stick out your tongue. Even an infant will laugh because they perceived the pattern and then you broke it, subverting expectations, which is the basis for much humor. Peek-a-boo may be our species’ first joke.*
I think being able to recognize patterns, and then discern the difference between true and false patterns, is fundamental to being a good, informed human and citizen. Distinguishing between goat sacrifice and the scientific method, or being able to spot pattern-breaking lies, hypocrisies and scams, is our gift and responsibility.
If only it were more common.
* Either that or a fart.
***
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