NEW ESSAY: Patterns in Human Life: What They Give Us, ​What They Cost Us, and Why Noticing Them Matters

This is the latest essay I published in my project POWER of meanings // MEANINGS of power. 

A pattern, at its simplest, is repetition. On fabric, a pattern is a shape repeated across a surface. In music, patterns appear as repeating rhythms, motifs, and variations. In stories, we recognize patterns in plot and character—structures that feel familiar even when the details change. In visual art, repetition can be soothing and beautiful; entire traditions, such as geometric design in Islamic art, have explored repetition as an aesthetic language in its own right. Clearly, patterns can be deeply enjoyable for human beings.

Why is that?

Our ancestors noticed long ago that patterns surround us in nature: cycles of seasons, tides, lunar rhythms, bodily cycles, and the repeated processes by which life grows, decays, and renews itself. Even when reality feels unpredictable up close, we keep noticing forms of regularity—enough order to orient ourselves. In practice, much of what we call “knowing” rests on this: recognizing that something tends to repeat, and using that repetition to anticipate what may come next. Recognizing patterns creates predictability. Predictability means order. And human beings are deeply attached to order—at least to a certain kind of order, shaped by human needs and human limits.

Patterns are not only something we notice and enjoy; they are also something we think with. The human brain constantly looks for repeated features and relationships, because repetition is one way we reduce complexity to something manageable. We can only make partial guesses about how this developed, but it is plausible that human pattern-seeking and human survival reinforced one another over time: noticing regularities made action more effective, and more effective action made pattern-seeking worth repeating. In this sense, human cognition appears strongly oriented toward detecting regularities and using them to guide prediction and action in what can feel, from a human perspective, like an overwhelming universe filled with nuance, detail, and uncertainty. To navigate that universe, we label what we observe so that we can understand it, predict it, and communicate about it...

You can continue reading here.
[This essay will be included in Newsletter #23]