Familiar Patterns And Underlying Connections

I am trying to convey how human beings think at the deepest level in terms of the patterns that underlie everything in existence. When people come up with new ideas or new technology, it is inevitably just new ways of arranging and manifesting the patterns that we are already familiar with. Thus, no matter how "smart" we are, we are limited by our "pattern vocabulary".

Most of the time, we express ideas in everyday "matter and energy" terms, as I will describe it. But patterns are inevitably a part of our expression also, albeit on a deeper level. We use parables and analogies such as "beating a dead horse", "selling a refrigerator to an Eskimo" or "too many chiefs and not enough Indians".

Such expressions and colloquialisms are not intended to be taken literally in matter and energy terms but to convey an idea that follows the same pattern. Jesus used many such parables to enable His disciples to understand things that they could not see by using examples that they were familiar with.

In the development of civilization, as well as technology such as the car, computer and, airplane, we simply rearrange the same patterns that we are familiar with. Some examples are direct, matter and energy developments such as the use of the action-reaction principle from bows and arrows all the way to rockets. Or from a rolling log to the development of the wheel.

But other examples of the development of civilization are more subtle, involving thinking on a deeper level. This is the realm of patterns.

A fundamental example is the planting of seeds to grow crops and orchards. Human beings have been practicing agriculture for about ten thousand years. Any kind of investing follows exactly the same pattern, planting a seed to make a worthwhile return in time.

It may seem that there is a world of difference between a stock exchange and a farmer's field but the two operate by exactly the same pattern, one that humans learned thousands of years ago by planting seeds. We can be sure that if there had been no farms, there would be no stock exchanges.

Humans have been using the power of the wind to move rafts and boats for thousands of years by means of sails. It developed into the art of catching the wind going in the right direction and using it to get to a worthwhile destination. This, like agriculture, became a very familiar pattern to humans.

Any businessman uses exactly the same pattern, hitching onto some need or trend to make money. Any business enterprise is the same, in terms of patterns, as an ancient raft sailing in the breeze. This is where human beings really learned business.

One of the most familiar patterns to human beings is, of course, gender, that of males and females. There is about an equal number of the two and they pair up. This pattern has obviously been with human beings since there were human beings.

When civilization got started, human beings started using money to make the exchange of goods easier. In this development, they used the familiar pattern. The supply of money in a society is theoretically equal in value to all of the goods and services produced by that society. The money is equal in value to and matches up with the goods. We could even say that goods are male and money is female.

Early human beings learned to obtain meat to supplement their diets by hunting and fishing. Those two occupations became deeply ingrained in the life and thought processes of people everywhere. It is the ancient patterns of hunting and fishing that humans recycled in markets. A business enterprise "fishes" for buyers by advertising or otherwise attracting attention. While customers "hunt" for the best bargain in the market.

Think of all the useful ideas and technology that human beings have not developed because our pattern vocabulary is so limited.

Have you ever wondered about the underlying connections between things that go unnoticed? I find this to be a good example of thinking in patterns.

For example, what about cell phones? Do you remember those communication devices that they used on Star Trek. The crew would simply flip the device open while on some planet and could easily communicate with the Enterprise. This was seen over and over during the Sixties and Seventies. In the mid-Eighties, real cell phones appeared on the market. I wonder if we would have the cell phones we have today without Star Trek.

What about those monster movies of the Sixties that were produced in Japan? Monster after monster would emerge from the ocean to devastate Tokyo. Sometimes monsters, such as Ultraman, could be good but usually they unleashed horrific destruction. Could it be that the tsunamis to which the country is vulnerable, as well as the bombing of Japan in the Second World War, including the atomic bombs, created the necessary mindset for the production of these movies a generation later?

Another Sixties serial was "Gilligan's Island" with seven people stranded on a tropical island. Is it possible that there was a hidden connection with the country being stranded in a military quagmire in a tropical land at the same time?

Has anyone ever noticed the amazing underlying connections between the United States and the Bible? The Constitution reads a lot like the Book of Deuteronomy. The Israelites conquering their promised land in the Book of Joshua bears a strong resemblence to the American conquest of the west. The parcelling of land to each of the Israelite tribes is mirrored into the division of the U.S. into states.

David's building of a new capital in centrally-located Jerusalem is mirrored in the building of Washington D.C. The split into Israel and Judah seems to be a forerunner of the U.S. Civil War. America's litigious culture may be rooted in the intricate legalism of the Book of Romans. Even the extensive lists of credits at the end of Hollywood movies appears to be rooted in the last chapter of the Book of Romans in which Paul gives a long list of people to send greetings to.

What about the strong relationship between industrialism and secularism? When people work on farms and deal with plants, they spend the day looking at what God has created. But when they work in factories and workshops around machines, they see only what man has created. This opens the door to secularism. The secularism of the Eighteenth and especially the Nineteenth Centuries in Europe did not gain widespread acceptance until vast numbers of people were working in factories instead of on farms.

The Industrial Revolution began in Britain and Northern Europe, that is also where modern secularism took root. This secularism revolved around Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution. This theory promoted a process that is very industrial in it's nature to explain the existence of life. I see a very close relationship between industrialism and evolution. Is it only a coincidence that America's Bible Belt is in that part of the country that is traditionally the most agricultural?

We have all heard of how life imitates art and vice versa. But what about music and war? Has anyone ever noticed the close relationship in how people make music and war?

Centuries ago, lines of singers would form a chorus in the same way that lines of soldiers would shoot arrows or march into battle. In the same way, an orchestra was a reflection of sailors on a ship, each with a different task to perform. As industry developed, metal warships could be quickly built and proportionally many more men served as sailors as in times past, this is reflected in the "big band era" of music.

In the Second World War, a new pattern emerged. Many men served in either tanks or bomber planes, each of which had a crew of from three to six, each with a different task to perform. When the war ended and their children grew up, many of them formed rock and roll bands using exactly the same pattern as their fathers in their wartime service.