Patterns can get you only so far today

Patterns help our understanding, which is more important to some of us than others. PHOTO/JOHN RHODES

I don't understand the world anymore.

Not that I ever did, really, but it has been nice for most of my life to have had the illusion that I did.

After scanning through online media stories this week in search of a topic to justify Midweek readers' valuable attention span, I have drawn a complete blank.

There is the usual mix of murder, war, "entertainment", religions -- plural -- and politics.

What I was looking for was a pattern, some thread in what has been happening in the world lately to help me -- and maybe even to help you -- make sense of it all.

Patterns help our understanding, which is more important to some of us than others. A profiling survey I once did on myself put me in the box of those who are, in the words of a box-mate, "more interested in trying to understand the world than to run it".

So here I am, looking at this mess of a week in this mess of a world, looking for a pattern to help me understand -- and failing miserably.

We are all pattern seekers. As infants the first pattern we probably spotted was that of two circles, around 45mm apart, with a more or less straight red line underneath them that moved around a lot and made noises -- the human face.

After a while we learned that all faces were not created equal and one or two were more likely than any others to provide food.

We also learned to make noises and get noises back, what my linguistics teachers called "turn-taking" and the first step towards acquiring language.

From there the patterns got more complicated, and they've kept getting more complicated ever since.

Now, at the age of 40, I wonder if I am losing my ability to find new patterns in an increasingly complex world.

If so, then I'm stuck with the patterns I've got, like it or not. Or with recognising that patterns can only take me so far.

And that might be a good thing. Patterns require lines, and in our zeal to patternise the world down to a manageable size, we can use lines to discriminate, not between ideas -- which is healthy -- but between the groups of people who hold the ideas.

We narrow-mindedly judge people of opposing ideas to be narrow minded and judgmental - and thus we judge ourselves, and find ourselves caged by the very pattern of lines with which we intended to cage them. I am sure you don't do this, of course.

To sum up, I'm losing faith in my ability to sum up.

A favourite movie I watched ended with the main character, played by Bill Murray, looking completely bewildered as only Bill Murray can -- as he realised he'd come to the end of his quest and none of his questions had been answered.

Now that I can understand.