Patterns of Truth

George Santayana, a Spanish-American philosopher, is often quoted as having said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Winston Churchill put his own spin on this concept when he said, “Those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat it.”

While a memorable cultural catchphrase, the premise that history repeats itself is false. What makes it false is the word history. History does not repeat. History only exists as collected fragments of memory and records of all occurrences leading up to now, but which do not presently exist. The correct phenomena to identify, learn and remember are patterns. To know and understand the truth of anything, before we can hope to change it, we must first find its pattern. 

Transcript

George Santayana, a Spanish-American philosopher, is often quoted as having said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Winston Churchill put his own spin on this concept when he said, “Those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat it.”

While a memorable cultural catchphrase, the premise that history repeats itself is false. What makes it false is the word history. History does not repeat. History only exists as collected fragments of memory and records of all occurrences leading up to now, but which do not presently exist. The correct phenomena to identify, learn and remember are patterns. To know and understand the truth of anything, before we can hope to change it, we must first find its pattern.

If we get sick or injured in a way that causes us great pain or prevents our normal functioning, we might choose to go to the doctor, especially if it is something we have not experienced before or know it’s something that requires more than home care.

The first thing we’re asked when we arrive at the doctor’s office or hospital is to describe what we are experiencing. In clinical medicine, these are called symptoms. But, more generally, we should think of them as elements of a pattern. And, before any treatment can commence, the medical professional must first identify and understand the correct medical problem to know how to treat it effectively. In medicine, this process is called diagnosis, more specifically differential diagnosis — meaning what is the exact problem in this person as distinguished, or differentiated, from various problems it could be.

A physician who is a good diagnostician tends to be very familiar and skilled with all of the various elements — symptoms — that can be expressed by the types of patterns — specific injuries or illnesses within the doctor’s area of expertise. The doctor has been highly trained to have a deep knowledge and understanding of the specific patterns and their elements in a particular medical specialty — immunology, neurology, cardiology, pulmonology, oncology, etc.

This pattern identification, recognition and understanding form the basis of discoveries in all of the STEM disciplines —science, technology, engineering and math — as they seek to know and understand more completely and accurately nature and reality.

This same dependence on knowledge and skill with pattern identification and recognition goes back to the earliest days of humanity. To this day, trackers of wild game animals learn to find different animals by species, their size, age, gender, behavior and movements by reading and understanding their tracks, scat, feeding habits, shelters like dens and nests, their trails and runs, their fur or hair, territorial markers, sounds and vocalizations, habitat, season, time of day and weather. These skills are as important to zoologists and hunters today as they were to our ancestors who depended on wild animals for food.

As humans train their focus up from the ground to the clouds and the stars, practitioners of geology, meteorology, astronomy and astrophysics display extraordinary powers of pattern identification and recognition to expand our ever-more amazing knowledge and understanding of the natural world.

We humans use patterns every day at home and at work. We automatically “read” the behavioral and emotional patterns family members, friends, clients or customers, strangers — everyone — not only looking for signs of threat or opportunity, but also how best to create and maintain “effective relationships,” as it’s called in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.

Writers of fiction in movies and books construct fictional elements of patterns in their science fiction, murder mysteries, rom-coms, action adventures and thriller genres to move their characters along dramatically through plot narrative. They build excitement and drama for the viewer or reader, hooking them on following the breadcrumbs or arranging the puzzle pieces to find the patterns that lead to the denouement or grand resolution, with its sense of release, relief or satisfaction.

So, why are patterns so pervasive in human life? The simple fact is that we’re wired for them. Human pattern recognition is a fundamental and universal ability that evolved over centuries. This hard-wired cognitive process, which we rely on for learning and decision-making, involves finding rules and regularities—and sometimes self-similar repeating and recurring irregularities—in information and phenomena.

Research reveals that various brain regions are involved in pattern recognition, most predominantly the neocortex. In his book, How to Create a Mind, Ray Kurzweil postulates that not only is the neocortex responsible for our pattern-recognition ability, but that the fundamental component of the neocortex is what he calls a “pattern recognizer." Most interestingly, Kurzweil asserts that "These recognizers are capable of wiring themselves to one another throughout the course of a lifetime, so the elaborate connectivity (between modules) that we see in the neocortex is not pre-specified by the genetic code but rather is created to reflect the patterns we actually learn over time."

Kurzweil estimates that about 300 million pattern recognizers live in the neocortex. He further suggests that, while humans have a relatively weak logic-processing ability, our pattern-recognition capability is “very deep.” Based on his estimate of 300 million recognizers, he reasons that each recognizer can “process” one iteration at a time, by which he means learning the pattern, predicting it and its parts, recognizing, and finally implementing it by thoughts or actions.

Collectively, Kurzweil refers to his system as “the pattern recognition theory of mind,” or PRTM, which consists of three parts: first, the input, made up of the lower-level patterns that, together, constitute the main pattern; second, the name of the pattern; and third, the set of higher-level patterns to which each pattern belongs.

In reviewing substantial research, Kurzeil found support for the conclusion that the way pattern recognition modules wire, or rewire, themselves aligns with the patterns to which they’re exposed. Thus, new patterns can be written into new "dendrite spines" to form connections between nerve cells, which could potentially  "update the code" of a previous pattern — for example, by learning a new or updated skill.

Our brains subconsciously look for patterns, and we feel joy, satisfaction, and pleasure when finding positive ones in the world around us—whether in work, play, or survival. Pattern recognition helps us learn, problem-solve, innovate, invent, create art, work puzzles, design buildings and other structures, navigate traffic, and perform various other tasks that help us survive and thrive.

Our patterns can also cause us and the people around us unhappiness, significant harm, and sometimes even death. These unwanted outcomes often result from negative or pathological patterns in our thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and behaviors. These can include:

Negative emotional patterns including,

·      Persistent sadness, guilt, or hopelessness

·      Excessive worry or fear

·      Irritability or anger

·      Emotional numbness or detachment or

·      Mood swings or emotional instability

 Or they can include psychological pathologies, like:

 ·      Depression expressed as Persistent low mood, loss of interest, changes in appetite and sleep, fatigue, and feelings of worthlessness.

·      Anxiety disorders exhibited by excessive and uncontrollable worry, panic attacks, phobias, or obsessive-compulsive behaviors.

·      Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) manifested through re-experiencing traumatic events, avoidance, hyperarousal, and negative mood and cognitions.

·      Personality disorders, including inflexible and maladaptive patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that deviate from cultural norms and cause distress or impairment.

·      Eating disorders.

 Or some common maladaptive behaviors like:

 ·      Avoidance or procrastination

·      Self-harm or suicidal behaviors

·      Addictions of all kinds

·      Aggressive or violent behavior

·      Impulsive, recklessness or compulsive behaviors (e.g., gambling, shopping, or sexual activities

·      Social withdrawal or isolation

·      Unhealthy relationship patterns (e.g., codependency or abusive dynamics)

Various treatments and tools can help us transform our negative emotional, psychological, and behavioral patterns. Here are some examples of well-established and evidence-based approaches:

·      Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

·      Mindfulness-Based Interventions, like meditation, yoga, tai chi and qi gung

·      Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) to increase mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. 

·      Neurofeedback: a brain training technique that uses real-time feedback to help individuals regulate their brain activity. 

Clinical ketamine therapy is a more recent and promising drug therapy to rapidly alleviate depression symptoms (as little as three hours) and reduce anxiety, even in those considered treatment-resistant. Ketamine works differently than other antidepressants by targeting the brain's most common messenger, glutamate, which plays a critical role in memory and learning. Researchers believe that ketamine stimulates the regrowth of connections between neurons (synapses), which effectively "rewires" the brain. This improves control over negative thoughts, emotions, and unwanted behavior patterns.

So, the very good news is that we can use our own pattern recognizers to first identify, understand and then change our unwanted behaviors, turn down our “monkey mind” of our restless and confused thoughts and negative emotions to gain inner peace and focused concentration, while opening ourselves to higher awareness and consciousness. In doing so, we increasingly reveal within ourselves the kind of truth that will set us free.

Copyright © 2024 by Joe Kornowski