Patterns - the easy and the hard

Our neurologies are, in one perspective, categorizers. We categorize all our our perceptions / stimuli - good, bad, tree, apple, ....  We code these categories somehow in our representational systems. The way we encode then allows / disallows the perception of patterns in our perceptual field. For example, if we encode objects by color, then we may see "reds" as a pattern. Group dress codes can be by color, form, function, ...  And we see the patterns of dress and then associate other attributes and criteria with those patterns.

It seems like a number of people encode behaviors with their feelings / emotions about the behavior. And if that same feeling is not present, they don't see the pattern in the behavior. For example, a number of people say that they would not repeat the behaviors of their parents. However, that is exactly what  they do and at the same time deny that is what they are doing. To the external observer, the pattern may be obvious. Why is it not so to the perpetrator of that behavior?  It seems like the dynamic may be that they have encoded the feelings associated with the behavior and that is what they are basing their denial on.  The feelings that they had when the parents did that behavior are very different from the feelings that they have when they are doing that behavior. Obviously the feelings of the receiver are different from those of the transmitter of the behavior.

This then leads us to the more general observation that  the encoding of experience is critical in whether  or not we are able to perceive patterns in our experience. The ability to detect patterns is probably critical both to our development / evolution as well as our continuing survival. Here we can see  that the  famous adage: "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it", or its original version: "Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it", are only part of the dynamic. How we encode what we experience and learn can obscure or allow us to see the patterns. And whether we can perceive these patterns or not can then determine whether we repeat them or not.

I guess I need to review all my learnings and perhaps recode them?