Sunday, November 04, 2007

Life By Exception

Learning is complicated. Let’s take the study of Statistics for example. If you know nothing about statistics, you first have to learn the words and their meaning. Usually, the book is filled with diagrams because some people learn visually. The book’s words are important because some people learn aurally. Statistic books are loaded with examples to give you an idea about how the diagrams / words are used to solve problems. There are also illustrations of exceptions to the statistical patterns. After thinking about it for awhile it suddenly occurred to me that everything around us is based on patterns. While you can argue that the essence of life can be many things, it seems to me patterns should be on that list. Patterns aren’t static. They evolve over time. God / whatever designed this universe on basic patterns that have the capacity to evolve over time. She did it that way, because our brains only have the capacity to notice exceptions. You can argue that people are creative, but they are only creative in simplistic ways. They are not creative in complex ways. For instance the development of the atomic bomb during WW11 took many creative people working in teams along with support staff solving relatively minute parts of the puzzle. Pattern evolution applies to everything. Language evolved. For instance the word "gay" is a word that has an entirely different meaning to what it meant 40 - 60 years ago. You and I evolve in many ways. For instance all of us age, which is essentially an evolution of a pattern commonly known as appearance. If you go down the street, thinking of nothing / looking at nothing in particular, you will only notice something if the pattern is different / broken. You and I try to stand out in our work. That is breaking a pattern. If you decorate your home, you try for something unique which is breaking a pattern. Therefore my readers, life is patterns and our management of our lives is noticing exceptions or in essence Life By Exception!!!

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