From Inspiration to Epiphany and Where to Find It

Any theory about a perfect utopian society where people live in pact with nature and each other and everything is bliss and harmony may sound perfectly feasible and achievable until it is put to the test in practice. Then human nature shows its grim face and individuals or whole societies will see opportunities to excel and grab these at the first given chance and the utopian idealism loses yet again. This has always been the case on a long enough timeline for any civilization so far. The problem is not the transcenders who came up with the systems of government, their ideas were flawless, but when applied to humans in practice, human nature will always tear down even the most well thought out plans.

The fact that human nature is as dependable as any of the forces of the Universal Clockwork and that it is one of the driving forces behind the historical Patterns of Recognition, like many epiphanies before it, came to me in a much unexpected fashion, which is classic determinism at work. Even the most lowbrow works of art can contain messages that suddenly puts ideas into a context where they make sense to form epiphanies. This one was such an instance. To unwind during my weekend break in Kota Kinabalu after a long shoot in the jungle, I went for a double feature watching Fantastic Four and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation on the same day. Yes, like I said; lowbrow, (MI:5 was actually quite decent, best since the first one) but even these popcorn flicks can cause epiphanies. Inspiration occurs in the most peculiar places.

First, Sue Storm in her new incarnation would not shut up about pattern recognition and second, the main villain facing Ethan Hunt would not shut up about the dependability of human nature. Inspiration=epiphanies. It’s that easy. That is why you must never shun from taking in culture in all its forms. So many epiphanies are lying in wait for you to uncover them. 

The mention of pattern recognition also made me research the term a bit further to find out what Sue Storm was referring to and as it turns out, pattern recognition is one of the most popular technologies used today to create AI. Robots are given pattern recognition skills which enable them to remember and learn, for instance how to complete an obstacle course. This again makes perfect sense to me. Looking back at our own history and observing what I term the Patterns of Recognition, or essentially the dependability and repeatability of human nature, gives us a clearer insight into our own nature as a species. That we should then use the same technique to enable our own inventions to grow smarter and stronger seems a logical next step. Maybe over time this will be the next step in the patterns, one that the transcenders of the future will look back on, assuming our intelligent machines have not yet eradicated all of us ;)