Human beings as pattern seeking anaimals (Essay Sample)

Human beings are pattern seeking animals Name Institution Professor Course Date Human beings are pattern seeking animals Human beings are pattern seeking species. Through the ability to realize the difference between similar and dissimilar, humans are able produce composite environments such as social media and complex medicine. The language used in developing these technologies is just but a complex set of patterns, symbols, sounds and shapes which only make sense through the process of similar and dissimilar- the process which involve auditory and visual discrimination (Caine & Caine, 1991). Thinking back to the ancient days of our ancestors, it is clear that this ability to develop auditory and visual patterns would have been one of their basic survival advantages. It would serve to distinguish them from other non-patterned living creatures. It would not only have helped man to progress through all the stages of evolution heading towards more and more complex cultural, political and technological concepts- literally, it would have enabled many of the human ancestors to survive. Not only are human beings pattern seeking animals, we are also a classification of animals which is evolutionary perfected to survive in a wide range of conditions. The tribal ancestors living in the forest seeing an unfamiliar object/shape in the woods at night would probably visually process in his/her mind if the object was a friend or an enemy. If the object could not be easily identified as a friend or rather as something which poses no harm to the human being, it would have been advantageous from a survival point of view to make an assumption that the object poses a threat. And as the ancient natural world was particularly harmful to the survival of man than it is now for many of us- the wary individual in the forest would have been the one who misinterpreted the patterns relating to the unfamiliar object and therefore assuming harm. Of course when he/she got back to a comfortable and secure place of fellow tribes people and the fire, he/she would have given a different description of the menacing object which he/she was confronted with in the darkness (Cox & Savoy, 2003). As danger lurked in nature in a form of either human or animal, whether an old tree stump or not- may have been given a wrong interpretation to be a combination of something more similar to a human being but not a human, like an animal but not known which type of an animal. The same can also be seen the same mechanism of survival in other non-human animals such as the deer and zebras. It is more advantageous to assume the worst while grazing on the plain. The spooked deer over a small crackling of dry leaves or an odd shadow will first of all respond by raising its flight hormones, this increases the survival rates of himself as well as that of the entire herd. Fear and anxiety is one of the basic survival mechanisms every human being possesses, but continual application of these mechanisms would be detrimental as the living process would not be in existence if human beings would always be a state of fear or nervousness. The trade off to this mechanism of survival is that fear is unreasonable. For instance, the number of times which the dry leaves in the fields would creek or any other sound of something visual is uncountable and responding to all these may lead the animal to its death since it will only be concerned about its safety and forgetting to feed. This is the reason why human beings with their unique intellectual capacities have come up with measures which even though it does not provide total safety, makes one feel secure; the invention of weapons of war, creation of militaries use of security alarms, and improvised danger sensing equipment are just but some of the ways in which man makes himself feel safe- a product of pattern seeking. So basically as species seeking patterns perfected through evolution and meant for survival, human beings are fearful of situations, images and sounds among others which can even in their limited capacity define a potential threat. These threats which are imaginable and irrational in many instances take on the attributes of the already known patterns of threats. The human’s best known threats are other human beings and other animals which seem to have more power than themselves- this is the reason why the mysterious objects and sounds takes on the patterns of known dangers(Caine & Caine, 1991). So that shape in the forest forms a "human" quotation mark in the human mind but not completely human and the sound in the forest or in the house are equated in the first instance to be a predator which is possibly a non-human. As pattern seeking animals, we are predisposed to finding causes of the things we cannot give an explanation about. This is the reason why we are also captivated by fantasies of any kind such as stories, movies, TV shows and novels. The human big human brain always falls in love with explicat...