The other night I was trying to point out some constellations to my wife, who did her best to make sure to put on her best "pretending to care" face. We have an agreement where when I go Super Nerd on her and get excited about science, she doesn't tell me to shut the hell up. Marriage is compromise, after all.
It got me thinking, "Why do we have constellations at all? It's just a bunch of dots in the sky with random lines connecting them." Well, we're hardwired for pattern recognition, and we can't stand chaos (the Joker excluded). If we didn't recognize patterns (like how that sabertooth tiger has a pattern of trying to eat me), then our ancestors literally wouldn't have survived. We need familiarity and we need predictability because they give us some semblance of control over a world that couldn't care less what we think. It literally is a very small-scale version of a life and death situation. So what do we do when these patterns we so desperately want don't actually exist? We make them up! We create stories and then we try to convince ourselves (typically by trying to convince others) that we actually believe them. This isn't just connecting stars in the sky; this is how we make our choices day-to-day from who we consider a friend or foe, what job we take, and the everlasting questioning of "why" something has happened.
It got me thinking, "Why do we have constellations at all? It's just a bunch of dots in the sky with random lines connecting them." Well, we're hardwired for pattern recognition, and we can't stand chaos (the Joker excluded). If we didn't recognize patterns (like how that sabertooth tiger has a pattern of trying to eat me), then our ancestors literally wouldn't have survived. We need familiarity and we need predictability because they give us some semblance of control over a world that couldn't care less what we think. It literally is a very small-scale version of a life and death situation. So what do we do when these patterns we so desperately want don't actually exist? We make them up! We create stories and then we try to convince ourselves (typically by trying to convince others) that we actually believe them. This isn't just connecting stars in the sky; this is how we make our choices day-to-day from who we consider a friend or foe, what job we take, and the everlasting questioning of "why" something has happened.
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