When ancient man gazed up into the stars, he saw before him a wondrous display. But his curious mind could not quite accept that this pattern could be nothing more than randomness. He sought order, and therefore picked out constellations – Orion’s belt, the big dipper, the little dipper…all having only the most tenuous links to the images he felt they must … must … represent.
This, it seems, is innate to us. When confronted with something that is at once overwhelming and apparently lacking in order, our brains attempt, by whatever means, to make order out of it. Let’s call it ‘spurious pattern recognition’.
In our time, the temptation is great to want to find such a pattern in what has befallen our civilisation in recent months. Is there, after all, a smoky backroom table, around which Gates, Soros, Page and Zuckerberg are plotting the Great Reset, in meticulous detail? (We imagine Dorsey is there too, but a little doped out and only vaguely aware of the overall evil plot).
It certainly would explain a lot – from the ridiculous overreactions that were lockdown, to the silly face diapers we must still all wear, to the steamrolling of an experimental vaccine, in the teeth of an antiviral treatment that is safer and just as effective (Ivermectin).
But we cannot dismiss the possibility that there is, after all, no great agenda. Vaccines will not achieve mass population control. Governments are short-termist and basically not that competent, while Big Tech is really nothing more than a gangly teenager with a sledge hammer, some fireworks and a bottle of whiskey stolen from dad’s liquor cabinet.
Maybe we can put away our tin foil hats this time. Maybe everything’s just a mess.
