 By Alan Hall | Excerpted from the February 2012 Socionomist
Originally published under the title “Touch Displays Society’s Growing Fascination with Patterns of Social Behavior” |
[Ed: Pop culture is reflecting a growing fascination with the patterns of social behavior.
[The Fox television series Touch, for example, which premiered on January 12, 2012, slakes a popular thirst for anticipating the future based on the mathematical patterns displayed in events of the past and present. In this February 2012 report, socionomist Alan Hall provides an explanation for this interest: When social mood is negative, people tend to embrace the idea that cycles of collective behavior exist and that patterns have power over most or all of history.
[Read on for an excerpt of Hall’s article.]
In Touch, Kiefer Sutherland, former tough-guy hero of “24,” plays a man whose highly autistic and mute son, Jake, can predict the future because he sees “patterns, mathematical in design, hidden in plain sight.”
The show’s trailer is replete with images of spirals and growth patterns.1 A few of the narrator’s quotes flirt with Elliott Wave theory:
- “What if our lives are part of a pattern?”
- “The universe is made up of precise ratios and patterns where everything and everyone is connected.”
- A Touch character, an expert on children who have special abilities with numbers, tells Jake’s dad, “Your son sees everything; the past, the present, the future. He sees how it is all connected.”
Part of a Pattern: Touch’s Jake sees all. [Courtesy Fox TV]
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In the remainder of this conside two-page article, author Alan Hall explains why ideas about patterns and cycles of collective behavior are becoming more popular now.
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