In my previous blog contrasting creativity and planning I described the creative act as the probabilistic intersection of thought “patterns in the making” and the circumstantial experiences which completes their meaning. A life spent surfacing new patterns is an elevating journey that frees one from the grayer reality of zero sum games unfortunately still prolific in our supposedly civilized society. It is also a fulfilling endeavor that brings man closer to his rightful place in the cosmos as an implicated observer, as a “function of the universe itself” in Buckminster Fuller’s words.

Regarded from this perspective, the purpose of life’s journey is that of surfacing not just more patterns but climbing an invisible qualitative hierarchy of ever more subtle or meta-patterns. In yet another previous blog I described my own journey from a causal to post-causal worldview. This fundamental shift in perspective is worthy of being called a “meta-pattern”. And so, I propose the elusive human quality we call wisdom is precisely related to the hierarchy of thought patterns and meta-patterns formed during a life-time. It is perhaps for this reason it saddens me so see old men still engaged in zero sum behaviors.