The Lost Art of Pattern Recognition

Like the builders of doomed Fukushima, we envision the future without respecting the past

A stone warning of the danger of deadly tsunamis of centuries past, one of many lining the coastline of northeast Japan, at the village of Aneyoshi, Iwate prefecture. “A house on high ground will lead to peace and happiness for posterity,” reads the inscription on the stone, which was erected after a massive tsunami in 1933. Credit: KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP via Getty Images

The Japanese built a nuclear power plant right down the hill from the stone tablets that their ancestors put in the ground warning, “Don’t build anything below here.” The markers, called tsunami stones, were placed centuries ago by villagers who had experienced the region’s devastating earthquakes and floods. Moderns ignored the advice, believing that their building techniques far surpassed anything their ancestors could have imagined.

The villagers had recognized the pattern of natural disasters, as well as the fact that the cycle repeated too infrequently for every generation to witness it. But their efforts to communicate their wisdom failed to impress a civilization without patience for pattern recognition or a sense of connection to the cyclical nature of our world.

Weather, ecology, markets, or karma: what goes around comes around. What the ancients understood experientially, we can today prove scientifically, with data and charts on everything from climate change to income disparity. But these facts seem not to matter to us unless they’re connected to our moment-to-moment experience. Cold, abstract numbers carry the whiff of corrupt bureaucracy. With politicians actively…