You might be familiar with specialized uses of terms like forms (Plato), archetypes (Carl Jung), Structures (Saussure, Levi-Strauss), or Noumena (Kant). Though each term has its own unique usages, in each case there is a sense of recurring themes or patterns in most human experiences.
So what? (Why it matters)
Each individual is profoundly unique. For that reason, even if we encounter some of the same experiences, each of us brings hers own body, past, mental apparatus and “spirit” into the circumstance. In the same way, every event in history has components that have characterized that one event only.
And yet if we take a moment to look beneath the individual surface, there are commonalities to discover. Most of us had a family or family-like set of people surrounding us in our earlier years. Indeed, the very word family can be used in a discussion with the confidence that others will have a sense of what the word refers to. Except for the rarest cases, family environments tend to exhibit recognizable patterns. And so it is with a host of other experiences: sports, meals, sleep, friendship, earning and spending money, and so on.
It is the same with historical events, which is why we can learn about, for example, revolutions, inventions, discoveries, fashions even of a distant past. Each is unique in its way, but each is reminiscent of various patterns.
It is easy to see that someone who had no ability or desire to notice such patterns would lead a very troublesome life, and most likely a rather short one. For one thing, s/he would have very little means of making a meaningful connection with another human being. How could that be possible if all of my experiences are my own only, utterly unique? And imagine waking up every morning with little or no understanding or wisdom that could have been gained from experiences of the days or weeks or years before?
It is obvious that we are served well by our ability to see recurring patterns. It is obvious at that simplistic level, but it raises a question: how deep should one go in trying to think about such things. If that is the very first level of exploring the matter, what if there are, say, ten levels, each one providing more profound and life changing insight?
I like to simplify highfalutin speech when I can, for my own benefit mostly. In that spirit, I prefer to label these recurring themes and patterns perpetuals.
Perpetual (usually used as an adjective, but my use here is as a noun. Not in the sense, “My cat has a perpetual problem with the dog next door,” but in the sense, “One perpetual of human psychology is the impulse to seek to be happy.”)
With all that behind us, following is a perpetual, with several examples from history, that prompted me to write this post. Do you see a very significant perpetual that’s being represented here that might be relevant to your own time and place?:
Have a look here if you think this post only matters as a rhetorical argument between “right wingers and “left wingers.” (July 2, Colorado Springs, CO)?
A bird with only one wing, if it flies at all, just flies in circles. Respect them, even as you disagree. Even skin-deep folks like and respect those who agree with them.
