Where is your cravat? Don’t have one? What about a polyester leisure suit? A toga? Patterns in clothing define “normality” and abnormality in the world of fashion. Every once so often an anachronistic fashion becomes a phoenix of popularity. So, if you still have a leisure suit, keep it. And if James Bond could wear a cravat in A View to a Kill, the 17th-century neckpiece seems capable of rebirth.
What if, however, cravats and leisure suits have long gone out of style like togas, only to be worn in parodies? A wearer would be “abnormal.” Now think inner city. What’s your image? Pants halfway down a butt? Picture Wall Street. What’s your image? Suit, crisply pressed shirt, tie? Imagine Texas. What’s your image? India? Brazilian rainforest?
Having stereotyped images is part of our makeup. None of us can picture all the diverse forms in our world, so we often take the easy path, finding a well-known pattern to identify. Of course, the stereotype is a mechanism of bias, but it saves us time, and it can keep us safe. The good side of the axiom of pattern is that traffic flows together, students sit at their desks, and lines form at the rear. The anomalies, like wrong way drivers, unruly students, and line-jumpers, are generally rare.
Unfortunately, there’s a bad side. From the axiom of pattern we deduce, and from deductions we judge and value. Every time we judge and value, each of us potentially shuts a door on understanding diversity. At the same time we shut a door on others, on other ways of thinking, on other possible solutions to problems, and on other cultures, we proudly accept the stereotype of our own patterns and judge them as valuable.
We can never totally get by our dependence on the axiom of pattern. We can, however, try to understand how we have derived our deductions and values from the fashionable patterns of our culture or subculture.
What if, however, cravats and leisure suits have long gone out of style like togas, only to be worn in parodies? A wearer would be “abnormal.” Now think inner city. What’s your image? Pants halfway down a butt? Picture Wall Street. What’s your image? Suit, crisply pressed shirt, tie? Imagine Texas. What’s your image? India? Brazilian rainforest?
Having stereotyped images is part of our makeup. None of us can picture all the diverse forms in our world, so we often take the easy path, finding a well-known pattern to identify. Of course, the stereotype is a mechanism of bias, but it saves us time, and it can keep us safe. The good side of the axiom of pattern is that traffic flows together, students sit at their desks, and lines form at the rear. The anomalies, like wrong way drivers, unruly students, and line-jumpers, are generally rare.
Unfortunately, there’s a bad side. From the axiom of pattern we deduce, and from deductions we judge and value. Every time we judge and value, each of us potentially shuts a door on understanding diversity. At the same time we shut a door on others, on other ways of thinking, on other possible solutions to problems, and on other cultures, we proudly accept the stereotype of our own patterns and judge them as valuable.
We can never totally get by our dependence on the axiom of pattern. We can, however, try to understand how we have derived our deductions and values from the fashionable patterns of our culture or subculture.
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