Are We All Paranoid? (Or Not Paranoid Enough?)

How do you know when a pattern matters and when it doesn’t?

Does it matter if a poem uses the same word 3 or 6 or 10 times, or only that it repeats the word? Does it matter whether the word is “tower” or “the”? Does the fact that a person often starts their sentences with “does” suggest anything worth considering? That last sentence was 16 words long—significant?

It’s easier to argue for the virtues of numerological analysis if you can show that the author intends to be read that way. But what about in cases where there is no such evidence? (The only word in that last sentence that had more than two syllables was evidence.)

In Freudian and Marxist analysis, structuralism, deconstruction, but also in big data analytics and machine learning algorithms, authorial intent hardly matters. Patterns are independent of consciousness, just as in natural science or in geometry. (The Fibonacci sequence is an observable truth, regardless of whether there is a God who wants it to obtain).

So—is paranoia a matter of degree, not kind? Are the patterns we accept or dismiss not a function of our social mores and political preferences rather than their “truth-content?”

It is possible to argue whether something is a pattern or not. What is more difficult is deciding—on a meta-level—whether we should care about a particular pattern. How do you decide?