The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die

When people see deities in snack foods, they are engaging in pareidolia, the tendency to see patterns in randomness. We all do this every day, because randomness and chaos feel threatening while orderly patterns are reassuring. While we assume our perceptions and beliefs reflect reality, they are also driven by our needs and desires. In other words, inequalities in power, wealth, and status change our perception of reality, our religious experiences, and our beliefs.

The human brain is fundamentally a pattern-detector, and it is very good at filling in gaps and making inferences and leaps of logic. Our brains assume “that the world is not random; that even if it has only partial knowledge, it can safely guess what is missing because the world is an orderly and predictable place” (138). This assumption that the world is predictable forms the bedrock of all our thinking, so much so that we regularly see patterns where none actually exist. This tendency to find patterns in randomness is universal but happens in some situations more than others, particularly when we feel powerless, left out, left behind, or socially disconnected.

The most typical method used to find meaning in our lives is telling stories about the world around us.