Facets of beauty

5 reasons underlie any learned behavior: opportunity, motivation, personality, incentive, interest. What we learn and to what extent we learn anything depends on the presence or absence and the mixture of these 5 reasons. If I apply this to various aspects of learning a particular value system, then I am not so confused by why the different kinds of people who practice this value system make it look so differently. If I figure the number of combinations (5X4X3X2X1) for these 5 reasons, I get 120. Theoretically, then, 120 people could get together and agree on a value system, but then have different incentives or different motivations or 118 different combinations that cause them to make that value system look different in practice from the others agreeing to the value system.

If each of the 5 reasons also stood for a number, the number increases further. What if there were 10 different ways to express opportunity or opportunity types, 8 personality types, 11 motivation types, 5 incentive types, and 40 types of interest expressed. The number of combinations is then 176,000. That would mean that even if 120 people agreed on a value system, there would be 176,000 expressions of that value system. I have a lot more respect for what the Son of Man tried to establish when I play with the numbers.

And my numbers are probably off, maybe by 2,000,000, because there may be more than 5 underlying reasons and/or more or fewer numbers for each reason. If we as humans ever catch up to the true underlying numbers behind establishing a value system, we would without a doubt understand why the Son of Man began one of his prayers, "Our father in Heaven, may your name be honored." There is honor and beauty in complexity.