A small diminutive man steps out of the crowds and begins to systematically unfold something out of his pocket, after a series of complex hand movements which he accomplishes with some aplomb a small box like structure resembling a soap box has been constructed out of what was once, you are sure was a bus timetable.

He coughs nervously before pushing his wire rimmed spectacles up onto his large hook shaped nose with ink stained fingers.

People of our eight cities I have been deliberating over the past few days the motivation behind recent activities, looking for patterns creating order from the chaos feeling the waft of the butterflies wings on my face so to speak.

The man shuffles and appears to look skyward as he recites to himself a series of nonsensical numbers.

Please excuse me, I have a disposition which makes me consider patterns where usually non can see such things… he drifts off again and tips his hat to a passing blackbird as it flutters overhead.

The question I want to put to you all is :

"What is the best way to ingrain a behaviour into a person? Not something you want to extinguish, but something you want to foster.?"

Now I myself suffer from what some people have recently diagnosed as an obsessive dysfunction, I do not think this is dysfunctional at all but allows me to see things others would usually overlook as trivia or un importance.

The first and most popular response to this question would, I assume, be reward! But ask yourselves if one of us is constantly rewarded would we not become bored? Would the task we are striving to achieve not become mundane and obtuse? Surely we would grow fat, weary and become bored with our existence? The answer I think myself is intermittent reward?

The better examples of this here in our world are prevalent for all to see, the hitters amongst us are rewarded, but as we all know of late those rewards are inconsistent. Gun Malfunctions are rife, sometimes resulting in death. Another Prime example is our incessant need to gamble: if we always win at a game, the game becomes boring for us. But if we only win some of the time, it can become addictive.

Or its like earners whining to their crew leaders / godfathers. The behavoir crew leaders hate the most from their family, but the earners can't help themselves - not because the whining always works, but because it sometimes works. The unpredictability makes it irresistible for us.

A voice shouts from the crowd"That's Crazy!"

The small mans eyes suddenly turn to steel and he stares the heckler down, it is as if he has become a different persona, one which is made more from the sum of his diminutive parts.

Not here! Not by definition: the behavouir of the majority is NEVER crazy!

This brings me futher into my deliberations and searching for the order in chaos. How can we ever hope for order when at our core we are irrational beings? If we were rational we would expect rational, predictable behaviour from our peers. This world of our can NEVER be called predicable, however he in lies my conundrum and why I have come to ask you your opinions:

Even if there is no pattern, we convince ourselves that there is some underlying logic to it all.

It is when our logic fails that we resort to our most basest form, we kill, we lie and we cheat. We force the pattern to our will but then is that a rational way to succeed.

How is it possible that we can foster some rationality into our lives and groom the next generation amongst us to behaviour that's fits with our chosen 'organised' profession?

Kurtz stopped and watched with fascination as the small man folded the timetable with such skill. He had noiticed the young man around the streets of Vegas muttering and nodding to himself in front of the various gambling opportunities. Taken with curiosity he listened to what the young man had to say.

It is nice to see this. You raise two quite different questions. In regard to motivation, you are right about intermittent reward. It will always grip a certain mentality and people who have that mentality will almost always be motivated by it. It is a mind set most common in the compulsive gambler. Any gambler will appreciate the draw of it. However there are those that have no desire to gamble. This could be because they do not have this mentality. For these people motivation comes from different places. A desire to understand motivates some to learn. A view of a long term objective will motivate others to work. There are many different ways that people can be motivated. It mainly boils down to the mind set of the individual. If you take the time to understand the individual, you can understand which tracks they operate on and in turn motivate them most effectively.

Taking out a dollar bill, he slowly folds it into a paper aeroplane and releases it into the breeze. It makes concentric circles in the air and slowly drifts down to land.

Your second question is also interesting. Patterns are always of interest when studying an aspect of system. As organisms we can not escape them. Try as we might our lives, our systems, our lives and our methods will always produce patterns. You claim we are irrational beings and on one level that may appear so, however if we widen our view past the expanse of a single life, even past the expanse of many, behaviours that appear irrational in the short term, can be seen to be stepping stones along a path toward the progression of a behaviour, action, method etc. With most organic systems, if what you observe is chaos, you simply need to widen or adjust your perceptive scope until the travelled pattern apparent. In life, invariably there is reason, even in the seemingly chaotic. Even with the seemingly atrocious, some things need to be played out to their horrendous end so that the collective can see the futility in that behaviour and abandon it as a profitless course in future. So the behaviour of all species evolve.

Picking up the dollar plane from it's resting place, he folds several other larger bills around it and tucks it into MrPrime's jacket pocket with a smile.

Thought provoking stuff young man. I am pleased to see such inquisitive minds at play in our city.