Profiling lies at the heart of our survival as a species . . . not to mention our ability to market junk food, talk to voters, and rationalize the best and worst of our prejudices.

Pattern recognition, more often than not unconscious, lies at the very heart of our ability to recognize danger.

Our ability to quickly distinguish friend from foe depends on it. Cops and cantors, perps and priests, soldiers and civilians, all "profile," both automatically and consciously. Indeed, most of us who "profile" as part of our profession are trained to sharpen our skills at doing what, because we are human, comes naturally.

Pattern recognition, aka profiling, triggers our instantaneous impulses to fight or flee.

It informs all language, art and music.

Because of it we see gods and men in the clouds and clouds in the daily news.

Because of it we know who is most likely to buy what . . . and how . . . and why.

The ability to see meaningful patterns, now enhanced by mathematics and technology beyond anything our fathers could have imagined, has saved lives, launched, lost and won wars, and taught us that what often appears to be incontrovertibly true or false is neither, or a little of both.

Our abilities to instinctively and almost instantaneously make decisions about what's just, or harmful, or respectful, or loyal, or awe-inspiring or compassionate, the ability to recognize patterns and act on that knowledge is one of the true glories of our species.

This side of pattern recognition informs what is best about us.

Unfortunately, at times, it informs what is worst.

Patterns, real and imagined lie at the very heart of both the excuses we offer for the evil we do, and the ideologies, faiths, and prejudices that we use to encourage others to join us. It defines our gods, and excuses our godlessness, in every sense of the word, spiritual and secular.

There is no escape from profiling.

There are, however, defenses against our acting precipitously because of it.

In part those defenses lie in all our other instincts.

In part they lie in our determination and the effectiveness of our attempts to codify and enforce those safeguards.

Hence codes of honor, religions, philosophies, constitutions and courts of law, rules, regulations, training, research, analysis, and all our other efforts to temper excess and error and reward informed behavior that benefits us all.

Our demons are real. Pattern recognition gives us racism, sexism, mindless violence and a host of other evils.

Happily, the better angels of our nature are also real, disproportionately present, and lie at the heart of what we as a species have evolved to be. They are courage and hope, self-sacrifice and generosity, compassion and forgiveness, and a thousand other qualities we seek to immortalize by how we live and in the stories we tell our children.

They are all profiles . . . patterns of behavior . . . that we do our best to describe, pass on, and have those who follow us enhance, improve and translate into action.

When we fail the cost is all too often unconscionable.

Perhaps it is not too late to profile our patterns of failure, and do our best to overcome them based on what we have learned from patterns of success.