Here’s an interesting article by Jule Beck that appeared in The Atlantic on synchronicity. Beck does her best at trying to balance meaningfulness with randomness. Of course, if you do that, you get all twisted in knots, and it sounds as if you can’t make up your mind.
Beck doesn’t exactly scoff at those who see meaning in coincidences, but she seems to think that statistician David Hand, is making an important point when he writes in his book, The Improbability Principle: “Extremely improbable events are commonplace.”
Obviously coincidences are not that commonplace or Hand wouldn’t go on to say that people only pay attention when an event is coincidental, while ignoring the that thousands of events that happen that are not coincidental. (Should we be amazed when something isn’t coincidental?)
Beck notes: “Humans generally aren’t great at reasoning objectively about probability as they go about their everyday lives.” That’s the scientific bias against people’s ability to make sense of the world. (I don’t think that’s necessarily true about probability as it is about politics. After all, 35-40% of Republicans think Donald Trump would make a great president. And some of them no doubt are scientists!)
Fortunately, Beck balances Hand’s randomania with the more synchronicity-friendly point of view of Bernard Beitman, whose new book Coinciding Coincidences takes on the view of statisticians like Hand.
There are lots of good examples in the article and it’s worth reading. Beck spins some clever zingers, like this one: If a rare event happens in a forest and no one notices and no one cares, it’s not really a coincidence. That is true. If you don’t pay attention, coincidences can pass right over your head.
The bottom line: It all comes down to whether you see meaning in life or are convinced everything is basically random and meaningless. A sad state of affairs.
As Beitman puts it: “You really come across a question of just what belief system you have about how reality works. Are you a person who believes the universe is random or are you a person who believes there’s something going on here that maybe we gotta pay more attention to? On the continuum of explanation, on the left-hand side we’ve got random, on the right-hand side we’ve got God. In the middle we’ve got little Bernie Beitman did something here, I did it, but I didn’t know how I did it.”
There is some truth in the mathematical argument. For example it’s 45,057,474 to 1 to win the UK lottery but it gets won despite the odds. I think they call it the Law of Big Numbers or something like that. That doesn’t rule out synchronicity though because of ‘meaningfulness’ – it’s the feeling we get when synchros happen – it’s felt deep inside.
Huge odds…but someone wins! Synchronicity really is that feeling deep inside.
Interesting thoughts. Who is to say that because no one hears a noise that the vibrations don’t affect the area.
Interesting about the vibrations…
Well, my personal opinion is to say the words my young eight-year-old grandson uses from the stories about Winnie The Pooh. Cameron says “Oh, Pooh!” I say OH POOH about the rare ‘ whatever’ happening in a forest and no one is there to notice or care, so it isn’t really a coincidence. I tend to think that whether a person observes or experiences the “coincidence” or synchronicity or not, it nevertherless occurs. It begs the question, does a synchronicity require a personal involvement in order TO BE. For me that doesn’t seem accurate. I think synchros happen whether anyone notices them or not. It just becomes “personal” when it is noted. Kind of like the old question, if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear the crash, does it make a sound? Of course it makes a sound, whether anyone hears the sound or not. For me, synchros are the same. They occur, noticed or not, and they become PERSONAL when they are noticed. At least, that’s my thoughts on the matter. Maybe I don’t correctly understand the meaning of synchronicity? Do they only occur when they are relative to a person?
I have to go back in time to an extremely powerful synchro that happened in my own life that I shared here on the blog long ago….about having a Reiki healing during which my deceased Father appeared to both me and to the Healer; after the healing, she and I each took a piece of paper and wrote what we had experienced during the healing. I wrote that I felt and knew that my Father was with us, assisting. The Healer wrote that her patient’s Father was present, assisting in the healing. Neither of us knew what the other was writing until we compared our notes. Then when I got in my car and turned on the radio, the song “OH MY PAPA” was playing….the words to that song so fitting about my Dad. Would that song have been playing whether I had turned on the radio or not? Or, was it a synchro simply BECAUSE I heard it? This confuses me…..
The idea about whether the sound is heard or not is linked to quantum physics-about something being observed before it is real.
The way I look at it, by definition, a synchronicity is a meaningful coincidence. If it’s ignored, it was just a passing coincidence, nothing meaningful to the observer. Or if not noticed, nothing at all. At the same time, who knows what the unconscious mind absorbs from such experiences in the everyday world. So, in a sense, both perspectives could be correct. As for the tree crashing in the forest, there is a vibration, and as Ray pointed out, who knows what effect it might have on the environment. Like the butterfly effect. But, on the other hand, sound requires a receiver or it’s just vibration. If there was a squirrel in the tree, it would be an event with sound and fury!
Re: The statistician David Hand, I was reading the new book by Robert Moss called ‘Sidewalk Oracles’, and he talks about the hidden HAND of synchronicity. 😉