Snow tiger, Leicester Square
I'm a synchronicity bore. With tedious regularity I notice events in my life, often trivial events, that appear, to me, to be connected in some mysterious, non causal way.
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Today's example:
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We slept over on Saturday night at some friends' house. They provide food and lodging to a pair of huge, black Persian cats. The cats are brothers from the same litter. One of the cats is extremely friendly with people. The other spent the weekend upstairs, hiding from us.
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Round about lunchtime, I was chatting with one of our hosts about owning pets. I got onto one of my favourite subjects and I said …
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'I'd love to have some pets but we can’t manage it where we live. I think it's good to have other living things around us. It reminds us that life is diverse and special. Look at your cat. How can science explain where your cat came from? I really can’t believe it originated from a pool of lifeless mud. And why is it that your two cats are so different in personality? If they're so evolved wouldn’t they both be born with the same, best-adapted personality?'
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'I'd love to have some pets but we can’t manage it where we live. I think it's good to have other living things around us. It reminds us that life is diverse and special. Look at your cat. How can science explain where your cat came from? I really can’t believe it originated from a pool of lifeless mud. And why is it that your two cats are so different in personality? If they're so evolved wouldn’t they both be born with the same, best-adapted personality?'
I have never discussed issues of creation and evolution with cats as an example before. I only mentioned cats because I was staring at one at the time. He was licking his own whatsit with great relish. I recall feeling jealous.
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A few hours later, we were back at home and watching a science documentary. A mathematician was discussing the origin of things. He said:
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'People say maths is difficult. I say no it's not. Maths is easy. What isn’t easy is a cat. Where do cats come from? Why do cats do what they do? Why do some cats come out different to each other?'
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'People say maths is difficult. I say no it's not. Maths is easy. What isn’t easy is a cat. Where do cats come from? Why do cats do what they do? Why do some cats come out different to each other?'
The camera panned from the mathematician and zoomed in on a large, black, Persian cat.
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The program was not a repeat and I have never heard someone discussing issues of creation and evolution with cats as an example before; except for myself earlier that same day.
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This kind of synchronous coincidence happens to me with almost tedious regularity. The rate of occurrence even appears to be increasing. Most of the time I have witnesses, so I doubt that I'm mad.
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Earlier on this evening I sketched out a few possible explanations for what is going on; using the cat story as a specific example. So far I've come up with the following:
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1. Coincidence - possibly assisted by the fact that I talk about and consume media based on related topics
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Hark! Do I hear the sound of the God of Large Numbers riding into action yet again?
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Admittedly, I am witness to thousands of events each day and, arguably, over a period of a few days there's a good chance that any two of those thousands of events may appear to be related in some way, even though they're not. This phenomenon would be enhanced if I am particularly observant and selective in my memory.
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The God of Large Numbers would also point out that, in a global population of 6 billion people, on any single day, week or lifetime, one person will witness more coincidences than any of the others. From that person's perspective the whole World will appear to be driven by coincidence. From the perspective of the rest of us, his experiences will just be a statistical inevitability.
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I don’t buy this argument. My coincidences are too frequent and far too specific. I also sense that they have meaning and significance. It's just that I'm too stupid to understand what the meaning is.
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The God of Large Numbers is a terrible explanation for the World around us anyway. The God of Large Numbers could support the reality of a Virgin Birth or that one day, given enough time, I might find Chevvy Chase or Billy Connolly funny. Big Numbers are just science's way of blowing off stuff it cannot explain. Besides, what is there to lose by hypothesising that dumb coincidence isn’t at fault then seeing where further thought takes us? This approach was once referred to as having an open mind. Not a lot of open-minded thinking goes on these days. It started dying out roughly about the same time that Western Science finally vanquished, then supplanted, Institutional Religion.
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2. I subconsciously control and shape the Universe
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Too egotistical
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3. I can predict the future
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Certainly worth putting in the list but, in my experience, most of my synchronicities do not require knowledge of future events. They simply connect existing knowledge at a future point. For example, when I was talking about the cat the documentary about the cat had already been filmed.
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4. I can tap into existing knowledge through some, as yet, unrecognized medium
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Possible and worth following up.
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5. God / Zeus / Athena / My Guardian Angel / a mischievous Goblin or personal Daemon are winding me up for some reason
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Also possible and worth following up.
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6. I witness occasional screw-ups in the normally smooth-running Matrix that controls us all
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Already been covered in a movie. The sequels were terrible and I must therefore conclude that they do not relate to some fundamental truth.
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7. ???
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I've written about this subject before and still don’t have any answers. I'm planning to spend more time on this question and will probably need to drink a lot more alcohol than I am at present. The key factor to bear in mind, whilst mulling over this, is that I am not responsible for the fact that our friends own Persian cats or that Persian cats were mentioned in the documentary. From my perspective these are fixed factors over which I have no control. I did, however, connect these two pre-existing variables by making the comment that I did. I'll also throw in the fact that when making the comment I felt consciously uncomfortableat the time, as I had never considered cats as an example before. It was almost as if I was compelled to say what I did.
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It is conceivable that the contents of the TV documentary and my being with the cats today were DIRECTLY connected in some way and I only made the comment I did because I, in some subconscious way, became aware of the connection.
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This is getting a bit convoluted now but the point is that maybe, just maybe, what appear to be totally unconnected events may really be connected in some, as yet, totally unexpected fashion. If true, and someone cracks the nature of this connection, it is conceivable that a person could control World events without ever leaving the house. Like Chaos Theory but much, much freakier. The simple act of arranging cutlery in a certain way or watching a particular television program could affect the weather in Peru or the outcome of a coup in West Africa.
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How cool would that be?
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There's a novel in all of this somewhere.
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The same documentary that featured the cat also claimed that there were limiting physical factors to the capability of organic intelligence and that the next quantum leap in intelligence would come through the evolution of computers rather than organic brains.
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Yes, that old chestnut. It’s been repeated so often it's more or less accepted as being true. AI is the way to go baby.
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Wrong again.
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Even the most sophisticated contemporary supercomputer is fundamentally no different to those crappy little Sinclair DIY computers I first played with 25 years ago. Except for the provision for a stored program, they're not much different to a 3,000 year old abacus. They just work faster.
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For example, speech recognition and language translation software was rubbish 15 years ago. It's still rubbish now. The only way people will ever make that stuff work is by compiling colossal databases of every conceivable variation in language and tone of voice. The computers won’t be thinking any differently. They won’t be thinking at all. They'll just be accessing a shed load of data.
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The human brain, on the other hand, is much more adaptable and capable of improvement. What restricts our thinking is not the physical limitations of our brains' capacities. It's the limitation of the thought systems we impose on them. Want to restrict what your brain is capable of achieving? Easy, just accept the blind dictates of religion or science that tell you how to think and what to think. Just let a man in a white coat or silly robe tell you that THEY know what is, or isn't, possible. That should f*** up the most marvellous, potential-packed object in the Universe good and proper. That, or watching shag loads of reality TV.
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1 comment:
I also watched Commando for the 38th time, and was thinking I bet Stef is watching this and ejoying Vernon Wells idiosyncratic performance. My favorite bit is when he get's electrocuted at the end and you think 'that's it' but then there is a bad continuity edit and he is seen punching Arnold in the stomatch, but like a girl making no effort.
The screenplay for this film, and The Running Man, and Predator, are all excellent screenplays.
Also, on your theme of synchronicity, here is an example from my recent experience. On returning to my flat on Sat night after a few drinks I trod on glass after washing up and smashing a tumbler on the floor - I didn't clear up all the bits and trod on one. I cut myself and bound my foot / instep with a tea towel to stop it bleeding. On sitting down to watch tele for R&R with my bound foot, I put Die Hard on. Two minutes after I started watching, Bruce Willis cuts his foot on a load of glass after fighting Alan Rickman and is seen binding his foot to stop it bleeding. I found this amusing, although he was in a lot worse shape than me.
and a second example - Die Hard 2 last night has a scene where Richard Thornberg the slimy news room journalist disappears into an airliner toilet to make a phone call. The stewardess asks him to sit down and stop phoning as they are about to land, so he says ' I am going to be sick' as an excuse to get into the toilet and make the call. About ten minutes later on Commando on the other side there is a scene where Arnold is standing up looking for a way out of the plane, the stewardess asks him to sit down an he says 'I am airsick' and makes for the toliet (although in this case I think he ends up in the Galley).
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