Saturday, October 18, 2008

Synchronicity



Yesterday I was listening to a CD a friend had bought me and I decided to go ahead and email that person since I hadn't spoken with him for a few weeks. I composed a short note and the strangest thing happened. I hit the send button, and my incoming email message popped up at the same time. It was him sending ME an email. I thought it was quite a coinsedence.... to send an email at that exact moment... on that day... during that week to each other.


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A small example of Synchronicity. A word coined by Carl Jung.
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I looked up some examples, and thought I'd like to share them.


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Wikipedia



The French writer Émile Deschamps claims in his memoirs that in 1805, he was treated to some plum pudding by a stranger named Monsieur de Fortgibu. Ten years later, the writer encountered plum pudding on the menu of a Paris restaurant and wanted to order some, but the waiter told him that the last dish had already been served to another customer, who turned out to be de Fortgibu. Many years later, in 1832, Émile Deschamps was at a diner and was once again offered plum pudding. He recalled the earlier incident and told his friends that only de Dortgibu was missing to make the setting complete—and in the same instant, the now senile de Fontgibu entered the room.



I also liked this example:

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During the production of The Wizard of Oz, a coat bought from a second-hand store for the costume of Professor Marvel was later found to have belonged to L.
Frank Baum
, author of the children's book upon which the film is based.


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Speaking of the Wizard of Oz there is also that example of playing Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album while you are watching the movie. I can remember in the early 1990's when radio stations actually held parties for people who gathered together to experience the so called "Dark Side of the Rainbow" effect.





Wikipedia

Fans have compiled more than one hundred moments of perceived interplay between the film and album, including further links that occur if the album is repeated through the entire film. This synergy effect has been described as an example of synchronicity, defined by the psychologist Carl Jung as a phenomenon in which coincidental events "seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality."


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