QOTD: Synchronicity

[SevenSeasJim]

This happened today.

Brothers die in traffic crashes minutes apart

Thursday, December 8, 2005 Posted: 1842 GMT (0242 HKT)

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (AP) -- Sheriff's deputy Andy McDowell was forced to live a parent's worst nightmare twice in a matter of minutes.

After he was taken to the site where one of his two sons was killed in a car crash early Wednesday, McDowell was driven past another fatal accident. Only later did he learn that the fiery wreck took the life of his only other child.

"You take the most unimaginable hell that a parent could be told and double that," Warren County Deputy Coroner Dwayne Lawrence said.

Rory McDowell, 23, and Cory McDowell, 21, both died within a couple of miles from the home they shared with their father in southern Kentucky's rural Warren County.

Rory McDowell lost control of his pickup truck coming out of a curve and the vehicle struck a tree shortly before 1:30 a.m., authorities said. There was no visible sign of alcohol involved, sheriff's Capt. Brent Brown said Thursday.

The father told authorities he had been talking with Rory McDowell on a cell phone about the time of the crash, Brown said. He said that might have been a factor in the crash, as well as excessive speed on a narrow road. He had no further details.

About 15 minutes after the first crash, Cory McDowell's 1984 Porsche veered off another rural road, went into a spin, struck a tree and burst into flames, authorities said.

The crashes remained under investigation, police said.

Authorities said the father had always doted on his sons. "That's all he talked about was his boys," said sheriff's department Sgt. Tim Meyer. "He lived for his boys."

Warren County is about 110 miles southwest of Louisville.

[MoMack]

Ever heard the parable of the 100th monkey?

[guigsy]

oh, shit, yeah, i've heard of it as the hundredth monkey syndrome, or something like that... damn... i forget who was telling me... something about furthering the idea of the global conscience with the idea of knowledge, and how once it's out there, it's known.... so, wait, now i remember, i think the dude in #5 was telling me one night when we were hanging out on the roof... i dunno... anyways, ie: put a monkey in a room in front of a machine with 2 buttons, red and green - monkey hits green, it dispenses a steak. monkey hits red, no steak. so, after 99 monkeys have tried and learned that green gets steak, monkey #100 waltzes in and hits the green button right away, because he's a fat little fuck and he knows he wants his goddamn steak.

something like that?

[Booche]

I had a fucking INSANE one tonight, so bare with me.

Alright, I was fooling around on the guitar tonight and a song popped out. Cornerstone Row by Days Of You. Immediately upon realizing that I was losing it, I brightly pm'd StnMtn for the tune via www.yousendit.com

In the meantime, I found the song (needle in a hay stack) thanks to a friend that leant me his only cd copy about 2 years ago. I extract it, begin to work on the words, get as far as I am about to show you:

A long time ago, only who knows when

we used to sniff the roses where the river did bend

*sailing* in the shadows where the souls hung high

a willow red the willows made me kiss the sky

as honey dews suckle neath the noon day high

everybody dancing on the bye and bye

the sound of the echo where the river does flow

down to the valley on the Cornerstone Row

leaf from above sent an angel on down

help me to release all the ties I'm bound

bring down south where the season is found

take me only devil where my ties are bound

walk on the road where the river does lie

cool breeze blows as the valley divides

chill to my bones and a sight unseen

when a voice from above whispers through the trees

that the wizard's in the valley of the cornerstone row

angels gonna change as the season once more (mow)

and the phone rings.......................

It's buddy for the first time in at least three years (one of those "How you doin" calls) saying "hello"

God bless you Indika

[gentlemonkey]

aahh man, one time, i was playin some cheese loud at my pad, and i had no weed. so then i got up and went and walked in tha park near my place, and dis guy sez "hey man, you want some weed?" .. I said- Yaa MAN! i just ran out!! so then I went home and toked some weed, it was crazy maaan.

[Freak By Night]

OK here's something that happenned to me recently. I had a bunch of change in my pocket and one $20 bill. I needed a few items at the grocery store, and some gas for my car. I counted the change and it was $12.47. I figured I would go to the grocery store, pay for the items with the $20 bill, and use the 2 or 3 dollars of change I expected, plus the $12.47, for gas.

I kept thinking about the all coins bouncing around in my pocket as I walked around the grocery store. I picked up what I needed, went to the cashier, and, you guessed it, the total came to $12.47. It weirded me out.

So I bought $20 worth of gas.

[Thorgnor]

That is synchronicity. You made the ideas come together by choices that may have seemed random but the totalling of your items + taxes is something you can control by brand specificity. This is where subconcious ordering becomes apparent. And this is also why some poeple don't buy the theory.

[MoMack]

oh, shit, yeah, i've heard of it as the hundredth monkey syndrome, or something like that... damn... i forget who was telling me... something about furthering the idea of the global conscience with the idea of knowledge, and how once it's out there, it's known.... so, wait, now i remember, i think the dude in #5 was telling me one night when we were hanging out on the roof... i dunno... anyways, ie: put a monkey in a room in front of a machine with 2 buttons, red and green - monkey hits green, it dispenses a steak. monkey hits red, no steak. so, after 99 monkeys have tried and learned that green gets steak, monkey #100 waltzes in and hits the green button right away, because he's a fat little fuck and he knows he wants his goddamn steak.

something like that?

nope. but there were monkeys, the story teller was missing half a finger too

[Douglas]

I think the one that is ingrained in my memory is this:

Our good friend had died and we were all huddled together in CatPhish and DaveyBoy's apartment for days...not being able to put on music. We spoke of it, but none of us could bear hearing music (which was strange/unfathomable to all of us). The first cd put on was a Jerry show dated 11-19...our friend's birthday...totally coincidental...or otherwise.

I don't tend to notice the small things in life that may fall into this category...such as a bus coming off-schedule at just the right time, or thinking of someone and the phone rings and it's that person calling, or I reach in my pocket with the exact amount of change for whatever it is I'm buying, or having lost something and then finding it just when I need it. But I do notice it with the larger things in life. And I don't know if they have meaning or not, and I'm not sure that I want to know. Sometimes I take comfort in it, while other times I curse it. But too much coincidence has convinced me that it isn't all coincidence.

edit to add: I hadn't read most of the above posts before I posted...so by no means was I demeaning the "exact change in pocket" or "that person called" stories. hmmm...now does this make my post in itself a synchronicity??? :crazy:

(2nd edit: not a Phish show but a Jerry show)

Edited December 10, 2005 by Guest

[headymamamyrna]

I think the one that is ingrained in my memory is this:

Our good friend had died and we were all huddled together in CatPhish and DaveyBoy's apartment for days...not being able to put on music. We spoke of it, but none of us could bear hearing music (which was strange/unfathomable to all of us). The first cd put on was a Jerry show dated 11-19...our friend's birthday...totally coincidental...or otherwise.

I don't tend to notice the small things in life that may fall into this category...such as a bus coming off-schedule at just the right time, or thinking of someone and the phone rings and it's that person calling, or I reach in my pocket with the exact amount of change for whatever it is I'm buying, or having lost something and then finding it just when I need it. But I do notice it with the larger things in life. And I don't know if they have meaning or not, and I'm not sure that I want to know. Sometimes I take comfort in it, while other times I curse it. But too much coincidence has convinced me that it isn't all coincidence.

edit to add: I hadn't read most of the above posts before I posted...so by no means was I demeaning the "exact change in pocket" or "that person called" stories. hmmm...now does this make my post in itself a synchronicity??? :crazy:

(2nd edit: not a Phish show but a Jerry show)

Well coincidence or synchronicity i don't know which is best to describe this!

i have been thinking of your friend and mine a lot tonight.

I have been playing music he used to like when he was here and then i came down and read your post.

Coincidence or what!!

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I've been trying to avoid this thread because I've been sure I'd get really carried away with it, but I've been thinking about his all day, and it's been bugging me (with apologies for the big Religious Studies content).

Back in the day when I used to be a big Joseph Campbell nut, I was struck enduringly by something he said (in The Masks of God) that had happened at the end of the Stone Age and the appearance of civilisation in Mesopotamia, around 5500 years ago. They had been looking at the stars for so long trying to figure out what sort of order they followed, while at the same time keeping careful count of the days of the year. They figured out after a while that there were more or less 360 days to a year, and presumably from that worked out a base-12 system for measuring space as well (the 360-degree circle; think of the Sumerians whenever you use a protractor). The heavens were then carved out according to the 12 points of the zodiac, while that 5-day lag in the year was given over to festival days. That same remainder (the argument goes) were represented in the 5 points of the ziggurat/pyramid, the first lasting religious structures in the region, oriented to the four quarters on earth with one corner pointing to the heavens, where the priests would ascend during said festivals to do whatever it was that they did up there to keep everybody happy.

Then their astronomers (who we have to assume had a bit of time on their hands that by this point they could bank on) noticed what is now known as the precession of the equinoxes. The point on the horizon where the sun rose at spring equinox slipped by about 50" a year, or 1 degree every 72 years (note the multiple of 12 there). Long story slightly shorter, in 25920 years, you'd have a complete cycle. 25920 divided by 60, now rapidly becoming their favourite number, came out to 432.

This is where Campbell really got going. He kept finding instances where this figure turned up in mythologies all over the civilised world. Eight hundred warriors would pass through the 540 doors of Valhalla in the 12th c. Icelandic Eddas; 540 x 800 = 432,000. In classical Hindu mythology (esp. the Puranas and the Mahabharata), the cycles of time through which all beings were to live were measured in kalpas, or periods of 12,000 divine years, which, multiplied by 360 human years each came out to 4,320,000 human years; the Kali Yuga, the final age in which we're supposed to be living, is taken to be 432,000 years long. The reigns of the pre-flood kings in the Bible and other later Mesopotamian myths churns out the same numbers. He points out other later instances as well, like the traditional arrival of St. Patrick in Ireland being the year 432. And so on. Among the things that Campbell saw going on was the the numerical order that had been teased out was so compelling that it lent people ever since a sense of order underwriting the universe, an order very different from what had been in place before, and that this has had an effect on civilisations around the world ever since.

Does this then say something about the universe, or does it say something about the brains of the animals who have applied an order to it?

I'm myself inclined to think that it has more to do with us than the universe per se, and the need we have to bring order to it, and the fact that we can find it really difficult to carry on unless we do have some order to bring to it. We notice similarities and congruences in the way that we don't notice randomness and chaos. Why? What does it reassure us of? Why do, say, cats seem to find such simple contentment living out their lives, while we sometimes drive ourselves to the brink of insanity looking for it, or inflict violence on others and ourselves to sustain it, as we've received it?

There is, if I can try to boil this down to a sentence, something in our brains that sifts coincidence out of randomness, and that this has been going on for a long time in our evolutionary history.

Just why, I have absolutely no idea .

[Thorgnor]

We use languages to understand things, to order them. Math is an ordering language or code that we have found useful for the translation of "real" events into communicable ideas. I think human complications have something to do with discerning noise from language... the more complex the language the more discerning the brain must be to comprehend it. The social world gives way to many different worlds such as the individual that complicate the relationship between perception and external reality, including the order/system that may guide that reality. We are trapped in our brains, using their limits to comprehend that which a brain can never be, external.

In short, order is a survival technique.

BTW, DR.EM How dare you use the bible as a teaching tool. Heathen.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Paging Superintendent Chalmers... .

[Davey Boy 2.0]

thanks Thorg & DEM- enlightening thoughts, as usual

[guigsy]

oh' date=' shit, yeah, i've heard of it as the hundredth monkey syndrome, or something like that... damn... i forget who was telling me... something about furthering the idea of the global conscience with the idea of knowledge, and how once it's out there, it's known.... so, wait, now i remember, i think the dude in #5 was telling me one night when we were hanging out on the roof... i dunno... anyways, ie: put a monkey in a room in front of a machine with 2 buttons, red and green - monkey hits green, it dispenses a steak. monkey hits red, no steak. so, after 99 monkeys have tried and learned that green gets steak, monkey #100 waltzes in and hits the green button right away, because he's a fat little fuck and he knows he wants his goddamn steak.

something like that?[/quote']

nope. but there were monkeys, the story teller was missing half a finger too

damn.

[Thorgnor]

Guigsy - That is the gist of it I think. From what I remember it had to do with monkeys on a couple of South Pacific islands that learned to wash fruit that had fallen in the sand by dunking it in the ocean. The salt also helped to make it more palatable. Once about a hundred or so monkeys had learned the trick from each other, monkeys on other isolated islands began performing the same acts without exposure to the monkeys on the first island or without even being shown the trick by one another on their own island.

Am I close Mo?

[Lazlo]

I wonder if psychic monkeys test better than regular monkeys.

[TheGoodRev]

Ever heard the parable of the 100th monkey?

According to Wikipedia, the 100th Monkey has been largely discredited.

In 1985, Elaine Myers re-examined the original published research in "The Hundredth Monkey Revisited" in the journal In Context. In her review she found that the original research reports by the Japan Monkey Center in vol. 2, 5 and 6 of the journal Primates differs from Watson's story in significant ways. In short, it contains no evidence that the 'Hundredth Monkey' phenomenon exists; the published articles only describe how the sweet potato washing behavior gradually spread through the monkey troop and became part of the set of learned behaviors of young monkeys. There is no evidence at all of a critical number at which the idea suddenly spread to other islands, and none of the original researchers ever made such a claim.

Despite the lack of supporting evidence for the story as told by Watson and Keyes it is still popular among New Age authors and personal growth gurus and has become an urban legend and part of New Age mythology. As a result, the story has also become a favorite target of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and was used as the title essay in The Hundredth Monkey: And Other Paradigms of the Paranormal published by them in 1991.

[Thorgnor]

I didn't say my info was up to date. Interesting, the theory was discreditied entirely upon a lack of evidence, but the evidence doesn't debunk the theory at all. The only thing I can figure is that more research is needed.

[Blane]

had to bring this thread up because of a wierd thing that just happened. I was sitting here reading Albert Camus "The Outsider" and listening to Neil Young, and When You Dance I can Really Love was on. As I 1/2 listened to the song while reading, I read "senses tingle" in the text exactly as he sang "do your senses tingle". Kinda crazy coincidence, no?

[Thorgnor]

Definately an example of synchronicity.