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Originally Posted by moonrambler  John Freestone -- one thing, I've asked you twice now what you would need to experience to believe it was a significant synchronicity, or whether there's nothing at all that would convince you the phenomenon exists. I'd love it if you'd answer that.
Bummer that you deleted what you wrote since you took the time to write it. That's the point of this thread, after all. |
Oh sorry, moonrambler, that was a bit silly of me - I forgot to give you a specific answer. It wasn't on porpoise (oops) I just thought that if I describe how I think about the world you would kind of understand the answer to the specific question.
I do not understand the question. The thing I am being asked about - 'significant synchronicity' - seems rather curious and, the more I think about it and try to define it, nonsensical. I'm not too hot on Jung.
As I suggested, if two events have a 'connection', that, to me, suggests that they are in some way causally connected. I don't quite know what other kind of connection you could be suggesting (or cylon) when you say that things are connected, but NOT causally, or that they are too unlikely to happen together to be a coincidence, but they aren't causally connected. I couldn't really give you a specific answer to what I would require as evidence for a phenomenon that doesn't make sense to me.
Let's simplify the terms and talk about what I would need to verify a miracle. Would I be right in assuming that you're asking pretty much the same question in principle, although your 'synchronicity' is to do with things happening in a particular pattern, where a miracle might just be a single event? Anyway, maybe if I address this, you'll see what I'm driving at. If you asked me that question, and we consider something obvious like a statue of the madonna said to be crying. Now, statues don't cry, we generally think, so let's say I investigate: now, the point is, what categories of phenomena can I divide my experience of the event up into:
1) something natural is happening, like a curious chemical process in the paint used on the eyes, causing them to produce an oil which is running down the face...NAURE
2) I discover a tiny hole drilled in the ceiling, perfectly aligned with the madonna's eyes. I go up into the roof space and find an eye-dropper and a bottle of water, and the dust that covers everywhere else is disturbed here recently...FRAUD
3) I examine the statue for seven years and eliminate all possible fraud and known scientific processes, but the statue continues to produce water at the eyes...PERHAPS AN UNKNOWN NATURAL PROCESS IS STILL UNCOVERED
4) After the above, I become moved by the teachings in the chapel there and convert. The statue is reported as crying only when several are gathered together, so it goes, or when a person goes there to pray in silence for a long time in great distress. I do that. I pray there, many times. She cries. I go to services, she's dry to start, then she cries. Eventually I am convinced that there is something super-normal happening, so ... well ... you see, that's the purpose of my question to you, and the reason I'm going into this so deeply.
You see, if we say...CHRISTIANITY, GOD, CHRIST...ALL THAT IS REAL AND TRUE AND GOD AND CHRIST ARE MAKING THIS STATUE CRY TEARS...
...well, what is that? It's a religion. It's a philosophy. It's an explanation. IT IS A CAUSE.
Similarly, if things of a co-incidental or syn-chronous nature keep happening to me that I can't explain my normal means, including what we know about psychology, I can only conclude one of two things - their relationship has some causal link, or it doesn't. If it has a causal link, it is not supernatural, but natural, and if it doesn't, it is coincidental. Now, even if there is some great pattern to the universe that means that everything is linked in such a way that when you start thinking about teal motocycles they actually being to increase in number around you, that's fine. If it had some really substantial evidence, we might have to consider it as a real contender for the universal cosmology, but it would still be a causal link, and it would only be magic(k) if you defined magic(k) that way - in other words, once discovered as REAL, it is NATURAL.
Some IMers say that there is a real process going on that we haven't discovered yet. Ok. No problem. If it is, let's investigate it. Others just seem to want it to be unknown, because they like being 'weirded out' and enjoy 'trippiness'. That's fine too, as long as you're happy to live in ignorance, in a world of makebelieve, not bothering to find out. I'm not meaning to tar everyone with the same brush. Some people are genuinely open minded and would forget these magical connections if they turned out to be false, a trick of the mind, as I think they are. Others would just hate it. That's ok too. Everyone's free to make up their own mind.
I was asking you to define your terms. I don't think you have done that yet. And I think that if you really think about what Jung's statement means, it points nowhere. It's like saying I've got a dog that is not an ordinary dog. You're asking me what kind of evidence I'd need to be convinced your dog isn't ordinary.