Synchro-missity

by Nick Meador

In recent times the term “synchronicity” has become one of the trendiest words in circles that self-identify as conscious or transformative. The Internet contributed to this, no doubt, by exposing so many of us to schools of thought like Jungian psychology (the origin of synchronicity) that had been partially or totally omitted from general education programs. However, common discussion and application of the term doesn’t take into consideration the fact that the Internet and connected technologies are constantly influencing our perception of supposed synchronicities. When we evaluate these phenomena more closely, it becomes unclear whether we’re identifying them correctly or interpreting them in a useful way.

The word “synchronicity” first appeared in the 1950s, when Carl Jung brought it forth in the development of archetypal psychology. Jung defined the term in 1951 as “a meaningful coincidence of two or more events, where something other than the probability of chance is involved.” [1] He applied the term not only to these striking coincidences, but also to parapsychological occurrences like clairvoyance, telepathy, and precognition. Yet it’s important to acknowledge that these phenomena are much older, or even timeless; examples abound in various artforms throughout human history.

Admittedly, the literature on the subject remains somewhat confusing. And the combination of most of Jung’s work having been translated into English and most people hearing about it by word-of-mouth (or word-of-comment-thread) means that our current understanding of synchronicity is probably very much based in the early-21st century cultural milieu. Most people who speak of synchronicity today use it to imply that some event was “a good sign.” Hardly, it seems, does anyone take a bizarre coincidence as a bad omen. Either way, what remains uncertain is how to qualify or quantify a synchronicity and what do to about it.

Jung expressly believed that these incidents involve some mechanism beyond time and space operating in an acausal fashion. In other words, they couldn’t be formulated like a physics equation in which a force acts on an object to produce some specific result. The events couldn’t even be conceptualized in such a way that would make much rational sense. On the contrary, Jung thought that the qualification would be for a coincidence “to appear flatly unbelievable.” So something happening at a probability of 1 in 5 would be less remarkable than something happening at a probability of 1 in 5,000,000.

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