scanners (David cronenberg, 1981)
"My Art keeps me sane. Art. Sane."
Do you know what the difference between coincidence and synchronicity is? Well, it depends who you believe. So the story goes: there is no such thing as coincidence, everything happens for a reason. If you find yourself thinking about shrimp, or plate, or a plate of shrimp, and then you hear someone say 'plate of shrimp,' it's not a coincidence, it's an example of synchronicity; the lattice of coincidence.
That's fun, but can we go anywhere useful with this? Well perhaps.
One aspect to consider is that if you believe in coincidence then you're likely to have the idea that life is something that is happening to you, or at you. You're a post in a field being bombarded by a series of different weathers. You have no say in any of this. Put simply, you're a 'victim of life.' Whereas, if you believe in synchronicity, then you're moving through life in an active fashion, seeing the patterns around you and taking the opportunities that are available.
"But Ben" you say, "I believe in synchronicity, I believe that I can make the most of myself, but it simply doesn't happen. I find myself perpetually in a place that I don't want to be in." And that's probably got something to do with chance, or luck.
'You make your own luck.' That's what idiots say. They also say 'there's no such thing as luck.' That's another ridiculous statement. Of course luck exists. Derren Brown did an episode of his television show about how we see luck and, as a simple example, he filmed himself throwing a coin and getting heads 10 times in a row. How on earth did he do such a thing? The answer's easy: he simply filmed himself for approximately 8 hours, flipping a coin into a bowl, until he happened to throw it heads face up ten times in a row, and that was the only part of the sequence that he showed. You see an isolated moment, and you think it's incredible, you step back to see the entire process, and you understand it all.
Luck is out there, waiting to dash your dreams to pieces on the shore, or carry you up to dizzying heights, but you have to keep trying. You have to keep throwing that coin, preparing yourself for the fact that it will take you forever to get 10 heads in a row. And you have to be awake to the synchonicty messages which are happening around you.
Before I sat down to write this review of David Cronenberg's 1981 film Scanners, I did what I usually do: went outside to smoke. I saw a fly on a brick wall and decided to see how close I could get my finger to the fly before it flew away. As it happened, I could touch the fly, and it didn't respond at all. "Oh, that's weird" I thought. Either the fly is asleep, or there's something strange going on. And then I wondered 'do flies sleep? I'm pretty sure they do.' At that point I noticed a second fly, about a foot and a half lower than the first. This second fly was also extremely still, and I wondered if I could also touch this fly without it responding. The answer was yes, yes I could. So is this a coincidence, or an example of synchronicity? And if it's the latter, what's the message here? Well now, that's probably a much longer conversation.
Recently, an article was published in The Atlantic about the nature of reality. To summarise it quickly: we do not see the world as it really is, what we see is an understanding or interpretation of what's around us. That might all sound a bit confusing, but then they use a metaphor of a computer screen, and that clarifies everything. We see a screen, with a cursor, and icons that we can select. Of course, that's not how the computer really is. That's not how it works. That's just a way of simplifying its functionality, its purpose, into a visual. If we were to actually look at the inner workings or the electronic workings of a computer it wouldn't mean anything to us (well, most of us). The article continues with a concept that I've previously touched on in a short story by the French writer Maupassant; namely, things that happen around us do not exist until we see them. You're standing in a field and you look up just in time to see a murder of crows fly overhead. But that murder is only there when you look up. If you hadn't looked up, it wouldn't have happened.
Some people consider concepts like this and say "Well what difference does it make whether all of this is true or not? My experience of life is what matters. Whether what I'm seeing and understanding is actually different from how it really is doesn't amount to a hill of beans." And you'd be right. it doesn't.
Do you know what the difference between coincidence and synchronicity is? Well, it depends who you believe. So the story goes: there is no such thing as coincidence, everything happens for a reason. If you find yourself thinking about shrimp, or plate, or a plate of shrimp, and then you hear someone say 'plate of shrimp,' it's not a coincidence, it's an example of synchronicity; the lattice of coincidence.
That's fun, but can we go anywhere useful with this? Well perhaps.
One aspect to consider is that if you believe in coincidence then you're likely to have the idea that life is something that is happening to you, or at you. You're a post in a field being bombarded by a series of different weathers. You have no say in any of this. Put simply, you're a 'victim of life.' Whereas, if you believe in synchronicity, then you're moving through life in an active fashion, seeing the patterns around you and taking the opportunities that are available.
"But Ben" you say, "I believe in synchronicity, I believe that I can make the most of myself, but it simply doesn't happen. I find myself perpetually in a place that I don't want to be in." And that's probably got something to do with chance, or luck.
'You make your own luck.' That's what idiots say. They also say 'there's no such thing as luck.' That's another ridiculous statement. Of course luck exists. Derren Brown did an episode of his television show about how we see luck and, as a simple example, he filmed himself throwing a coin and getting heads 10 times in a row. How on earth did he do such a thing? The answer's easy: he simply filmed himself for approximately 8 hours, flipping a coin into a bowl, until he happened to throw it heads face up ten times in a row, and that was the only part of the sequence that he showed. You see an isolated moment, and you think it's incredible, you step back to see the entire process, and you understand it all.
Luck is out there, waiting to dash your dreams to pieces on the shore, or carry you up to dizzying heights, but you have to keep trying. You have to keep throwing that coin, preparing yourself for the fact that it will take you forever to get 10 heads in a row. And you have to be awake to the synchonicty messages which are happening around you.
Before I sat down to write this review of David Cronenberg's 1981 film Scanners, I did what I usually do: went outside to smoke. I saw a fly on a brick wall and decided to see how close I could get my finger to the fly before it flew away. As it happened, I could touch the fly, and it didn't respond at all. "Oh, that's weird" I thought. Either the fly is asleep, or there's something strange going on. And then I wondered 'do flies sleep? I'm pretty sure they do.' At that point I noticed a second fly, about a foot and a half lower than the first. This second fly was also extremely still, and I wondered if I could also touch this fly without it responding. The answer was yes, yes I could. So is this a coincidence, or an example of synchronicity? And if it's the latter, what's the message here? Well now, that's probably a much longer conversation.
Recently, an article was published in The Atlantic about the nature of reality. To summarise it quickly: we do not see the world as it really is, what we see is an understanding or interpretation of what's around us. That might all sound a bit confusing, but then they use a metaphor of a computer screen, and that clarifies everything. We see a screen, with a cursor, and icons that we can select. Of course, that's not how the computer really is. That's not how it works. That's just a way of simplifying its functionality, its purpose, into a visual. If we were to actually look at the inner workings or the electronic workings of a computer it wouldn't mean anything to us (well, most of us). The article continues with a concept that I've previously touched on in a short story by the French writer Maupassant; namely, things that happen around us do not exist until we see them. You're standing in a field and you look up just in time to see a murder of crows fly overhead. But that murder is only there when you look up. If you hadn't looked up, it wouldn't have happened.
Some people consider concepts like this and say "Well what difference does it make whether all of this is true or not? My experience of life is what matters. Whether what I'm seeing and understanding is actually different from how it really is doesn't amount to a hill of beans." And you'd be right. it doesn't.