Synchronicity: A Mere Delusion

Synchronicity: A Mere Delusion

                You are searching for a book in a library, and the book you need falls right out of the shelf and lands in front of you. Your laptop breaks when you find out that your parents were planning to buy you a new one for your upcoming birthday. You select a comfortable date for your English Summative, when your Biology teacher arbitrarily assigns you a Biology Summative on that same day. What could be the meaning of these coincidences? Could it be synchronicity, the occurrence of two or more unrelated events that is meaningful to the observer? That’s purely what you want to think and it’s what Carl G. Jung, the man who theorized the idea of synchronicity, believes to be true. Synchronicity is merely an incidental occurrence of coincidences that allows the observer to conjecture a speculation stretched with confirmation bias.

                The novel Fifth Business, written by Robertson Davies, offers a few examples of “synchronicity” . One example is shown when Dunstan Ramsay encounters Paul Dempster for the second time since his childhood departure. This encounter leaves quite a lasting effect on Dunstan. While he is furthering his knowledge on saints; once again, his path crosses with that of Paul Dempster, now known as Magnus Eisengrim. From this experience, Dunstan is able to view himself from another perspective, as well as establish a new friendship with Liesl. Another occurrence leads to the death of Boy Staunton. An interesting fact to note is that both the snowball incident and the reunion both occurred on Sunday, and continued until the following Monday. The birth of Paul Dempster and the death of Boy Staunton happened in the same hour. The final occurrence appears shortly after the death of Boy Staunton. The question “Who killed Boy Staunton?” pops up in Eisengrim’s performance. This unlikely occurrence serves to bring the tale to a close.

                Synchronicity in Fictional literature is a key ingredient in a recipe for a compelling tale. Though it adds allure in the realm of fabricated tales, synchronicity is, in reality, nothing more than a fallacy, a misconception, a misguided notion. Former graduate of Harvard University and Princeton University and professor at Cornell University , Dr. Stephen Strogatz directly stated: “No evidence has ever been found for Carl Jung’s idea of synchronicity.” Take Jung’s strongest example of synchronicity. A patient describes to Jung her dream about a scarab. At that moment, a flying beetle flew into the room, and Jung concluded that since the scarab is the Egyptian symbol of rebirth, the patient needs to be liberated from her excessive rationalism. According to the National History Museum, the rose chafer beetle (Jung’s example) is quite localized all over southern and central Europe. In addition, according to Cambridge University PhD John Littlewood, an improbable coincidence is likely to appear to the average human once every month. This is known as “Littlewood’s Law of Miracles.” Given those conditions, the beetle “occurrence” is, indeed, quite ordinary. It is impossible to extract meaning from the ordinary; therefore, it is impossible to extract meaning from synchronicity.