Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.
At the foot of Mt. Shasta, October 26, 2011: Today I found an inspiring micro-story on Shafin de Zane’s facebook account. I’m reprinting it here. Maybe you’ll enjoy it too …
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I had a dream once and it caught a horrible disease: disbelief. It almost died for I knew no cure, but somehow survived, it was a strong dream. Yet many others have died, especially the ones that I had when I was little. And
Northern California, October 2011: Some folks — including some very serious physicists — think that there may exist multiple universes, perhaps an infinite number.
In a way, these universes may all be here in the same space, but somehow vibrating at a different rate; and if that were true it might account for some folks reports of visiting “fairyland,” “hell,” “captured by aliens,” and other reports of non-terrestrial experiences.
According to some, and I personally suspect that it’s probably true, every time in your life that you have made a decision — left or right — that the universe split into two universes, and a *you* is in each one, and in one case the *you* turned left, and in the other one the *you* turned right.
If that is true, and the number of universes is infinite, then in one universe you are the Queen of England, and in another you live below a bridge on a freeway, and another you’re a movie star, and another you’re on death row.
One of my most productive mental self-help methods is to (in the “imagination”) walk through a doorway into another universe, where the Richard/Arthur has already solved the problem in question, and ask for advice. I call it “dimensional guidance,” and it’s proven to yield remarkably interesting and generally useful guidelines for solving the various problems I face.
It’s fun and helpful. Go figure.
Weed, California, July 1, 2011: When I was quite young I had great difficulty making decisions. I was impulsive, and it largely stemmed from being extremely fearful and accepting my worries as if they were external objects. (That is, I had no insight that they were my creations, and I had no clue how to actually operate my mind and it’s automatic creations.)
So I was wishy-washy, I flip-flopped, I made great long lists and then still flip-flopped because the basis of all my decisions was the emotional content most pressing at the moment. But then …
[reprinted with permission from CopyDragon.com webwriters]
Some people think they have nothing to say. Some people believe they cannot express themselves.
These are illusions.
These illusions, these thoughts, are caused by the unconscious mind’s automatic learning. It learns something, usually in childhood, and quite often these “solutions” are brilliant, given the resources you have at the time. Unfortunately, like how to tie your shoes, these solutions are re-generated automatically below consciousness ever after, and sometimes they fit, but oft-times these solutions suck!
These beliefs, emotions, thoughts, and automatic reactions are a part of you, operating below consciousness, but they are illusions. (In which we are sometimes as trapped, and blind, as fish are to the water.)
(If you want to learn more about how the unconscious mind both helps and sometimes harms you, in its effort to promote your survival, pick up my free book at http://beinghappytoday.com. You can one-click unsub the newsletter if you wish.)
Let’s talk about how to make writing, and self-expression … easy.
Weed, California, Easter Sunday 2009: Here is an Easter gift for you … a super-quick little thing you can do in about twenty seconds, and it makes you feel really good. Most likely this is very good for your body and mind as well, though I can’t prove it!
I call it ‘Arthur’s Twenty Second Tune-Up,’ and it’s both startlingly effective and super-easy.
First, get an index card, or something similar, about 3″ x 5″. And then … [Read more…]
San Francisco, 1976: I got my first computer! It was a high-class Cromemco, in a kit, and had a lightning fast Z80 processor that ran at (gasp) 3 megahertz, and a full 64K of memory.
I had a buddy who knew computers in and out — he wrote code for our satellites to determine whether a field in russia had wheat or alfalfa — and he put the kit together for me, cause I didn’t know how to solder back then. (He’s rich and retired long since, because he went to work for a new startup called Cisco, and they gave stock options; but that’s another story.)
He also gave me a book about beginning to program in Basic.
It showed a simple technique called ‘successive refinement.’ If you are a programmer then you know this technique but for non-programmers here, it’s really simple. And mongo useful.
Here’s how it works …
You first state what the program is to do, in one sentence:
“Manage a mailing list”
Then you refine that, as precisely as possible, still in ordinary words —
“manage a mailing list
input of an address
finding an address
editing an address
sorting the addresses
printout of the addresses
printing addresses on envelopes
printing addresses on labels
And then in similar manner you break these down. Pretty soon you discover that stating what it’s to do starts to look like code, eg:
“bubblesort( addresslistname, ascending )”
After a while it’s all code, and it will have these virtues —
(a) It’s structure will seem logical to a human
(b) therefore it’s easier to debug and later modify
(c) you tend to avoid can-of-worms code that goes everywhere
Now, and here’s my point, what’s really lovely is that this approach will work fairly well for most any project of any kind.
Successive refinement.
With this, you can become … refined. Cool.
Go Thee Forth and Prosper!
San Francisco, Many Years Ago: Back in those days, I ran an answering service and later a voicemail company from an office on beautiful, scenic Geary Boulevard.
Fueled by a talk I heard at a trade convention, I began to experiment with ‘scripted’ sales presentations on the telephone. The lady giving the talk had claimed that a scripted sales presentation got more sales than just ‘winging’ it.
But first you got to write down the script!
How to do that?
Well …
In doing my experiments, I found a wonderful way to work out the scripts, to come up with stuff that was powerful. If you just try writing it down, it tends to wander all over the place like a lost dog sniffing after olfactory wonders in the woodland.
Plus, plenty of things that theoretically ought to work … don’t. But my organized method works wonders.
Later, I discovered I could simply sell the voicemail by leading the buyer into listening to my (recorded) presentation on the voicemail itself. These days a lot of selling is done on the internet, and still on the telephone. And there’s a mighty parallel between my older processes and the way things are sold today, on the phone and online.
Here is the method that worked again and again …
(Oh the sheer suspense!)
OK. Enough stalling. Here’s the plan …
(1) At first, if you can, arrange to take calls whenever possible, even if it’s a cheapo product.
(2) Improvise and explain your product as best you can. Answer their questions as best you can.
(3) After just a little time, you will notice that you are saying the same words to every caller, and you will notice that the callers are asking the same questions.
(4) Now write down (or record) those words that you are saying. Make a list of the questions that they most frequently ask, and weave the answers into your presentation.
(5) Now you have a tested and working presentation.
The human is always efficient. We learn not to waste time or energy automatically. Even without much thinking about it, you will notice maybe subconsciously, what ‘worked’ and you’ll repeat that behavior on your next phone call. You’re a human. That’s how a human naturally operates.
Try it. You’ll like it.
Wikipedia, 6/14/2008: Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events which occur in a meaningful manner, but which are causally un-related. In order to be ‘synchronistic’, the events must be related to one another temporally, and the chance that they would occur together by random chance must be very small.
The idea of synchronicity is that the conceptual relationship of minds, defined by the relationship between ideas, is intricately structured in its own logical way and gives rise to relationships which have nothing to do with causal relationships in which a cause precedes an effect.
Instead, causal relationships are understood as simultaneous that is, the cause and effect occur at the same time.
[You’re thinking of calling Suzie. You reach for the phone, but it rings. It’s Suzie.]
Synchronous events reveal an underlying pattern, a conceptual framework which encompasses, but is larger than, any of the systems which display the synchronicity. The suggestion of a larger framework is essential in order to satisfy the definition of synchronicity as originally developed by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung.
[Carl was a merry old fellow, and his beard was very good.]
It was a principle that Jung felt gave conclusive evidence for his concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious. in that it was descriptive of a governing dynamic that underlay the whole of human experience and history social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual.
[For the life of me, I’ve never understood what synchronicity has to do with archetypes, which are images or ideas that we all have in our heads, like fearing bugs. It probably comes from our evolutionary memory embodied in DNA relating to pattern recognition. That is, far enough back, when our grandfather’s grandfather’s great grandfather was a bug, we were afraid of the larger bugs. But I digress …]
Jung believed that many experiences perceived as coincidence were not merely due to chance but, instead, suggested the manifestation of parallel events or circumstances reflecting this governing dynamic.
[Now here I have to agree with Carlos. I think stuff is going on, around and through us, stuff that flows both ways through time, stuff we cannot see anymore than a fish can tell the difference between Bach and the Beatles. This stuff affects us. Peculiar things happen. If you tune in, more of them happen. Wooooo.]
One of Jung’s favourite quotes on synchronicity was from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, in which the White Queen says to Alice: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards”. Because only if an observer could remember the future could synchonicity be expected and explained.
[My favorite quote from Alice is “No wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise.” What is yours?]
According to Occam’s razor, positing an underlying mechanism for meaningfully interpreted correlations is an unsupported explanation for a “meaningful coincidence” if the correlations may alternatively be explained by simple coincidence.
The amount of meaningful coincidence which one expects by random chance is higher than most people’s intuition would lead them to believe, an observation known as Littlewood’s Law.
[Hmmm. Littlewood. Perhaps that is as when we say, “Littlewood he know that …” Or maybe not.]
Jung and followers believe that synchronous events such as simultaneous discovery happen far more often than random chance would allow, even after accounting for the sampling bias inherent in the fact that meaningful coincidences are noticeable while meaningless coincidences are not.
[Uh oh. Who are these followers? In every picture I’ve seen, he’s been alone. Now I realize there must have been people shadowing him. Perhaps they were waiting outside the door of his office, in the street, or up your alley. Have you noticed them? I hadn’t. I didn’t notice a thing. That’s scary.]
In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias is the tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions and avoids information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs. Many critics believe that any evidence for synchronicity is due to confirmation bias, and nothing else.
[Confirmation bias! That’s one of my favorites! In fact, it’s right here on The Adventures of Bloggard, listed in the Wisdom Log as Law 23 of Human Perception.]
Wolfgang Pauli, a scientist who in his professional life was severely critical of confirmation bias, lent his scientific credibility to support the theory, coauthoring a paper with Jung on the subject. Some of the evidence that Pauli cited was that ideas which occurred in his dreams would have synchronous analogs in later correspondence with distant collaborators.
[Severely critical. What a shame. Not just critical, but severely critical. Bummer.]
Jung claims that in 1805, the French writer mile Deschamps was treated to some plum pudding by a stranger named Monsieur de Forgebeau. Ten years later, the writer encountered plum pudding on the menu of a Paris restaurant, and wanted to order some, but the waiter told him the last dish had already been served to another customer, who turned out to be de Forgebeau.
[Hot damn!]
Many years later, in 1832, mile Deschamps was at a diner, and was once again offered plum pudding. He recalled the earlier incident and told his friends that only de Forgebeau was missing to make the setting complete and in the same instant, the now senile de Forgebeau entered the room.
[Holy Cow! That must have been pretty scary!]
In fact, Deschamps gives the name as “de Fontgibu”, and also describes him as a Marquis and Colonel who fought against Napoleon under Louis Joseph de Bourbon, prince de Cond – “Oeuvres compltes de mile Deschamps, 1873” and “Echoes from the Harp of France” a collection of works by G.S. Trebutien – since no de Fontgibu appears in French history, this is most likely an invented name and could easily be a purely fictional character.
[Oh.]
In the 1976 film The Eagle Has Landed, the character Max Radl (Robert Duvall) asks a subordinate if he is familiar with the works of Jung, and then explains the theory of Synchronicity.
In the 1980s film Repo Man, Miller’s “Plate ‘o’ Shrimp” theory outlines the idea of synchronicity. The Miller character states that while many people see life as a series of unconnected incidents, he believes that there is a “lattice o[f] coincidence that lays on top o[f] everything” which is “part of a cosmic unconsciousness.”
In the 1983 release Synchronicity by The Police (A&M Records), bassist Sting is reading a copy of Jung’s Synchronicity on the front cover along with a negative/superimposed image of the actual text of the synchronicity hypothesis. A photo on the back cover also shows a close-up but mirrored and upside-down image of the book. There are two songs, titled “Synchronicity I” and “Synchronicity II” included in the album.
For specific examples of the Synchron in action, in the Adventures of Bloggard, see “A Tiny Miracle on Napa Street,” “April’s Mystery Avocado,” and “A Photograph of the Future.”
REFERENCES:
1. from Through the Looking-Glass, by Lewis Carroll, Ch. 5, Wool and Water —
‘It’s very good jam,’ said the Queen.
‘Well, I don’t want any TO-DAY, at any rate.’ [replies Alice]
‘You couldn’t have it if you DID want it,’ the Queen said. ‘The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday — but never jam to-day.’
‘It MUST come sometimes to “jam to-day,”‘ Alice objected.
‘No, it can’t,’ said the Queen. ‘It’s jam every OTHER day: to-day isn’t any OTHER day, you know.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ said Alice. ‘It’s dreadfully confusing!’
‘That’s the effect of living backwards,’ the Queen said kindly: ‘it always makes one a little giddy at first –‘
‘Living backwards!’ Alice repeated in great astonishment. ‘I never heard of such a thing!’
‘– but there’s one great advantage in it, that one’s memory works both ways.’
‘I’m sure MINE only works one way,’ Alice remarked. ‘I can’t remember things before they happen.’
‘It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,’ the Queen remarked.
2. from Emile Deschamps, in reference to Echoes from the Harp of France —
Simultaneous discovery is the creation of the same new idea at causally disconnected places by two persons at approximately the same time. If for example an American and a British musician, having never had anything to do with one another, arrived at the same musical concept, chord sequence, feel or lyrics at the same time in different places, this is an example of synchronicity. During the production of The Wizard of Oz, a coat bought from a second-hand store for the costume of Professor Marvel was later found to have belonged to L. Frank Baum, author of the children’s book upon which the film is based.
3. from Repo Man, the movie —
“A lot o’ people don’t realize what’s really going on. They view life as a bunch o’ unconnected incidents ‘n things. They don’t realize that there’s this, like, lattice o’ coincidence that lays on top o’ everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you’re thinkin’ about a plate o’ shrimp. Suddenly someone’ll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o’ shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin’ for one, either. It’s all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.”
[And you thought it was just … oh, but maybe not.]
