Old Things New Again

The problem of synchronicity has puzzled me for a long time, ever since the middle twenties, when I was investigating the phenomena of the collective unconscious and kept on coming across connections which I simply could not explain as chance groupings or “runs.” What I found were “coincidences” which were connected so meaningfully that their “chance” concurrence would represent a degree of improbability that would have to be expressed by an astronomical figure.

~Carl Jung

Long time readers of this blog know I am a true believer when it comes to synchronicity. Where I respectfully disagree with Jung is his notion that synchronistic events are a rarity, measured in astronomical degrees of improbability. In his book There Are No Accidents, Robert Hopcke suggests the scarcity of synchronistic moments is less about their occurrence than our paying close enough attention to recognize them. Which is why I encouraged my students at Miami University and our clients at ImagineIt Today to look for these acausal coincidences everywhere and everyday. Just as an athlete builds “muscle memory” to ensure consistency in a home-run producing swing or three-point basket, the more we practice the art of identifying synchronicities the more frequently we will find them.

Sometimes, however, no skill is required when it comes to identifying synchronistic events. One such example began with my favorite congressman Aaron Bean sponsoring a legislative proposal called the “Claiming Age Clarity Act.” If you are a representative who has no idea what to do about the pending shortfall in Social Security and Medicare funding, you pretend you do by uselessly changing the existing law to henceforth refer to what was always known as “Early Eligibility Age” as “Minimum Benefit Age.” “Full Retirement Age” as “Standard Benefit Age.” And “Delayed Benefit Age” as “Maximum Benefit Age.” [Note: In his September 17 press release, Bean explains the new nomenclature using the same language in the existing law. An equally appropriate title for this bill would have been “Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Titanic Act.”]

Now one might argue Bean created his own synchronistic moment by giving this piece of legislative excrement a title for which the acronym is “CACA.” But a better acausal coincidence was waiting in the wings. “CACA” was one more reminder that Bean has now introduced 36 pieces of legislation since relocating to D.C. in 2023, only one of which, renaming a post office, was signed into law by President Joe Biden. The complementary acausal event in this synchronistic saga was less obvious. How do I know the first did not cause the second? Because the latter occurred 12 years prior to the former.

For lack of anything one could call “must see TV,” last night my wife and I continued rewatching Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom (originally broadcast 2012-14),” in which anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) and his executive producer MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer) thread the needle between journalistic integrity and corporate profits. Season 2 Episode 6 included a segment in which McAvoy, a self-professed Republican, compares the lack of congressional action by the Tea Party-dominated GOP majority to the previous record-holder.

Harry Truman dubbed the 80th Congress the “Do-Nothing Congress.” [Bar graph appears on screen.] Its productivity, measured by this bar, shows the number of laws they passed. The productivity of the 112th Congress is measured by this bar. The 112th Congress has not yet passed one sixth of the laws of the Do-Nothing Congress. But let’s look at the laws they have passed.

Congressman Peter Roskam represents the 6th District of Illinois. Illinois has the fourth highest unemployment rate in the country with 9.9% of its workforce out of work. So Congressman Roskam introduced House Resolution 2139, which would require the Secretary of the Treasury to mint coins in commemoration of the centennial of the Lions Club.

Congressman Randy Forbes of Virginia sponsored a bill reaffirming “In God We Trust” as our national motto, a motto already made official in 1956, 2002, 2006 and now 2011. One in four American children are living in poverty, but the motto should take care of that.

We’re fighting a war, a stagnant economy, a failing education system and climate change. The 112th Congress has renamed 40 post offices.

Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, blocked the appointment of MIT economist Peter Diamond to a vacant seat on the Federal Reserve Board. Said Shelby, “I do not believe the current environment of uncertainty “would benefit from monetary policy decisions “made by board members who are learning on the job.” While Senator Shelby held up Peter Diamond’s nomination on the grounds that Diamond was insufficiently qualified to counsel the Federal Reserve Board, Peter Diamond won the Nobel Prize for economics.

I am quite certain if Sorkin had written this script for a present day episode of “The Newsroom,” Aaron Bean would have also been singled out in McAvoy’s report on the “Do-Even-Less” 119th Congress. The segment would go something like this.

Aaron Bean is the congressman from the 4th District of Florida. His district has been impacted by flash floods and beach erosion resulting from severe. late-summer thunderstorms. Home ownership is beyond the means of many residents. In his first term in Congress he was one of those members who sponsored a bill to rename a post office. This year he sponsored a bill to make harming a state or federal police dog a felony, something that is already covered by state law in 49 of the 50 states.

Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright. The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light. And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout. But there is no joy in Heaven. Yogi Berra, head in hands, is sobbing as he laments, “Why do bloggers like this Dr. ESP guy use every instance of time-disconnected coincidences to remind their audiences that I once said, “It feels like déjà vu all over again?” [NOTE: Although “Casey at the Bat” is now in the public domain, I apologize to Ernest Lawrence Thayer (1863-1940) for appropriating his iconic poem for this post.]

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP