Letter From America: "That’s the So-und of the ? Working on the Cha-a-in Gang!"
An old and familiar song comes on the radio as Ronnie Bray is driving along - and at the very moment he sees a sign: "Sheriff’s Chain Gang. Please Slow Down."
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You can call it a coincidence, because that is what it was, no more, and no less. Carl Gustav Jung is one of my favourite pioneer psychologists, not because I agree with him on all points, for I do not, but because he was not afraid to tread on grounds that were, at worst, highly interesting although speculative, and, at best, scintillatingly and wonderfully imaginative. No one falls asleep whilst reading Jung’s extravagant theories on the collective unconscious, race memories, and archetypes.
I mention Jung for no better reason than because he had a word for coincidences that was meant to categorise them accurately and also correct people that miscategorised them. It was more than an overzealous correction by a grammatical purist, rather the product of a mind that was almost but not quite at one with other human minds but found it necessary to remedy a nonsense that was as widespread in his day as it is in ours.
It shows itself in an expression that I used a few days ago, "Things happen in threes." Of course they do not, but the notion that they do has become crystallised in human consciousness by custom based on erroneous interpretations of anticipated cycles of threesomes of unfortunate incidents. Had the ancient been bale to count above three, the custom could be that bad things happen in fours, or tens, or as high as they were able to count. It seems that no one noticed that the first instance of a new triad was really the fourth of the previous quadriad that was prematurely terminated at its triad stage.
Jung was particularly careful to disabuse those suffering under the delusion that "post hoc ergo propter hoc’ was a law of nature. A good example of this condition was related to me by an eyewitness to the occasion when a convicted prisoner asked to see the Prison Doctor because he was experiencing stomach cramps.
"When did your cramps begin?" asked the medic with a resigned air.
"Right after I lost my spoon!" said the gastritic one, obviously blaming his present discomfort on his past loss.
If the loss of his spoon was the root cause of his alimentary woes, then the theory ought to have been tested by prescribing a new spoon and observing whether the restoration ameliorated his condition. If it did not, then other avenues of investigation must be probed.
It is a nod to the doctor that he did not write his patient up for a new spoon, but in place thereof made the sickly man imbibe a quart or so of a good old catch-all that was well known to us old folk, called ‘Mist. Alba’, which translates into ‘White Mixture," probably due to its two main characteristics of being a mixture and because it is white. So there we have it apart from how everything and everyone involved are tied together, a condition I will remedy without further ado.
Jung was not hasty when he assigned the term ‘synchronicity’ to the apparent connection between events that might appear to be related, but which are nothing to do with a conscious act of the cosmos to convey meaning by way of these ‘signs’ by having them come together or close enough to raise a false conclusion in the unwary. Synchronicity means nothing more than ‘Happening at the same time.’
Therefore, if you dream that Woolworth’s is reopening a thousand stores and on the strength of your dream you instruct your stockbroker to buy all the Woolies stock he can track down, and he does, and when you have amassed sufficient stock to have the controlling interest in the defunct Holding Company behind Woolworth’s, the company announces that not only is it not reopening, but that at today’s final board meeting, there were not enough teabags to do other than to share one infusion package between twenty-five or thirty stockholders.
This is the point at which you realise that you are left holding the bag – which is not a teabag – and that the dream and the events following were neither signs, hints, nor instructions from above intended to set your debt-ridden feet on the path to great riches. You read ‘into’ rather than read ‘from,’ and thus you were discomfited.
Synchronicity is not Fate, Destiny, or Karma knocking at your door, because synchronicity refers to unrelated events or causes and effects, that you take as a celestial pairing placed in your path as evidence that the Cosmos takes an especial interest in your welfare.
Although most will recognise the falseness of the premise, there are even more that fail to comprehend the folly in doing anything based on such a pairing. Jung would be disappointed that instances of fatalistic dualities are being garnered every day with no less fervour and no more understanding than in his heyday.
However, let it be understood that not all signs perceived as ‘given’ provide disappointment. For instance, In Cyprus, if when a Greek Orthodox Pappas is making his way to his church in the morning and his path is crossed by a black cat, because it is regarded as an omen of misfortune, he turns towards home there to remain for the remainder of the day.
I have been asked to add that there is no truth in the rumour that these Priests encourage the breeding of black cats and pay for all others to be neutralised. It’s funny how these silly rumours start and proliferate!
At nine o’clock this morning, the temperature outside our home was 100 Fahrenheit. Don’t worry, it will warm up later today. As today is Gay’s birthday, I went to the 24-hour supermarket to pick up a card and find what I needed to make her a nice lunch as a special treat.
The supermarket – Wal-Mart – is about one mile from home, and as I got onto the main road I saw a dark blue pick-up truck with what looked suspiciously like Police Department red and blue identification lights flashing away on its roof. I also noticed that a bus towing a box trailer was parked on the empty corner plot, but as I was moving at a fair lick I did no more than note the gaudy vehicles.
On my return home a half-hour later, there were signs at each side of the main road in the vicinity of pickup and bus. The signs said "Sheriff’s Chain Gang. Please Slow Down." And exactly at that same time I saw about a score of prisoners in hard hats and orange jackets hitting the weed-rich ground with hoes and spades, and from the radio in my rig came the intro to "That’s the Sound Of The Men Working on the Chain Gang."
Was this an example of divine singularity, or was it merely Jungian synchronicity? Although I would love to be able to say it was a divine manifestation, I am afraid Carl had hit the nail on the head with his ‘it just happens to happen that two unconnected happenings happened together.’
So, ‘tweren’t nothing arcane, nothing worth drawing the curtains for, or sitting expectantly in the gloom waiting for enlightenment for. It didn’t even rise to the level of serendipity, for the prisoners, whilst apparently cheerful and chatting as they worked, could not be described as "the men working on the chain gang," because they were – to a man –women!
So despite the prevalence of superstitions that determine otherwise, and my intimacy with Herr Doktor Jung and his Synchronicity, there was nothing remarkable about my instance of it. Drat!
Unless, that is, I am at liberty to take into consideration the fact that it is not every day one can claim to have the men working on the chain gang toiling under the Sheriff’s rifles and guns right next to one’s abode.
Yet it is more rare when "the men working on the cha-a-ain gang" turn out to be women.
© 2009 – Ronnie Bray
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Be Well, Be Faithful, Be Forgiving, Be Blessed.
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