EMC220 Synchronicity and you? 
To:   Emergency Communications Units - Information Bulletin
To:   Emergency Management Agencies via Internet and Radio
By:   Auxiliary Communications Service (ACS) of the
      California Governor's Office of Emergency Services  

EMC220 Synchronicity and you?   For release 1/17/2000

   "Synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and
time as meaning something more than mere chance." (Carl Jung)

      "Carl Jung is the founder of what has come to be known as 
"depth psychology." His postulation of universal principles, or
"archetypes" operating in the field of what he defined as the
"collective unconscious," as well as the synchronicity theory,
make for fascinating study. As for the latter, in his work
"Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle" Jung explained

"This ...involves a certain curious principle that I have termed
'synchronicity', a concept that formulates a point of view
diametrically opposed to that of causality. Since the latter is
merely statistical truth and not absolute, it is a sort of
working hypothesis of how events evolve one out of another,
whereas synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space
and time as meaning something more than mere chance, namely, a
peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as
well as with the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or
observers."

According to Jung, synchronistic thinking is "field thinking,"
the center of which is time, a moment in time. From a
synchronistic point of view, the important question is not why
has something occurred, or what factor caused this effect, but
rather what likes to happen together in a meaningful way at the
same moment. What types of events, including psychological
events, happen together in time?"

"The Synchronicity Principle.

We have some notion of a tendency of events to cluster around a
moment in time in our own culture, as evidenced by folk sayings
like, "Good things (or accidents) happen in threes," etc. This
only exists as a superstitious kind of popular awareness.
Nevertheless, it has long been evident that there is a tendency
for several scientists at the same time to make the same
discovery completely independently. And, in histories of science,
one can observe that there is a tendency for certain ideas and
inventions to crop up in different places at the same time. Or,
on a more mundane level, one has been known to wonder why the
most needed library book is always the one already checked out?"

Quoted from Paul O'Brien and Visionary Networks, Inc. Portland,
Oregon web page at http://www.IChing.com   (end)

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As managers and participants in EMCOMM units it well may
be that - IF we will allow ourselves to do so - we can benefit 
from looking more closely at events and see what timing and
tandum events have to 'tell us' that we can use beneficially.
Like the day I took a county RACES plan up to the State for its
concurrence, and ended up being asked to become the State RACES
Officer, which was something I really didn't want to do at the
time. But events caused me to pause and look at the situation
in a different way. That led to the eventual emergence of what
today is our ACS program, which includes the RACES. Many was the
time when Stan Harter (first paid staff coordinator of the RACES
program) and I would come up with the same idea within minutes
of each other. We learned those were powerful times offering new
ideas and opportunities. Sometimes the change was painful but
it always turned out for the better in the long run.
            Cary Mangum, State ACS Officer, California.  (W6WWW)
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     Submit suggestions, topics or constructive comments on the
bulletins to cary.mangum@macnexus.org or cary_mangum@oes.ca.gov

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an Archive: ftp.ucsd.edu/emcomm or ftp.ucsd.edu/hamradio/races
EOM