Metasynchronicity

For starters, what is synchronicity?

No, its not an album by the Police.
Well it is, but its not what I'm getting at here.

Wikipedia defines synchronicity as "the experience of two or more events that are causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner. To count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance."

I think that many of you have probably had an experience that could be called a synchronicity. With the help of our social networking sites like facebook and twitter, synchronicities are becoming less of a surprise and more of an everyday occurrence. So what does this all mean? Nothing really. It could easily be explained away as coincidences that hold no major meaning for our day to day lives. Or it could be open to your own subjective interpretation which is the beauty of it.

So what is meta-synchronicity?
I have recently been obsessing with the idea of "meta" and what it means. Meta, simply defined, is a prefix attached to another word to help signify the nature of the idea you are defining. For example, meta-data is simply data about data. Metaphysics is the study of the elements that make up the universe and the nature of these elements. Metaphors are comparisons of two or more things in order to show how they are alike. What I am getting at is that using the meta prefix with another idea, you are usually trying to get at the underlying nature of an idea or situation. You are trying to describe the frame work of an idea to help better understand the idea itself. Wikipedia's article on Meta holds this paragraph which I find to be most in line with the definition I am subscribing to the idea of Meta-Synchronicity:

"Douglas Hofstadter, in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach (and in the sequel, Metamagical Themas), popularized this meaning of the term. This book, which deals extensively with self-reference and touches on Quine and his work, was influential in many computer-related subcultures, and is probably largely responsible for the popularity of the prefix, for its use as a solo term, and for the many recent coinages which use it. Hofstadter uses the meta as a stand-alone word, both as an adjective and as a directional preposition ("going meta", a term he coins for the old rhetorical trick of taking a debate or analysis to another level of abstraction, as in "This debate isn't going anywhere."). This book is also probably responsible for the direct association of "meta" with self-reference, as opposed to just abstraction. The sentence "This sentence contains thirty-six letters," and the sentence it is embedded in, are examples of sentences that reference themselves in this way."

So to put it simply, to me, Meta-synchronicity is a synchronicity that has a meaning which points to its own meaning. In other words, it is an experience that not only holds some significant meaning, but that the meaning inherent in this experience is pointing to a greater meaning, a larger purpose, a symmetry in the universe that mirrors itself in our everyday lives.

So in summary, I believe that Meta-synchronicity is nothing new, but something that is becoming increasingly relevant in a world that is becoming more connected day by day. I think that the meta-synchronicities that we will continue to find in our daily lives will help us see how connected we have always been as a people. I think these connections will help us to fulfill a human destiny that has been a long time coming. I think that meta-synchronicities are directly connected to the singularity which is not far in the future. But for clarification, I do not believe that the popular definition of the singularity is actually what the future holds for us. But that is for another article.

Thanks for reading and keep your eyes open for metasynchronicities.

P Buck

Citations:
Quotes on synchronicity:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity
Quotes on meta:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta#Quine_and_Hofstadter