Historical Synchronicity
James Pruett
(archived from web page http://www.io.com/%7Emmaltbie/synchron.htm )
Toward the Development of a Theory
The Primacy of Meaning: Historical Synchronicity
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for Interested Publisher
Synchronicity:
An Acausal Connecting Principle
DEFINED
"The concept synchronicity indicates a meaningful coincidence of two or
more events, where something other than the probability of chance is involved.
Chance is a statistical concept which ‘explains’ deviations within certain
patterns of probability. Synchronicity elucidates meaningful arrangements and
coincidence that somehow go beyond the calculations of probability.
Pre-cognition, clairvoyance, telepathy, etc. are phenomena which are
inexplicable through chance, but become empirically intelligible through the
employment of the principle of synchronicity, which suggests a kind of harmony
at work in the interaction of both psychic and physical events."
---- The Journal of Religious Thought
Of the numerous influences operating at every moment, e.g., air, electricity,
we sense almost nothing: there could well be forces that, although we never
sense them, continually influence us….Ultimately, we understand the conscious
ego itself as a tool in the service of a higher, comprehensive intellect [MP
p. 357].
---Frederich Nietzsche
We live in the first age when change occurs sufficiently rapidly to
make…pattern recognition possible for society at large [MP].
--- Marshall McLuhan
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Mechanistic History
During the Middle ages and in China, the historic process was viewed very differently than today. Facts were less important than patterns and interconnections of individual events. For instance, the dramatic Norman invasion of 1066 was heralded with the appearance of a new comet in the sky. The outbreaks of war or disease, the crowning of kings and queens and the births and deaths of famous men were accompanied by a variety of natural portents. The Chinese, in particular, have traditionally viewed history in terms of how things happen together in time. [SP – p. 65]
Events, historic or otherwise, have the tendency of being explained in accord with the ruling science of the day. Today that means by stress, force, pressure, or through some kind of energy transfer or transfer of information. Whatever the case, in order for one event to cause another, they must be shown to have a direct connection. Generally speaking, there must be a clear flow of time with the cause occurring in the past and the effect at some point afterward. In historical analysis, the Western approach is concerned with tracing events to their root causes. For example, World War I was said by many historians to have been set off by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The Japanese bombing at Pearl Harbor was credited as the reason the United States entered World War II. The Apollo moon landing, meanwhile, resulted because of competitive pressure to beat the Russians.
The Western historical method has logical consistency but is not without fault or limitation. Due to the Western prejudice for mechanism, priority in assigning cause is given to events related to another but also occurring in sequence. By isolating a particular moment preceding an event and assigning it as "the cause," we are left a partial truth and an incomplete picture. When operating side by side, or simultaneously, events are considered random and meaningless. In any event, one element is cause, and another is effect.
However, in the 18th century, English philosopher David Hume demonstrated causality cannot be placed on a strictly logical foundation. Hume thought causality to be based on a habit of mind formed through repeated historical precedent. Just because A has been observed to follow B in the past is no proof that this succession will occur in the future. Media philosopher Marshall McLuhan interpreted Hume by saying, "that one thing follows another counts for nothing. Nothing follows from following, except change." The controversial 19th Century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was similarly skeptical.
Nietzsche believed that the sequence of certain phenomena does not demonstrate "law." Sequence is only the evidence of the relationship between two or more forces. The assignment of cause, Nietzsche argued, is not a question of succession but of interpretation. "It is a question of a struggle between two elements of unequal power: a new arrangement of forces is achieved according to the measure of power of each on them. The second condition is fundamentally different from the first (not its effect)." [WP - ] In his Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche implores us to use "cause" and "effect" only as pure concepts for the purposes of designation and communication – not explanation.
If the question between phenomena is, as Nietzsche suggests, not one of succession but of interpretation, then in this struggle of interpretation we have reached a critical point. For McLuhan, in this history of interpretation of things, the greatest reversal occurred with the advent of electricity, ending sequence by making things instant. "With instant speed the causes of things begin to emerge to awareness again." [UM p.12] The priority given to sequence in causality was giving way to synchronicity. Thus James Redfield’s assertion in his blockbuster best seller, The Celistine Prophecy, "that a mass of people have begun to take synchronicities seriously," is a clear confirmation of what McLuhan predicted a generation before.
In conclusion, while linear causality is not without theoretical limitation, it may work well enough for restricted, mechanical systems. Something more subtle and complex is needed to describe the full richness of nature. The linear aspect of alphabetic writing and page layout of books compelled the presentation of events in series. Hypertext links and multi-screen viewing of Web TV and the Internet allow for a new order of facts, effects, and references. Coupled with the instantaneous nature of this global network of connectivity, the stage is set for a new historical interpretation based on parallelism or synchronicity.
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Toward the Development of a Theory
Jung believed that synchronicities have their origin in a ground that lies beyond the particular categories of knowledge and defy all attempts to place boundaries or erect mental divisions between particular areas of experience. It is unfortunate, but it has been this characteristic evasiveness and lack of categorization of experience that has made synchronicity such an elusive concept that has hitherto defied historic appropriation. We must first begin our interrogation by recognizing synchronicity’s primitive beginning.
The roots of synchronicity are grounded in primitive magic. Primitive tribes have long held the belief that like influences like. This first law of primitive magic may be regarded as the law of sympathy. Of second critical importance, is the primitive belief that things that have been in contact continue ever afterward to act on each other. This second law is known as the law of contagion.
Sir James Frazer, author of The Golden Bough, categorizes the foundation of primitive magic on two general principles referred to as homeopathic magic (that like influences like) and contagious magic (things in contact with each other, forever remain in contact). Homeopathic magic infers that the magician may produce any effect that he wants by merely imitating it in advance. The most familiar use of this technique is used to injure or destroy an enemy. Sticking pins in a voodoo doll, for instance, is supposed to create a sharp pain in the person of whom it is an effigy. In sports, we see a residuum of this belief. Effigies of opposing teams are often burned at bonfires proceeding an important game. Homeopathic magic may also be referred to as the law of sympathy.
Goethe, in his Conversations with Eckermann, speculated that "we all have certain electric and mechanical powers within us and ourselves exercise an attractive and repelling force, according to whether we come into touch with something like or unlike." Koestler believed that different objects and events congregate to form and overall pattern in space and time. Simply put, "certain things like to happen together." [SP – p 65] Here Goethe and Koestler are restating the laws of sympathetic magic.
In primitive cultures throughout the world, there is a firm belief in sympathetic connection of friends or family at a distance. Like modern day telepathics, they believe it is possible to affect events across wide distances. Case studies of identical twins separated at birth show startling coincidences that confirm the connection through space of persons genetically similar, demonstrating the primitive law of sympathetic influence upon like and like. The famous Jim twins of Ohio come to mind here. Bothhad law enforcement training and worked part-time as deputy sheriffs and vacationed in Florida. Both drove Chevrolets and had dogs named Toy. Both married and divorced women named Linda and had second marriages with women named Betty. They named their sons James Allan and James Alan, respectively. Both like mechanical drawing and carpentry and have almost identical drinking and smoking patterns. Both chew their fingernails down to the nubs. In addition, they both have hemorrhoids, identical pulse, blood pressure and sleep patterns, and both had inexplicably put on 10 pounds at the same time in their lives.
Genetic determinism is the traditional argument used to explain the astonishing coincidences concerning twins separated at birth. However, while hemorrhoids, pulse, blood pressure and sleep patterns clearly have their genetic roots, second wives named Betty, Chevrolets, and dogs named Toy do not. They are elements of behavior governed by complex psychological tendencies.
Still there is still a more glaring flaw in the argument for genetic determinism. Since twins are always genetically identical, why are the similarities so extraordinary for some and non-existent for others?
Synchronicity, as a selective, a-causal psychological agent provides a more reliable answer. Re-explanation: although the Jim twins have never met one another and are separated by time and space, being genetically identical, they are of one mind and act accordingly. The statistical inconsistencies are then a problem in the transmission of information among sets of twins. Some minds connect, while others cannot. This explains psychologically influenced behavior while leaving genetic influences undisturbed.
Synchronicity remains a suspect concept to many "scientific minds." However, it finds doctrinal affinity with a number of ancient and modern systems:
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Seriality
Posited by Paul Kammerer in the first part of the 20th century, seriality is a unique contribution to the field of meaningful coincidence. Like primitive causality, seriality correlates with affinity. Like gravity, Kammerer posited a universal field of force that tends towards unity. But unlike gravity, which acts on mass indiscriminately, this force acts selectively, depending on form and function to bring similar configurations together in space and time. In Kammerer’s own words, "We thus arrive at the image of a world-mosaic or cosmic kaleidoscope, which, in spite of constant shufflings and rearrangements, also takes care of bringing like and like together." [RC – p.86]
Kammerer regarded related events that occur in series as a kind of cyclic wave process. Reversing the skeptic’s argument that out of the multitude of random events we only pick out those which are significant, Kammerer argued that we are only aware of the crest of the waves, which appear to us as isolated coincidences. Meanwhile, the greater part of phenomena, while perhaps similarly connected through serial coincidence, go unnoticed. Kammerer, the last Lamarkian of European fame, was charged by his peers with scientific heresy.
While synchronicity provides theoretical support to events that happen simultaneously but appear otherwise disconnected, seriality provides similar buttressing to events that occur in series. Examples would be shooting streaks by basketball players, gambler’s runs of luck, cycles of good days and bad or winning and loosing streaks of all kinds. Common superstitious belief in the connection between isolated deaths or tragic accidents that seem to cluster together in series finds theoretical support in Kammerer seriality. Car accidents and airplane crashes, for instance, appear to us to cluster together. Freak accidents, meanwhile, like the skiing accidents occurring within one week of each other in 1998 that claimed the lives of Sonny Bono and Michael Kennedy, while not causally connected in any formal sense, nonetheless feel connected as we perceive them. For in the process of observation, we cannot deny their obvious similarity. They are connected through meaning.
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A New Conception of the Mind
With new evidence being gathered from life experiences and from breakthroughs in the new physical sciences, what formerly may have been regarded as reckless superstition or meaningless coincidence must now be thoroughly re-examined. With countless out of body experiences retold, massive amounts of data proving the existence of ESP, and modern physicist's claims to a casually interactive wholly non-material universe of elastic time and space, the concept of "the mind" has gone through a thorough revision. The mind has come to be regarded as more than mere gray matter. It has come to be regarded as a seamlessly integrated web existing beyond the elementary precepts of time and space.
With this new conception of the mind come fresh connections. In sports, basketball players such as Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, previously regarded as having great peripheral vision – demonstrated by their pin-point no look passes - are now said to have possessed eyes in the back of their head. Court sense, they call it. Great running backs, once referred to as possessing exceptional downfield vision, are now more commonly referred to as possessing superior instincts. "The action happens so fast," says Detroit running back Barry Sanders, "that you really don’t see anything at all. It’s a blur." Quarterbacks, meanwhile, while once commonly referred to as intelligent, plotting or deliberate are increasingly referred to as either in synch or out of synch, providing further support to the growing explanatory preference of simultaneity over sequence.
With the preponderance of evidence favoring this new conception of mind as
well as its casual adoption as evidenced by sports commentators and athletes,
fresh explanations supporting what have long been our intuitive suspicions
concerning events are needed.
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Primacy of Meaning: Historical Synchronicity
As Jung explains in his groundbreaking treatise, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, the bias toward mechanism and sequence did not occur without inflicting collateral damage in regard to our comprehension of meaning. "With the predominance of mechanistic causality the idea that there may be a correlation between events and meaning has became so thoroughly neglected that the intellect lost track of it all together." Oswald Spengler, author of the foremost treatise on the rise and fall of civilization, The Decline of the West, wrote "the test of value for a thinker is his eye for the great facts of his time." And it is not facts themselves that are important, he emphasized, but what they signify by appearing. Spengler's much misunderstood methodology marks a turning point in Western historical criticism.
Like Spengler, it is not our concern that something or someone happened at such and such time. Rather, it is the meaning of the event that we seek, and this is best described by setting it against related phenomena for purpose of contrast and comparison. Like Nietzsche's interrogation of morality, history, too, is a sign language, a symptomatology: "we must first know what it is about before we can derive any profit from it." [TW p.66]
Spengler's historic critique resonates with tribal man's consciousness where all levels of meaning are simultaneous. His method strikes a cord with the experience of illiterate natives related by Freudian psychologists. When asked questions about the symbolism of their thoughts or dreams, these natives insist that all the meanings are right there in their statements. There is nothing is subliminal in non-literate cultures. [GG p. 72]
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Apollo and Dionysus
It was Nietzsche's belief that through the ancient Greek deities, Apollo and Dionysus, existed a world of tremendous opposition of origin and aim. Apollo (the source of light, the founder of states and giver of laws), and Dionysus (the god of wine, women, and frenzy, of fertility and darkness), are the source of the derivative aesthetic categories divined by Nietzsche as Apollonian and Dionysian.
This antithesis between the Dionysian and Apollonian Nietzsche saw as one of the great riddles to which he was drawn. [WP – p. 539] Nietzsche believed these two creative but conflicting formative forces "developed alongside each other, usually in fierce opposition, each by taunts forcing each other into more energetic production…" It was through this antagonism, he said, that "they incite each other to new and more powerful births." [BT - p. 1] "The further development of art," Nietzsche contended, "is as necessarily tied to this antagonism between these two natural artistic powers as the further development of man is to that between the sexes." [WP - p. 1050]
Nietzsche saw sculpture, epic poetry, and painting as demonstrations of Apollonian art. By contrast, for Nietzsche music and dance were prime symbols of Dionysian aesthetics. In contemporary America, these conflicting aesthetic tendencies find stronger opposition and deeper contrast in the two rival approaches to the world of experience, the exploration of inner and outer space.
As a consequence of the visual bias first set forth by print technology and perspective painting, the Western world embarked on a 500 year process of expansion. A continuous line of development was achieved between Columbus, De Gama, Magellan, and the pioneers of the Eastern and Western frontier regions of the former Soviet Union and America. In the further progress of this development, the aviator sprung from the frontiersman, and the sailor of the stars (astronaut) became the natural heir to the seamen of the preceding era of exploration.
In the 1960’s, the explorers of outer space were challenged by exploration of another order. When mescaline, psilocybin, LSD and then DMT, which many consider the ultimate trip (initiating the supposed contact with alien intelligence), and the growing appreciation of mystical, Eastern religious philosophy, joined forces with the creative impact of rock musicians, the wholesale exploration of inner space had begun. These twin movements grew alongside each other with startling symmetry.
Moving in an opposite fashion from ancient Greece, where "Greek Apollonianism" grew out of "Dionysian subsoil," our interrogation here examines the growth of contemporary Dionysian upheaval alongside a previously dominant Apollonian tendency. These two Nietzschean aesthetic types, along with Spengler’s Faustian aesthetic (not interrogated here), correspond with contemporary historical events linked together in a web of synchronicity. The questions raised here are these:
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Kennedy and Huxley
In one of his many books, 20th Century German existential philosopher, Karl Jaspers, said that some things belong to the realm of the inexplicable, like the clustering of the births and deaths of significant men, and the simultaneous inception of creative ideas. "To cite them," he continued, "only gives passage to the mystery." But since historic event is, in large part, a psychic phenomena, all simultaneity (coincidence) does not lie beyond the scope of investigation.
John F. Kennedy, as the godfather of the Apollo moon mission, was a guiding light and torchbearer of the Apollonian aesthetic manifesting itself and realized. It was Kennedy, after all, who set the Herculean task before America of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Huxley, nonetheless a visionary and idealist, stood worlds apart in aim, inclination, and worldview. Huxley is generally regarded as a forerunner of dystopian fiction regarding technologic society, and is seen by many as the godfather of the burgeoning psychedelic movement that caught fire in the 1960's and has now become a global phenomenon.
It was Huxley that recruited Harvard professor, Timothy Leary. More than anyone, Leary was responsible for the introduction of LSD to the masses. Huxley himself was an advocate of LSD and took it on his deathbed. It was under the influence of LSD, Nietzsche, and rock music that Jim Morrison emerged in the late 1960’s as our Dionysian aesthetic personified. Their band, the Doors, had by no accident taken their name from Huxley’s 1954 treatise on the hallucinogenic effects of mescaline, Doors of Perception. Huxley may then be seen as the spiritual father of Dionysian aesthetic personified by Morrison and best represented in the rock gathering in Woodstock. Kennedy, in contrast, is the visionary partner of our emblematic symbol of the Apollonian aesthetic organized in the Apollo moon mission and personified by Neil Armstrong.
Synchronicity implies an underlying ground that conditions events, particularly creative or transformative ones. Kennedy and Huxley, as the critical individual representatives of rival, formative, psychic states or conceptual drives, Apollonian and Dionysian, during a decisive stage in Western history and culture, are linked by a kind of "cross-connection" or meaningful coincidence. We may then, like Jung, "entertain the hypothesis that one and the same (transcendental) meaning might manifest itself simultaneously in the human psyche and in the arrangement of an external and independent event, and come into conflict with the conventional scientific and epistemological views" [YS p. 66]. What is suggested here is that a correspondence exists between natural events and mass and individual psyche.
While the relation between the nature of events and their corresponding aesthetic have been identified, the medium for the transmission of these events to human physiology remains difficult to explain. For this pseudo-scientific terms have from time to time been employed, like ether (a mass-less medium formerly regarded to transmit radioactive waves). Jung’s term, the collective unconscious - world psyche, that unifies the individual mind to the cosmic whole - or our description of the mind as a web leave us similarly disabled in providing an identifiable medium similar to physical states. For these reasons, skeptics remain unconvinced.
Nonetheless, Huxley and Kennedy’s simultaneous passing represent more than mere coincidence. Synchronicities, particularly those that are antithetical, may be understood as periods of reconciliation, the same as intercourse acts as a momentary reconciliation of the perpetual tension between the sexes. Intercourse remains our most primal, creative act. With intercourse follows the potential for creation, same as synchronicities portend. This event expresses a synchronicity of deep structure and meaning. Kennedy and Huxley’s simultaneous passing is a cosmic reconciliation of opposites. The meaningful relationship established by this conjunction suggests that our births may be governed by influences of a higher order, synchronicity.
In life, Kennedy and Huxley were divided by time, space, and ideology. In death, they are united. And from this unity flowed the promise of the events of 1969: the culmination of 500 years of Western expansion in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space program at the intersection of the most powerful subliminal forces unleashed the world has every seen – psychedelic drugs and rock music of outdoor rock festivals, particularly the Monterey Pop, Woodstock and Altamont. Between these events came a burst of industrial creativity that would forever change the world and its economy. Frictionless capitalism it has been called, driving down inflation at the same time as unemployment, creating more new jobs than anytime in American history.
Nietzsche believed that the continuous creation of art and high culture of ancient Greece being dependent upon the tension between the antithetical art sponsoring dieties, Apollo and Dionysus. This formula indicates that the most creative moment of culture would be signified by the greatest moment tension. The source of abundant creativity in the 1960’s flowed from the antagonist energy unleashed from the erupting Dionysian aesthetic in contest with Apollo. By contrast, a cultural thoroughly dominated by one perceptual tendency (left or right brain dominance - eye or ear*) or lacking conflicting tendencies in art, science and culture, based on this formula, would appear to be fundamentally less creative. The adjustment made by the new sensory balance is paralleled by a shifting of emphasis in the hemispheric bias of the brain (left to right). * see chart (Apollonian aesthetics correlate with left side of the brain, Dionysian the right)
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1969
Apollonian/Faustian Aesthetics
| July 20, 1969 | The Apollo Moon Landing |
| Internet | Created by the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARPANET |
| Intel | Founded -- George Gilder calls Intel the most important company in the history of the world |
| AMD | Founded |
| Bill Gates and Paul Allen | Form the "Lakeside programming group" – later to become Microsoft |
| UNIX | Operating system created in Bell Labs |
| Xerox | Creates the laser printer |
Dionysian Aesthetics
| August 9, 1969 | Manson family’s Tate murders |
| August 11, 1969 | Labianca murders |
| August 13-16, 1969 | Woodstock |
In 1969, true to form, at the cross connection of these archetypal events, we see the creative beginnings of the most empowering factors driving the world economy today – microprocessors (Intel/AMD), software (Microsoft), and the Internet.
Between 1967-69, Silicon Valley sprouted 26 new firms, leading to the development of the first microprocessor in 1971, and the integrated chip in 1975. This coincides with the clustering of events signifying the collapse of the Apollonian/Faustian aesthetic. Furthermore, one cannot help but notice where the major advances in electronics occurred. The glass offices of Silicon Valley were sprouted from the epicenter of 1960’s hippiedom - Haight Ashbury. Like the Beatles, many computer programmers and software engineers of Silicon Valley have made public omissions to being influenced by LSD to the point where it affected their work.
The 1960’s were also far and above the most creative decade for rock music. A 1999 VH-1 artist survey revealed that 15 of the top twenty groups of the century came of age in the 1960’s. Three were produced prior to the 60’s and two afterwards. The top five – Beatles, Rolling Stones, Jimmy Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan – all burst on the scene during the 1960’s. Surprising enough, a higher percentage of bands that topped the charts in the 60’s are still getting playing time today than those that came age in the 70’s and 80’s. Reason: their music stayed relevant when more recent efforts did not. The music of the 1960’s was simply of better quality.
Influence by the Beatles, marijuana and LSD, the late 60’s brought on a veritable flood of inspired musicians. By 1967, three years after the Beatles arrival, innovative and creative superstars such as Jimi Hendrix, Doors, Van Morrison, Byrds (Eric Clapton), Buffalo Springfield (Neil Young), Van Morrison, Procol Harum, Simon & Garfunkel, Bee Gees, Pink Floyd, as well as the ultimate acid band, Grateful Dead appeared from seemingly nowhere. The onslaught continued in ’68 with the appearance of Fleetwood Mac, Steve Miller, Traffic, Cream, Joe Cocker, Creedence Clearwater Revival, along with the first beginnings of heavy metal (Deep Purple and Iron Butterfly). 1969 delivered huge music industry names such as Rod Stewart, Santana, Led Zeppelin and David Bowie.
However, in the last significant moments of the decade there were definitive
signals of America's incipient creative decline. On December 6, 1969 at a free
concert given by the Rolling Stones at the Altamont Racetrack celebrating the
end of their American tour, an 18 year old black man is attacked by the Hell's
Angels with pool cues and ultimately beaten and stabbed to death. During this
attack, the Rolling Stones played Sympathy for the Devil, providing a
sinister backdrop to the beating in progress before them. The Hell's Angels,
legend has it, were hired as security for $500.00 in beer to manage a restless
crowd of 300,000 persons. Tragically, three others would die that night. Two
persons run over in their sleeping bags and one unidentified person drowned.
Altamont came to be known as the dark side of Woodstock and the end of the
sixties. Less than three weeks later, on Christmas Eve, Charles Manson, who has
been frequently characterized a kind of self-appointed antichrist, refused to
accept his court appointed lawyer, imitating the stance Jesus took at his
crucifixion when he refused to defend himself against his accusers.
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Post '69
Neitzsche distinguishes between two types of Dionysianism by contrasting the Dionysian Greek to the Dionysian barbarian. In ancient times, from Rome to Babylon there existed Dionysian festivals of the type that bears a resemblance to the Greek festivals in which the bearded satyr bears Dionysus himself. Similar to modern festivals like Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Carnival in Rio, these festivals overwhelmed family life and are centered on extravagant behavior and sexual licentiousness. In ancient times as in modern, on many occasions savage instincts were unleashed, "including a horrible mixture of sensuality and cruelty" that Nietzsche referred to as a real "witches cauldron."
What kept Greece safe from the excesses of Dionysus was said to be the imposing image of Apollo. Immortalized in Doric art, the image of Apollo stood proud and majestic in its rejection of all license. "For some time the Greeks were apparently insulated and guarded against the feverish excitement of such festivals." But in time resistance proved difficult, "even impossible. Similar urges began to burst forth from the deepest roots of Hellenism itself." The function of the Delphic god Apollo was consequently downgraded. Apollo must now be content with simply taking away the destructive weapons of his powerful antagonist. Nietzsche calls this act of pacification or reconciliation the most important event in the history of Greek ritual. "Every department of life now shows symptoms of a revolutionary change." [BT – p 2]
In the history of the contemporary Dionysian upheaval, Charles Manson marks a turning point. According to Vincent Buglioso, Manson prosecutor and author of the all-time best selling crime book, Helter Skelter, the results of August 9th were in his words "the most horror filled hour of savage murder and human slaughter in the annuals of recorded crime." For Manson, music was call for the youth of the country to rise and take up arms against the establishment. His interpretation of the Beatles invoked him to organize, instigate, and prepare for a coming race war.
The Tate-Labianca murders sent shockwaves throughout America. During the trial, Manson’s bizarre behavior and anti-establishment rhetoric confirmed the worst fears about hippie counterculture. It was, after all, upon Haight-Ashbury where Charles Manson descended within days of his release from Terminal Island reformatory. This is where he first began using LSD and recruited members to his acid-orgy commune, later to become known as "The Family."
After 1969, nothing would be the same. Like Nietzsche’s observations of ancient Greece, every department in life shows symptoms of revolutionary change. The interplay of our senses had undergone a radical shift. The ascendancy of the Dionysian aesthetic brought a break with the past and along with it a new sense of identity. Youth, intoxicated with music and influenced by drugs, fashion and new technology could no longer relate to the world of their parents, whose world appeared dull and listless in comparison to their own. The uniformity of Western culture was over. A generation gap emerged as a consequence of this aesthetic shift that translated itself into new values.
McLuhan wrote that it is the changing of sense ratios that makes the older songs and dances seem odd to the youth of the new culture. [GV - p. 136]. The fact that music produced in the 1960’s is still relevant provides further indication that the 1960’s was the critical decade in our aesthetic shift and not before or after. This is why the Rolling Stones and the Beatles have stayed current through the 90’s when Elvis was already musically passe by the mid-1960’s.
In 1970’s and 80’s, both artistic production and progress outer space would prove anemic when contrasted with the 1960’s. In the 1970’s everything associated with both domains appeared to collapse and wind down. As the Apollo program wrapped up the rock festival evaporated, going into a complete hiatus between 1974 and 1980, only to return transformed as gatherings for social benefits – i.e. Live Aid, Farm Aid, etc. Their reason for being had changed, loosing much of their earlier creative edge and Dionysian quality. With the Apollo Soyez hookup in space, the space program became little more than an afterthought. NASA all but gave up in its thirst for exploration, staging repeat missions on a reusable spacecraft that resembled an airplane more than a rocket. Disco music permeated the airwaves of mid to late 70’s, lacking political and social relevance. And although the reggae and punk movements of the late seventies were akin to the underground rock movement of the sixties, they were not nearly as strong, large, or as artistic.
In the mid 1980’s, a second psychedelic wave hit with the arrival of a new drug, often referred to as "the ultimate love drug," MDMA, otherwise known as ecstasy, reawakening our slumbering Dionysian passions. In the Lalapalooza tour, the outdoor rock festival returned in the spirit of the sixties, as a creative artistic endeavor and "a happening." In celebration of the 25th anniversary since Woodstock, Woodstock II was staged with much of the hoopla surrounding the first one. There was a new vitality to music emanating this time primarily from Seattle. Bands such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam brought an early death to the transparent glam bands (i.e. Lover Boy, Motley Crue, Ratt, Vixen) that had thrived for much of the 1980’s.
The antagonistic deity Apollo, following the same pattern Nietzsche observed
in Grecian antiquity, falling limp and flaccid in its own productive sphere,
space, was now content to simply take away the most destructive weapon of its
antagonist, psychedelic drugs. The federal government moved very quickly to ban
ecstasy in 1986, placing an emergency ban on the drug. Through the Omnibus
Analog Act of 1987, for the first time in recorded history, a government
outlawed a state of consciousness. During the Reagan-Bush-Clinton years a drug
war launched that grew so extensive they would soon incarcerate more persons per
capita than any country in the world, including apartheid S. Africa.
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Dionysus Without Appollo
As Nietzsche conceived the creative production of Greek culture being dependent upon the antagonism between Apollonian and Dionysian aesthetics, evidence presented here suggests this relationship at work in contemporary America. In the 1960’s, American culture appears to be at its most creative pitch when these two aesthetic states are at rival conjunction. At its apex, 1969, we witness the creation of the most important companies (Intel, AMD, "Lakeside Programming Group") and technologies (Internet) alongside creative artistic production (particularly in regard to music) that for the Western World represents a high water mark.
While the diminished interest in the space program is a partial consequence of the Dionysian upheaval of the 1960’s, the absence of a vigorous space program has in turn diminished the productivity of the creative forces Dionysian aesthetic. Aside from the technology spillover created from Mercury-Gemini-Apollo, our thesis maintains that effort in space incited the collective arousal of artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs towards a more energetic production. This effect may be likened to the psychological impact felt on the European continent by the landing of the first Europeans in America.
Author notes that these relationships are difficult to "prove" in a
scientific sense and may be dismissed as meaningless coincidence. However, just
as the creative conjunction of the Apollo program and the Outdoor rock festival
supports Nietzsche’s arguments concerning the creative principle driving the
culture of the ancient Greeks, a manned Mars mission would provide a relevant
test case for the construct presented here.
Throughout his multiple works, Marshall McLuhan indicates that due to the onset of electric technologies and satellite communications, we are returning to a collective tribal awareness and sense ratio. The pervasiveness of TV and satellite communications, as well as the stepped up intensity of rock music and psychedelic drugs act as a kind of anesthetic for our other senses, chiefly, the neutral eye. McLuhan explains that hypnosis relies on the same principle – by isolating on one sense a hypnotist may anesthetize all others. A dentist, meanwhile, may use noise to reduce all tactility. The dilation of one sense creates what McLuhan referred to as, Narcissus narcosis, "a syndrome whereby man remains as unaware of the psychic and social effects of his new technology as a fish of the water it swims in." McLuhan further contends that at the point where the new media-induced environment becomes all pervasive and transmogrifies our sensory balance, it also becomes invisible. [MP] Societal changes occurring today, despite its accelerated velocity, are met with mounting anxiety but not social unrest and confrontation. With the critical shift in aesthetics now behind us, changes are occurring with no less rapidity, but we are less aware of them.
McLuhan foresaw the combination of the radio, TV, and computer as having the
ability to transform the entire world into "a global theater in which the
entire world is a Happening." Digital technologies, high speed Internet
access, and universal connectivity where electrical information travels at the
speed of light, hold the promise to bring the world of McLuhan to life. McLuhan
also perceived hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD as a means of achieving empathy
with the new penetrating electric environment. The electronic environment
McLuhan saw as fostering an "all at once" world where process of
linear causality is overwhelmed by a "synaesthetic discontinuous integral
consciousness." [MP] As this process takes full effect,
historical synchronicity will grow to become a more recognizable analytic
construct. VH-1 and MTV are already using similar methodology in their
presentation of rock history. When presenting a new music sensation or top rock
single of say, 1975, they will cut to political or social events of that time.
It provides a wonderful effect. A far richer experience than presenting events
in simple chronology.
The Kennedy family has enjoyed more success and yet endured more tragedy than perhaps any family in American history. JFK, RFK, and Ted Kennedy are connected in tragedy to critical events and persons in this thesis. First, as previously investigated, we have the John F. Kennedy/Aldous Huxley conjunction. Second, strangely enough, in what was a dark omen for Sharon Tate and Roman Polansky, Robert Kennedy dined with the famous couple the night of his assassination. And third, Ted Kennedy’s accident at Chappaquiddick, killing the 28 year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, occurred on July 18th, during Apollo 11’s historic flight to the moon. This event effectively destroyed Ted Kennedy’s chance at the Presidency, acting as a kind of self inflicted political assassination. All coincidences are related in meaning. They are connected to the deaths (political and real) of the three Kennedy’s.
These coincidences do not fit our pattern of pre-ordained aesthetic categories. However, they do exhibit a kind of serial connection reminiscent of Paul Kammerer’s theory of seriality; yet, at the same time appear overly obtuse to label a "synchronicity" in a formal sense. We are left to ponder their meaning. Here we are reminded of Nietzsche’s thoughts - "there could where be forces that, although we never sense them, continually influence us."
In the future, causal relationships may be divined to explain events where
today we have no explanation. To a higher, more encompassing intellect than our
own, our world may appear as unsophisticated and predictable as the observation
of birds in a nest or the growth of tree rings. This work is an effort to bring
us toward a more comprehensive view of patterns at work affecting the critical
events of our recent history.
The sudden and tragic death of JFK Jr., his wife Carolyn and sister-in-law came as surprise and shock to the nation. The day his plane went down (July 16th, 1999) marked the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 liftoff. This confirmed, once again, the prior serial connection of the Kennedy's in connection to the critical events in this thesis.
Again, how do we make sense of this? It helps to view time as it is
conceived in the East, as cyclic or spiral phenomena. Here the
Kennedy curse appears to support Kammerer's postulate of a selective, universal
field of force in operation. It tends toward unity and assists in bringing
together similar configurations together in space and time. We call this
seriality.
The above represents a critical section of a larger work intended for book publication and potential multi-media presentation/lecture series. Interested parties may contact author at jp@aztec2112.com
Author resides in Houston, Texas. Any and all feedback
concerning this or related topics is encouraged and appreciated.
March 6, 1999
© 1999