Random Thoughts

THE LAW OF UNRELATED THINGS

I wonder. A lot. About a lot.

To what extent are coincidences unplanned, uncoordinated and unrelated?

To what extent are planned occurrences deliberate, independent and timed?

Ramblings much? Perhaps. Onto something? Maybe. The enterprise of writing , after all, has always involved a degree of madness.

With more than 7 billion people on the planet, who can truly tell what each of them is planning or thinking? Yet, history has shown us that there are events that have happened in different parts of the world, at the same time, involving different people.

For example, March 20th 2023 will see mass action in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Tunisia.

As I was pondering on the probability of these events being coincidences or coordinated, I came across two interesting vantage points.

One was by Klaus Conrad, a psychiatrist who while writing on schizophrenia in 1958 coined the term ‘apophenia’. A human propensity to unreasonably seek patterns in random information.

In the second, two economists in their book ‘Freakonomics’ explore the ‘law of unrelated things.’ This is the phenomenon where seemingly unrelated things somehow appear to have a connection.

What interesting coincidences have you come across?

17 thoughts on “THE LAW OF UNRELATED THINGS”

  1. I think this happens more often than we probably think, but once you realise its happening you will see it more and more. I believe Conrad is right, we like to put order into chaos so we seek patterns where none exist and try to explain everything.

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  2. Carl Jung talked about meaningful coincidences but I’m not sure if he made connections to events that seem to coincide across the globe simultaneously. Maybe there’s an astrological component. I mean, the moon has a strong effect on our oceans with its tides coming and going – I believe there is a connection with the cosmic travels of the planets, at least in part. It changes the collective energy in some way…

    Or something.

    Nonetheless, it’s an interesting phenomenon to think about. 🙂

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    1. Hey Writer of Words 😃

      Carl Jung was spot on about meaningful coincidences.

      I had never thought about the connection between our moon and oceans. That’s great food for thought.

      Thanks for making time 😊

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  3. This is entirely personal and without allocation of any scientific methodology for justification.
    Each human, each “animal” and perhaps each plant gives off a vibe at some level that cannot be confined by human understanding (though I am sure people are exploring that on some level at some engineering school). Even the materials that make up the planet vibrate at variance.
    My personal belief is that there does not have to be a human understanding of such circumstances, but there is the possibility that the vibe can be shared on some level. Further, the vibe is subject to “time”, which science has arbitrarily created but remains something that science acknowledges is “beyond us”.
    Perhaps everything can vary its vibe, or it’s vibe changes without their interference, in order to be in sync at some level we don’t have much hope of understanding. Sometimes, you just have to go with it.

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  4. Love your post.
    Thought provoking.

    “They say that if a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian rain forest, it can change the weather half a world away. Chaos theory. What it means is that everything that happens in this moment is an accumulation of everything that’s come before it. Every breath. Every thought. There is no innocent action. Some actions end up having the force of a tempest. Their impact cannot be missed. Others are the blink of an eye. Passing by unnoticed. Perhaps only God knows which is which.

    All I know today is that you can think that what you’ve done is only the flap of a butterfly wing, when it’s really a thunderclap. And both can result in a hurricane.”

    Catherine McKenzie

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    1. Hey Catherine 😃

      “All I know today is that you can think that what you’ve done is only the flap of a butterfly wing, when it’s really a thunderclap.”

      Such a beautiful encapsulation ❤️

      This is a wonderful school of thought!

      Thanks for making time.

      Reply

  5. It’s all connected, at least that’s what I’ve come to see! Even the disconnected stuff, is connected. Maybe not to our story, but certainly to someone else’s. I’m constantly amazed how things I thought were terrible things ended up setting the stage for something really good, a few years down the road, and even good things led to better things. If we don’t see a connection, maybe a much longer view is needed to patiently wait to see how it unfolds!

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  6. What an interesting post, Billy. I think that as humans we are wired to make meaning – the something that went wrong in our life helps us figure out what we need to change. Maybe that combined with our penchant for story-telling makes everything connected – even if at the physical level they might not be. It’s a theory at least!

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