Tag: Murphy’s Law

What kind of 2024 do we want?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn New Year

In my version of reality, what happens in the world is the total of what everyone in the population desires with enough fervor to be able to see it and taste it and experience it in their dreams and in their mind’s eyes.  We can say, then, that each of us is responsible for what we get and all of us are responsible for what our city, our state, our country, and our world experience.

The problem doesn’t just come from what the looters, shooters, and terrorists want to do, but from those who assume that the looters, shooters, and terrorists cannot be controlled. Those who think the bad guys will rule enable the bad guys to rule. This is not fate. It’s our permission.

Each of us needs to put hope and energy into what we want. That’s how what happens, happens. In our personal lives, we must be positive and expect the outcomes we desire. And yet, many people begin each week with a pessimistic, Murphy’s law expectation about what will happen. They get what they focus their energy on, so if they think things will go wrong, then things will go wrong, confirming their beliefs about how the world works.

Pessimism always seems to be in vogue, so we swear by Murphy’s Law as though it’s handed down by the Fates. In fact, by swearing by it, we create it again and again. And we smile and say, “That’s life.” Or so we presume.

If we can one day grasp what James Allen wrote years ago, “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he…A man is literally what he thinks,” we will understand that the “bad” and the “good” of life do not come from fate or Murphy’s laws but from ourselves and how we see ourselves and the world. Understanding this is the true power we have over bad things that seem to come out of nowhere.

You can, if you take the time, reduce your brain waves to the Alpha or Theta level, and meditate on the world you want in 2024.   This is more powerful than casually thinking about the best of all possible worlds because it places your consciousness at the level where it can impact reality.

I’ve written about all this before in earlier posts. We’re not corks being tossed and turned by an angry sea, but the sea itself. Seeing that is the beginning of wisdom.

–Malcolm

If it can happen, it will happen

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

Is “if it can happen, it will happen” pure cynicism, a long-ago mathematician’s theory, a quantum mechanics idea, a version of Murphy’s law, or common sense? Perhaps it is all of these.

Cox and Forshaw will tell you it’s a quantum mechanics idea in their  book, as the subtitle suggests. I agree with them.

Or maybe French mathematician Émile Borel thought up the idea in 1943. Or maybe it was in Morgan in 1866

Many of us see it as a version of Murphy’s law. When I was in the Navy, we saw Murphy’s law everywhere because that was just the nature of ships, oceans, and wars.

People will always debate where the law came from, but apparently –as Wikipedia says, “Though similar statements and concepts have been made over the course of history, the law itself was coined by, and is named after, American aerospace engineer Edward A. Murphy Jr.; its exact origins are debated, but it is generally agreed it originated from Murphy and his team following a mishap during rocket sled tests some time between 1948 and 1949, and was finalized and first popularized by testing project head John Stapp during a later press conference. ”

Common sense tells us that the old Chinese curse, ” May you live in interesting times” doesn’t really mean “interesting,” but “bad.” I think Murphy would agree. Lately, the times have been playing out abnormally as a cosmic SNAFU as those of us in the military abbreviated “Situation Normal All Fucked Up.” (Parson mon français.) Or, as the Austrians might say, “Fatal but not serious.”

SNAFU is people drinking all night in a bar while climate change is causing the seas to rise up to the doorstep. Hell, maybe “if it can happen, it will happen” is pure cynicism as we see our politicians arguing about how many angels can dance of the head of a pin while ignoring what’s really important.

Actually, I think that everything that can happen has already happened. We just haven’t noticed it yet.

–Malcolm