Archetypal Patterns

Part Two. Fractal Self Similarity.
Thriller as the Soundtrack to Casablanca.
 
By Roy H. Williams

Hear Memo...

Today we’re going to fart around a little. You up for it?

Of course you are.

Much has been written about how the 1973 album by Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, synchronizes with The Wizard of Oz (1939) as a shockingly appropriate soundtrack. The movements of the actors seem to be choreographed to the rhythm and tempo of the music. The lyrics of the songs often describe exactly what is happening on the screen.

Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz follow a similar, archetypal pattern of tension and release. Consequently, one can be overlaid above the other with surprising synchronicity.

Chaos, in science, is a higher level of order than can fit into the human brain. It is a more complex degree of organization than you and I can comprehend. Chaotic systems are not random; they are magnificent.

The formation of clouds, the shape of fire, the motion of waves, the twisting of tree branches and the birth of a snowflake are not random events but the results of chaotic systems.

A fractal image is the map of such a system.

Mathematically created, fractals are three-dimensional. In other words, they look the same from a distance as they do under a microscope.  The guiding pattern - driven by what scientists call "the strange attractor" - is endlessly repeated in an interlocking design to create - you guessed it - a larger copy of the same pattern.

And thus we begin to understand the old saying, "The reason history repeats itself is because we didn't pay attention to it the first time." Solomon said it famously in Ecclesiastes, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.”

Solomon, I believe, was speaking of fractal, archetypal patterns.

The fact that the guide pattern is woven through every iteration of a chaotic system is known as the Law of Self-Similarity.

I believe that every great success follows one of the many fractal, archetypal patterns and that you will find these patterns underlying every mass-appeal success in music, literature, movies and the arts.

Or perhaps I'm being fooled by randomness. My entire theory might be nothing more than the result of an overactive, right hemisphere of the brain finding patterns where none exist. But for the purposes of your entertainment, I'll continue.

The Wizard of Oz was made in 1939 and Dark Side of the Moon in 1973, exactly 34 years later.  Last week I wondered, “What would happen if I took the movie of the year and the album of the year from the two zeniths of the most recent social cycles, 1943 and 1983 respectively, and played the album as a soundtrack for the movie? The synchronicity should be obvious because of the similarities in the guide patterns of these out-of-balance, zenith years.”

Coincidentally, the movie of the year for 1943, Casablanca, is every bit as iconic as The Wizard of Oz and while Dark Side of the Moon remained on the charts for 10 years, Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1983) quickly became the top-selling album of all time.

Funny thing, I was right about the synchronization. See for yourself. Just start the Thriller CD exactly as the Warner Brothers logo dissolves into the map of Africa. Prepare to be amazed. (Did it ever occur to you that Wizard Academy is the only business school on earth that investigates this sort of thing? It’s in our DNA.)

Music is magic and chasing rabbits through the forest is fun. Arooo! Aroo-Arooooo!

Wizard Academy cognoscenti are the cool kids. They drive more convertibles, ask more questions, do more stunts, study more phenomena, make more money, cause more trouble and have more fun than the graduates of all the other business schools combined.

Never forget that.

Next week I'll tell you how archetypal patterns apply to business.

Aroo.

Roy H. Williams

PS - If you thought today's memo was fun, the August session of Da Vinci and The 40 Answers will make you sit cross-legged and howl at the moon.
Your eyes will cross.
You'll have brain palpitations.
You'll throw your head back and laugh.
You'll understand the meaning of life.
Taught by Mark Fox (chief engineer on the Space Shuttle project) and me, the first 14 to register will stay in Engelbrecht House at no charge, with all their meals provided. This makes coming to Austin a lot more affordable. Think about it. (But not too long. You don't want to be number 15 and have to stay off-campus in a lonely hotel at your own expense.) Check it out at WizardAcademy.org

PPS - On Wednesday, April 16, just after I recorded the audio version of today's Monday Morning Memo, Edward Lorenz, the father of chaos theory, died at the age of 90. A meteorologist, Lorenz set up a computer to help predict the weather. Each day, Lorenz would input all the mathematical weather data and the computer would draw a prediction of what was likely to happen.

One day in 1961, Lorenz wanted to see a particular sequence again, but to save time, he rounded .506127 down to just .506, thinking the tiny differences represented by the fourth and fifth decimal places couldn’t possibly have a significant effect on the outcome. Indeed, by all conventional ideas of the time, the results should have been very close to the original sequence. But when Lorenz came back an hour later, the resulting pattern was wildly different from the original.

In 1972 he presented an academic paper entitled: "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?"

His discovery of chaos is considered to rank alongside relativity and quantum mechanics as one of the 3 great discoveries of the 20th century.

Goodbye, Edward.
You blew our minds.
And we'll most certainly miss you. Aroo.