Introduction
Every single day Americans across the United States wake with the sunrise, down their morning cup of coffee, and begin work for the next 8-12 hours. Almost every form of labor studied by Bureau researchers has revealed that laborers are demanded to perform tasks in highly-elaborate patterns that often lack reasoned and rational justification as it pertains to efficiency and profitability. When Americans finally arrive back home after a grueling day of repetitive tasks, they set out preparing their final meal for the evening and ceremoniously “unwind” before resigning themselves to rest — only to begin the process again come sunrise.
Daily life for humans is notably marked by these repetitions coordinated across a vast swath of individuals and punctuated by personalized practices, which assist laborers in maintaining their sense of self. The key findings in this report center on two primary concepts: Ritual and Synchronicity. In order to understand these concepts, one must first recognize the velocities and practices of everyday life, and the power these practices hold over human endeavor.
Rituals
In “natural” society, rituals can be understood as ceremonial or repetitive practices integrated into normative modes of being. These rituals often do not have a direct bearing on cause-and-effect. Instead, rituals are defined by the meaning, feeling, or emotional sensation they impart or impose on an individual or group. While rituals are often understood by the general populace to comport with a “positive” or self-affirming meaning/feeling, our study has shown that this is far from the truth.
For example, one of the most common rituals in the workplace is the execution of meetings at regular and frequent intervals. After conducting approximately 56,000 interviews with over 22,000 Americans sampled at random, our research has concluded that these frequent meetings did not have a measurable effect on improving businesses by any benchmark. In fact, our study concludes that frequent meetings generated a “feeling” of progress and completion, often with the effect of improving the standing and power of the meeting organizer within the company and among peers. While this was the most common outcome observed by this practice, researchers also observed that this practice would often conversely generate “negative” meaning or emotional feeling, resulting in many interview subjects to create new rituals intended to maintain emotional and mental stability.¹
While early studies conducted by Bureau researchers focused on examples of obsessive or compulsive rituals, it is now our understanding that the form and application of rituals is much more widely diverse than initially hypothesized.
It is certainly possible that the rituals dominating daily life in America — that is, the 24-hour ritual delineated in the introduction of this report — conjures their own unique set of anomalous effects. Indeed, it has been observed by researchers at the SCP Foundation in their studies of Groups of Interest that mass-rituals can generate powerful anomalies with profound effects on organized society. However, our research suggests no such conclusion regarding the synchronous rituals of everyday life.
In the “paranatural” sense, rituals are processes that have a bearing on — or are influenced by — anomalous and unknown forces that typically evade direct human control. Just as meaning and consequences are produced by rituals, so are anomalous effects and objects engaged by these rituals.
The most commonly studied use of rituals for the benefit of the F.B.C. is their application in controlling the environment of the Oldest House. These rituals, when deployed at specific locations known as “Control Points,” allow the Bureau reorganize the structure of the Oldest House to improve management and efficiency. In accordance with our findings, Bureau-accepted rituals are based on relationships of meaning rather than causality, and can be used for many purposes. Certain rituals can affect the nature of Objects of Power or allow for instantaneous transport to other regions of the Oldest House. The Director of the Federal Bureau of Control is required to be trained in the nature and use of rituals to maintain the integrity of Bureau activities, the structure of the facility, and the safety of employees.
Rituals seem to obey certain rules, though these rules and laws vary depending on the ritual in question. For example, a ritual leading to the Oceanview Motel & Casino obeys the Law of Four, and implicitly may have obeyed the Law of Three at one time. At least some rituals are connected meaningfully to the Black Pyramid, which is often associated with the Board and the Astral Plane.
Some notable examples include:
- Arranging items in a room.
- Talking to walls.
- Playing a song.
- Brewing coffee.
- Reciting a poem.
- Having a conversation.
Regardless of the ritual deployed by Bureau employees, only those rituals that have been approved by F.B.C. research staff are submitted and disseminated through official interdepartmental channels.²
Synchronicity
Easily misunderstood, synchronicity is the concept that undergirds the Bureau’s hypotheses on the mechanisms and systems that guide rituals. Developed by our resident experts and founded on theories by psychoanalyst Carl Jung and semiologist Umberto Eco, synchronicity is described as an “acausal connecting (togetherness) principle.” In other words, synchronicity offers an explanation for what is often described as “meaningful coincidences” and often dismissed as “delusional thinking.”
Indeed, it is in the Bureau’s favor that the average American adopts the position that synchronicity is a debunked and far-fetched concept put forth by an altogether discredited psychoanalyst. However, the discovery of paranormal anomalies and their properties can be easily understood using this concept.
In theory, synchronicity is the principle by which parallel or correlated meaning is achieved in the outright absence of causal connections. In function and form, synchronicity is often generated or manifested through specific actions (such as rituals) or experiences (such as dreams). F.B.C. research staff have conducted extensive testing to reproduce synchronistic effects, which have proven fruitful, but these effects often evade our experts’ abilities to predict both the means by which they are produced and the outcome of these efforts.
One leading theory as to how synchronicity is produced is by making contact with parallel or alternate realities, timelines, or worlds through ritualistic and/or patterned actions. While there is some evidence to support this theory, research is currently ongoing.
- The most common ritual performed in response to negative feelings towards employers: “Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That’s why I poop on company time.” — Chase ████████, 36, Systems Engineer
- For a complete list of Bureau-approved rituals, see “Report: Workplace Rituals” (2019).