FlashForward Talk | What the future holds according to Nostradamus and other seers

The Future: A Million Dollar Industry

There’s a lot of money to be made in telling the future, even if you’re not actually saying anything. There have been charlatans using cold reads and body language to convince people that they knew the future for centuries.

That’s the great thing about the future: You can pretty much say whatever you want. A woman comes in and wants to know if she’ll ever find the love of her life. What does a charlatan tell her? Of course she will, it’s just a matter of time. The psychic then describes some perfect amalgamation of a man and the customer leaves happy.

No one wants to really know the future if it’s going to be bad. They want to know they are going to get the job of their dreams, the man or woman that is the one and that their husband is going to get better. We would rather be left in the dark or even be in denial.

If you have ever met someone with the gift or prognostication, then you know that it’s sometimes more than a curse than a gift. They don’t have the luxury of just telling people what they want to hear. They feel the need and the obligation to put the bad with the good. People don’t want to hear that.

That’s why the charlatan psychic industry is to popular and thriving in this time of indecision. No one wants to make decisions, they would rather think that it’s fate and it’s not their responsibility.

The Norse Belief of the Future

I am a big aficionado of the culture and mythology of the Vikings. It’s become a hot topic again thanks to the popularity of television shows like “The Avengers” and movies like “Thor.” They had a relatively common polytheistic hierarchy with Odin being the primary leader.

What makes their mythology unique was their belief of the future. For then, the future was already laid out and there was no way a human or God could escape it. They were hard believers in the idea of fate and there was no free will.

While us humans in Midgard may have not been privy to the machinations of fate, the Norse believed that whatever was going to happen no matter what they did. The Norse were a very battle hardened race and I am sure the idea that their future had been planned out already made it easier to go into battle.

Their decisions have already been made and they were simply following through on the great plan. The fate of the gods was well known. The gods waited for the time of Ragnarok when there would be a great battle with the frost giants and many of the old gods would die.

People generally want to know the future so they can help change what might happen. They want to prevent or cause something to occur and change how things were naturally going to play out. This would not have been possible in the Norse culture. Even if you knew the future, there was nothing you could do to change it. You could only prepare for it.

The Truth About Doom

One of the biggest concepts that prognosticators through the ages have attached to is the eventual end of the world. The Bible talks about it, the Norse had Ragnarok and so on. For some reason, history seems to be obsessed with the end of all things.

The funny thing is that no one has successfully predicted it yet, or else I wouldn’t be here to write about it. Doomsday dates have been around for ages and they all come and go without so much as a wimper.

People have killed themselves rather than face the end only to have their deaths mean nothing when everything turns out fine. “Prophets” have raised millions of dollars to help people prepare for the rapture only to see the date come and go. They end up having to make some kind of excuse to postpone it, and then hope no one things about it again.

The truth is that there are far too many variables to accurately predict the end of the world. Even honest and truth prognosticators can't predict something like that because one tiny change in history could postpone it for millenia.

It's such a major even that if it were predictable, it would be like a beacon in the time stream. There wouldn't be one or two people predicting, it would be everyone. People who say they can predict the end of all things, obviously don't know the implications that would have on the psychic world.

What Would You Do If You Knew The Future?

There are many movies, books and television shows that have dealt with the idea of prognostication. The ability to see or perceive future events has been a powerful tool through the ages. Regardless if these oracles were real or not, the leaders of nations listened to them.

In modern times, the role of the oracle is vastly different. Many people who have the ability don’t understand it and those that do are afraid to show it for fear of persecution. I have often wondered what I would do if faced with such knowledge.

Would I immediately go out and try to verify or change the outcome? Would I take advantage of it for my own gain? Would I do nothing and simply let nature takes its course? There are people that see murders, plane crashes and other events before the happen, but many times stay quiet. Most of the time they don’t understand that what they had was a vision until it’s too late.

I know of a person that once had a vision where they saw someone killed. She thought it was a nightmare and didn’t think much about it until the person ended up on the news as a missing person’s case. This is where she thought long and hard about helping or not. She had an idea where the body was because of the vision, but never told the police for fear they would think she did it.

The police ended up fighting the body and catching the killer, but my friend never said anything.

Portents of Disaster: The Mothman

The future is difficult to predict, but throughout history there have been spirits or beings that have known about impending disaster and showed up to view or warn people. The evidence of their actual existence is questionable for some, but others have many eyewitness accounts to back it up.

Perhaps one of the most publicized beings that came around prior to a disaster was The Mothman. Point Pleasant, West Virginia was the home of a bridge collapse in 1967 that killed 46 people. In the year prior to the collapse, people in the area began seeing a strange being called The Mothman.

Eyewitness accounts said the being was 7 feet tall with red eyes and could fly. Skeptics said that the creature actually matches descriptions of the Sandhill Crane and is most likely what they saw. While there were not many reported sighting of the The Mothman after the bridge collapse, there is evidence that others have continued to the see being through the years.

The Mothman has become a part of the popular culture and folklore of the area and spawned festivals and even a couple of movies. There is debate on whether The Mothman is a supernatural creature, cryptozoological creature, alien or hoax. It was brought into the main stream in the 1970s with the publication of The Mothman Prophecies and again in 2002 with the release of a movie based on the book.

The debate continues 40 years after the original sightings and it doesn't look like a consensus on creature is coming anytime soon.

Flash Forward: A Series Gone To Soon

My interest in future prediction first began while watching the short lived, but awesome series “Flash Forward.” People around the world passed out and saw a few minutes of their future on a specific date. The rest of the series was about figuring out what happened and people dealing with the knowledge they learned or didn't learn in some cases.

One of the coolest aspects of the show was for those people that didn't have a vision of the future. That meant that at some point and time they died and weren't alive at that time. It was interesting watching people deal with their visions as well. Some of their visions were completely mundane, while others offered hope and still others showed traumatic events.

It only lasted one season and it was pretty clear early on it wasn't going to make it and still I watched. It made me think of the future and how fickle a thing it is. Does knowing your future mean you can change it or do we have no chance to take it?

I was thoroughly saddened when the show went off the air especially after what I thought was a great cliffhanger. I may never know what happened to the people on that show, but I am glad that it gave me an interest in future prediction. I always had an interest the paranormal, but discounted future prediction because of the idea of the future being predictable. This show showed me a completely new way of looking at it.

The Out of Body Experience

There are few paranormal experiences more desirable to people than the out of body experience. Often it happens by accident while a person just begins to go to sleep or when waking up. The out of body experience involves the spirit or energy of a person leaving the confines of the body.

Many people say that they see a string attached to them and connects them to the body. If that string should break, then the person would lose contact with the body and be unable to reenter. There are people that can have a out of body experience at will.

These travelers are able to fly great distances and through walls and other objects. There have been reports of people visiting not only other homes and cities, but outer space and other realities. I have read reports where a person wakes up to find themselves in another version of themselves. There are also reports of strange and other worldly dimensions.

While uncommon, people have also seen other beings who reside in the non-physical plane. Some are helpful or reclusive and others are scary and violent. There are worries by some of their body being inhabited by one of these beings should the soul or spirit stray too far from the body. There are many techniques that people to use to create the out of body experience, but it they all generally all involve meditation and visualization techniques.

The out of body experience is closely linked to the near death experience and may simply a different form of the same phenomenon.

Flash Forward: 20 Years Down The Road

The past two decades have seen a revolution of technology in the world, and I don't see that changing any time soon. For those of you that remember the 80s and 90, you have seen the world transformed by computers and the Internet.

We went from giant clunky televisions and cell phones they size of pop bottles to plasma screens and cell phones the size of a deck of cards that can do far more than just call people. The last five years the tablet has added another technological evolution that will only continue to grow.

In 20 years, there will likely be no paper books produced at all. Everyone will have some sort of electronic reader device and be able rent, buy and borrow every type and genre of books imaginable. Computers will continue to invade out life not only in work and home, but also car and all about us. Billboard will be electronic and in tune to change with the needs of the people passing by. The advertising technology that Facebook and other websites developed will be used outside the Internet.

Cars will be completely electric or hydrogen-based and gas stations will charge instead of sell gas. The world will be filled with every type of renewable energy and coal fired power plants will be in the process of decommission. The price of coal and oil will continue to increase leading to a revolution in fuel and power.

The seeds are already planted and the world is already beginning to lean in these directions. Keyboards will be replaced with hand gestures and laptops will be completely be replaced by tablets.

Living With The Paranormal

Spirits or ghosts that live in the same homes we do are often there to stay no matter how we feel about them. It often starts with you noticing little things like figures out of the corner of your eye and things being lost and then being found right where you left it several days later.

The majority of the spirits that abide in our homes are complete harmless. You can spend years living in the home without hearing a single peep from them. Others make themselves known right away as a way of telling you “Hey, I'm here and you're just going to have to live with it.”

Problems arise when the spirits in the home are either malevolent or mischievous to the point of being dangerous. These spirits can attack people in the home and make it miserable to live. You can try and learn who the spirits might be by researching the former occupants of the home and then trying to either help them move on or just learn to live with them.

Unlike other intruders in your home like mice or insects, there aren't many ways to keep the spirits out of the home for good. They are non-corporeal, so you can't just lasso them then throw them out. It's always best to come to a mutual understanding with the spirits and live peaceably. For malevolent and mischievous spirits, you may need to either move from the home or have the house blessed with the hope that it drives the spirits away.

Blessings often alleviate the problems for a while, but eventually the spirits are able to return and the harassment starts anew.

Prognosticator's in Movies

The thing about telling the future is that it's a fickle thing and Hollywood has been using this for decades. They have been portrayed as hanky wearing gypsies to evil blind witches with a magical eye. Thank you to Clash of the Titans for that one.

My favorite portrayal of prognostication was in the Nicholas Cage movie Next. Cage plays a cut rate magician in Las Vegas, but in reality he has the ability to see a few minutes into the future. The duration of how far he sees into the future varies, but mostly its a few minutes.

Cage has a considerable amount of control over the ability and can use it at will. A trait not many prognosticators have and one that they would surely envy. He's not only able to see the future, but also the directions things take if different decisions were made. For example, if he goes left one time and right the other.

It's a fast paced action film, but I thought it was done very well and shows prognosticators in a good light. I can't stand how they do prognostications in the Final Destination movies, which is funny considering that it's actually how many people have visions.

I will admit that my main problem is simply the fact that the movies are lame. The idea that some person gets a random vision and upsets death's plan and then death takes revenge was played out after the first two films. The fact it has gone on and on and on, is just annoying.

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