March 2012

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.

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.

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.

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.