I used to be a proper modern, believing in logic and reason. But now I believe in prophecy.
Well, not exactly. It's just that now I get the point of prophecy.
Back in the day, before science, humans had very little idea of how the world works, and very little ability to predict what other things and animals and people might do to them.
So humans imagined everything animated by its familiar spirit. Including rocks and rivers. When you think about it, it makes sense. There is no predicting what the folks in that village on the other side of the hill might do next. Nor is there any predicting when the river will suddenly drown half the village in a flood and leave rocks behind the size of lions and tigers and bears.
But it sure would be nice to know what the rocks and the rivers and the guys in the village on the other side of the hill might get up to next. Enter prophecy.
Today, of course, we have science, and it is real good for the design of bridges and cars and jet airplanes. But we still don't know what we really want to know, like will it rain next week. So yeah. There's a real demand for people who can predict the future. And like in olden times, these prophets often get their secret knowledge from divine sources.
I've found it really helpful to read When Prophecy Fails, a scientific study of a group of ordinary Americans by three social scientists, Festinger Riecken, and Schachter. These ordinary folks received information telling them that the world was going to end in a great flood, but that they would be saved by extraterrestrials that would fly them away in their flying saucers.
It seems to be a common theme: end of the world; a big flood; only the chosen will be saved. I suppose that, down through history, the world has indeed ended for many small communities in a flood. And only a very few, a chosen few, have survived.
We have the same thing going on right now. End of the world due to climate change; rise of the oceans and coastal flooding; only the few will be saved. If we act now. And like in olden times, the science is pretty skimpy, because we just do not know very much about how the climate changes. It might be due to carbon dioxide levels; it might be all about the level of cosmic rays seeding clouds. It might be the precession of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. Or something else, about which we are totally ignorant.
And then there is the whole question about the nation's future: Trump or No Trump. Or children: will they grow up to be healthy and wealthy and wise? Or that tall handsome stranger.
It's comical really. Even with all our science and logic and reason we still do not have knowledge of the really important things: the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. We do not know why there should be a universe rather than no universe; we do not know why there is life rather than no life. We really don't even know how life works, even though our bodies and our minds are coded to create and continue life.
I mean: how come scientists haven't yet strung a bunch of DNA together to create a new virus, from scratch?
And so, we are tempted to take the short cut to knowledge, and fake it with prophecy. Everybody does it, so don't be ashamed. We would do anything to reduce the uncertainty in life and know what the future will bring.
But the truth is that life is a mystery, wrapped in an enigma. And nobody knows nothing, at least not about the future, which is the only knowledge really worth having.
Meanwhile, we can at least fake it, and prophesy. And how.
As an auto mechanic I’d often issue prophesy to my customers about the future of their cars. It always was hit and miss. Experience taught me the longer I was in the business my experiences at being correct were often tainted in an over abundance of wanting more profit. Sometimes it worked and sometimes the tow truck humbled me.
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