2007-12-23 05:09:00
I have written a lot of material over the years, but I have rarely made predictions. The reason I rarely do this is my realization that no matter how inspired you think you are it is virtually impossible to be 100 percent accurate in all the details of the future. If all the future is written in stone then there is no free will. If one believes in free will then he also has to believe the future is not set and impossible to predict in all its variables.
As I said earlier there are some things that are close to 100 percent predictable, but there are also many things that are not.
I remember when the tabloids used to publish predictions by psychics at the beginning of each year. Some of them were pretty outlandish like: "Elvis will return and run for president," or "Aliens will hold a press conference on the White House lawn" -- things like that. Then there were a handful of predictions that seemed like possibilities. Almost every year some psychic predicted that we would have an economic collapse or a great natural catastrophe.
I was curious how accurate these would turn out to be so I collected them for a number of years and after a period of time looked back on them to see if anything came to pass. As it turned out I was amazed at how inaccurate these predictions were. I never found one that really hit the nail on the head.
I did find one though, but the psychic was not a part of an annual prediction. About a week before Princess Diana died I was checking out some groceries when I noticed a headline in a tabloid about a warning from a psychic to Diana. I picked it up and read it and noticed that she was giving Diana a warning that her life was in danger and she must take certain precautions.
About a week later Diana died and I thought to myself "finally, someone got a prediction correct. I'll bet this will be in the news or at least the tabloids." The funny thing is though that I never saw another word about this prediction.
If one wants to predict the future the first thing he must realize is that he will not be 100 percent accurate, but if he follows the right procedure he can be a lot more accurate than the average psychic.
Here is what must be done.
First he must gather all information available on the subject and absorb it and let it circulate through his brain, mind and spiritual self.
Secondly, he must eliminate all authority from the past and project into the future based on what he knows for sure, not what someone tells him is supposed to be.
Translation: Many people do not see the future correctly because they are following a prophet of some kind, a book or interpretation that is supposed to be the final word from God. This distracts their mind from perceiving the true reality.
Thirdly, he must contemplate that which he wishes to know while raising his consciousness to the level of Spirit.
If he does these things he will see some things that will definitely come to pass but then see others as probabilities. Where free will is still largely at play he may see a 70 percent chance that a certain thing may happen.
Now the economy is a little like the weather. It has so many variables that it is difficult to predict with a high degree of accuracy. But I will tell you of a group who have had the worse track record of any group when making predictions on the economy. No its not Merrill Lynch or Wall Street, but prophets of doom. Ever since I started paying attention to the economy back in the Sixties there have always been doomsday predictions out about the economy. These predictions not only came from false Messiahs and spiritual leaders, but also students of the economy.
Here is basically the trend of the predictions that I have observed over 40 years.
The economy is going to hell in a hand basket within the next five years. Yes, a great depression that will eclipse the 1929 crash. They always say it will come within a few years -- usually around five. Then after the five years pass and the economy survives and sometimes prospers another book or teaching comes out with the same theme, but different words, and still giving us another five years or so. For about eight sets of five year periods I have watched the predictions of economic doom come and go unfulfilled.
The funny thing is that a stopped clock is right twice a day so I figured that we are lucky nothing really bad has happened to the economy since about 1938 as the depression was ending. If it had, the current prophet of doom would have surely taken full credit and gained a following.
That said let me repeat my prediction:
"The banks in the United States will not fail over the next twenty years even though they will have problems that will cause many to think doomsday is around the corner."
As I look at the banking system and use my own common sense while ignoring prophets of doom I see no reason that the banking system would completely fail over the next twenty years. Some banks may fail but the system as a whole should remain intact.
Yes, there are problems -- the national debt and deficit spending but if this trend continues the worst that will happen will be some strong corrections. The value of the dollar or the stock market should not drop any more than a strong correction of around 30 percent unless something extraordinary happens.
The worst case scenario would be a nuclear attack. This could destroy the banking system as we know it, but then after the pieces are picked up a banking system would be reestablished.
The chances of a nuclear device going off in the next twenty years and causing great alarm by killing many people is about 80 percent over the next twenty years. The chance of an all out war where much of America is destroyed and all systems break down is about 15 percent. Our leaders will have to make some major errors to allow this to happen, but it could.
I believe there odds are greatly in favor of the banking system holding up over the next twenty years, but this is not a sure thing -- just highly probable.
We had better hope it holds up because there is no group of people ready for what would happen in a total breakdown of our society. If you want an idea of what would happen read my story "Journey's End".
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
-- Alan Kay
Copyright © 2007 by JJ Dewey, All Rights Reserved