Did You See This Coming?

In a land where every town now boasts a local 'psychic,' it would seem that some less than astute Trinidadians are preferring to be fooled for money rather than for free.

How else can one explain the proliferation of this sleight of hand tomfoolery, this assault on decency and logic, where every 'two by four' mechanic and hairdresser now moonlights as fortune tellers, and could read leaves, cards, chicken feet, entrails and other devices created to fool the already ignorant and take advantage of the weak for personal gain?

Is it that the people have so lost faith in their religious and civic leaders that they are turning to tricksters to allay their fears? I don't know, but this willingness to embrace witchcraft and other dark arts are a symptom of a greater malaise, and we the thinkers of society need to ask what is driving this desire to see around corners and into the future regardless of expense to self.

A famous local psychic that i believed in went home to find burglars in her house and I wondered how she didn't see it coming. Someone suggested: "Until you see the headline 'Psychic Wins Lottery' keep your money in your own pocket" and that sounded like good advice to me. Popular US trickster Miss Cleo was prosecuted for fraud and jailed, and one can only assume she was packed and ready when they came for her.

(WARNING: Big words ahead and some thinking required!) The concept of fortune telling was effectively debunked by the hypothesis put forward known as Schrödinger's cat. To illustrate the putative incompleteness of quantum mechanics, Schrödinger applied quantum mechanics to a living entity that may or may not be conscious. In Schrödinger’s original thought experiment, he describes how one could, in principle, transpose the superposition of an atom to large-scale systems of a live and dead cat by coupling cat and atom with the help of a "diabolical mechanism" (in this case a time released vial of poison). He proposed a scenario with a cat in a sealed box, wherein the cat's life or death was dependent on the state of a subatomic particle (or whether the poison was released or not). According to Schrödinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead (to the universe outside the box) until the box is opened. Extrapolated to the vagaries of life in complex society, options are limitless depending on other external forces and choices, and because of this impossible to predict.

If your life is out of control then you need to take steps to put it right, but that responsibility is yours and cannot be abdicated or transposed to anyone else. The most important thing we ever learn is that life is about choices at every step of the road, and our power lies in how we react to the things that happen outside of our control.

Loved ones die, accidents happen, businesses fail, relationships end; these are are all par for the course of a life and cannot be shielded, predicted, avoided or deterred. New relationships begin, opportunities are created out of loss, and children are born as the counterbalance, and the well adjusted know you take the good with the bad on this journey and strive to be happy along the way. 

Proper analysis and self honesty are required to identify where you are in relation to your goals, and there are ways and means well within your personal power to adjust and fine tune all aspects of your life through discipline and healthy choices to get you back on the right road in the direction of where you want to be. Life is a wonderful adventure taken one step at a time.

Rest assured, no amount of snake oil can change your destiny or alter the occurrence of future events, and anyone willing to predict your future or 'adjust it' for a fee is fooling you and only bent on making their own dreams come true. Like all schemes that exist to take advantage of people by inflicting fear and abusing trust, this charade is no different and should be considered an act of terrorism and a crime.

Where the future is concerned, all one can ever hope for really is a good guess, and you are well able do that for yourself for free.