To Predict

 

On Pages 71 and 72 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer writes this about true believers and prognostication (I quote Hoffer and then I will respond afterwards.): “

 

                                                         51

 

A deprecating attitude toward the present fosters a capacity for prognostication. The well-adjusted make poor prophets. On the other hand, those that are at war with the present have an eye for the seeds of change and the potentialities of small beginnings.

 

A pleasant existence blinds us to the possibilities of drastic change. We cling to what we call our common sense, our practical point of view. Actually, these are all but names for an all-absorbing familiarity with things as they are. The tangibility of a pleasant and secure existence is such that it makes other realities, however imminent, seem vague and visionary. Thus it happens when times become unhinged, it is the practical people who are caught unaware and are made to look like visionaries that cling to things that do not exist.

 

On the other hand, those who reject the present and fix their eyes and hearts on things to come have a faculty for detecting the embryo of future danger or advantage in the ripeness of their times. Hence the frustrated individual and the true believer make better prognosticators than those who have reason to want preservation of the status quo. ‘It is often the fanatics, and not always the delicate spirits, that are found grasping the right thread of the solutions required by the future.’”

 

My response: Hoffer seems right that the frustrated at ware with the present are better prognosticators than the contented with live in the present and enjoy the status quo.

 

Perhaps a living angel could live in the present and enjoy the status quo (if it is capitalist, free and peaceful and opportunity is there), while peacefully always seeking to change, grow, become and evolve; this may not make her a prognosticator of skill, but it would prepare her for change that is coming and always be ready to adjust creatively to incoming changes, be they familiar or strange and exotic.