This is why all cultures have been fascinated with sorcerers and soothsayers, fortunetellers and shamans. They read tea leaves, gaze into the heavens, interpret the turn of cards, recite ancient scripts, repeat mantras or even examine the bladders of ritually slaughtered animals.
There are doomsayers who read foreboding in natural calamities and charlatans who find good news in the evil turn of events. Knowing the future gives one a sense of power, an advantage over those who do not.
At the start of each new year, the obsession with knowing the future rises to a frenzy. It is the stuff of entertainment, the subject of sober discourse, the content of media. It is driven by the awesome power of common curiosity.
Observe how media, during the new year celebrations, is suddenly populated with fung shui masters, psychics of every variety, fortunetellers and card readers, manghuhula and astrologers. Everybody wants to know whatever, from anybody who pretends to possess the capacity to foresee the future.
Those who study trends lose out in the media battle to those who read cards.
Following mankind’s age-old curiosity about the future, the ancient urge to develop the means to anticipate things that have not yet happened, science began developing rigorous methods for seeing things before they happen. Geologists tell us that earthquakes are likely to happen in certain areas although they do not yet have the ability of predict. Weathermen, for their part, have become more and more accurate in telling us how tomorrow’s weather will be like.
And then there are the social sciences. These disciplines examine repeating patterns. The repeating patterns allow us to anticipate trends. The trends allow us to make extrapolations.
But the more disciplined studies of trends, unfortunately, do not have the entertainment impact of people who wear conical hats and read crystal balls, those who shuffle cards and tell us we will be luckier this year than last.
The talking heads of scientific anticipation are crowded out of the television screen and elbowed out of the airwaves. They are simply not entertaining enough.
But there are small constituencies that seek out scientific forecasting. Golfers consult the weathermen days before they schedule games. Businessmen consult with currency analysts to try and anticipate the currency exchange rate. And economists are always consulted to tell us if we will, collectively, be poorer or richer in the new year.
Some politicians consult with fung shui masters on when best to file their certificates of candidacies and what colors to wear for their campaigns this year. At the same time, they consult with pollsters to tell them about their prospective chances of winning in the next elections.
For most of us, we can only hope that our institutions hold through the stresses of an election year – with or without the blessings of card readers and shamans.
The uncertainty created by the elections makes for a wide variance of possible outcomes for next year. The economy may pick up quickly or plod on slowly. Poverty may be significantly reduced or multiplied. We may have a period of political stability or a period of turbulence.
Much hinges on how the campaign proceeds, how credible the results will be and who ends up on top of the heap.
We don’t need the tea leaves or the crystal ball to know that if the institutions of our electoral democracy get messed up, things will go bad for our country. We don’t need fung shui to know that if the wrong guy ends up on top, anxiety may set in and our progress will again be put on hold.
The paradox of democracy is that it is a government by amateurs; but it is a government that works only because of the collective competence of those who govern. It is a government that is constrained by the limits of rights but strengthened by a shared sense of responsibility for our collective fate.
Democracy is made vibrant by the availability of choice on who should govern; but it is constantly undermined by the frailties of passing emotion and the passions of the least informed. It is easier to succumb the agitations of the moment; much more difficult to grasp the historical necessities of the broader landscape of the time and place that we share.
Elections are the essence of democratic practice. They give life to the promise of informed choice. They allow ordinary people to choose their leaders.
But elections are also tremendously polarizing exercises. They create deep fissions and induce intense rivalries. They subdivide constituencies and break up communities.
Elections are interesting because they cause so much investment of emotions, so many partings of ways. If they were less so, elections would be dull and people will be come to think that they are given no choice. The democracy they want to enjoy will be suspect and the perpetually discontented will say that freedom is a fraud.
It is part of the democratic paradox that elections sometimes seem to threaten the wellbeing of a free people, that such exercises are a necessary evil that causes inflation, breeds animosity and induces inflation. This year, for us, that paradox is a bit more emphatic.
On the first day of each year, it has become habitual for us to grit our teeth and muster all the hopefulness we have available. We expect the best and prepare for the worst. Each year, it seems, is a new battlefield where, privately, we all wish to survive and thrive and collectively we all wish to progress against odds that always seem great.
This year, once more, we are staking our freedoms and our wellbeing on the line with what might seem like an unfounded faith in the common wisdom of our people. We are undertaking a ritual commanded by our commitment to the proposition that democracy is the best means to ensure that prosperity is available to the least among us.
May this be a good year for our nation – with or without the assurance of soothsayers and the consolation of ancient wisdom.
May this be a good year for our people. We deserve a life of abundance and certainty, of freedom and security. For all the failings we sometimes inflict on ourselves, we are a cheerful and inventive people – in large part because we are willing to invest too much in the vagaries of fate.
A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!