History: Coming Soon

[ysabetwordsmith]

Here's a look at how history can predict the future.  It's not true that "nobody" ever sees it coming.  Somebody always does. The problem is that the people who can't see the obvious ignore the ones who can.  By obvious, I don't mean that an individual situation looks obvious; it's often obscure.  I mean that the pattern  is obvious, because human history contains many cycles, which makes it very predictable in certain ways.  So when you have studied history and you know the patterns of it, and you start seeing the early moves of a cycle, you know with pretty high accuracy what is going to come next.  If you are a sane person, you will try warning others, and they will either ignore you or punish you.

Welcome to the Cassandra club.  >_<

Comments

[alatefeline]

Nod.

[apatheia_jane]

I found Nate Silver's book on prediction, the signal and the noise, really interesting. Chapter topics include weather, hurricanes, the economy, baseball, earthquakes and infectious disease outbreaks, as each chapter looks at the different ways predictions get made and responded to, from ignored to panicked overreaction, and what happens to the cassandras in different fields.

Wow!

[ysabetwordsmith]

That does sound like an interesting perspective.

[(Anonymous)]

Pretty much. But then this is why we write, no? In the hope that -someone- will learn? -kellyc

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Yes, but then I see:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/247402

And I think:
https://landing.athabascau.ca/mod/file/thumbnail.php?file_guid=130187&size=large

And then it's "Why do we even bother trying?" and I just go:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/3d/69/37/3d69370dede7c3a4effaa77d2b79dde5.jpg

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

There's a song about that (http://www.talis.net/cassandra)...

If you have Spotify you can find a recording as well.

It fades out as Cassandra loses her sound man to a bomb, with explosions all around, and a single string plucked, as if it were a telegraph key, rises from the noise: dah-dit-dit-dit, dah-dit-dit-dit, dah-di-dah-dit... over, and over, and over, and then fades too....

O_O

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

That's depressing.

Re: O_O

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Most of the album is; it's about what happens when the oligarchs get control and then things fall apart...

At the very end, though, there's "Blackthorn Winter", when hope begins to reappear... just a hint of it, enough to stay alive until spring actually comes again.

[conuly]

Back a while ago, I came across an expression I'd never heard before: "Coming events cast long shadows before".

All this year, that's been echoing in the back of my mind.