2020 Foresight

Having 20/20 hindsight is nowhere near as valuable as having 20/20 foresight; in fact, the claim to have hindsight, always is the excuse for lacking any foresight -- and that is the value of any understanding.  Any knowledge one claims, has value according to its predictive value, because anything can explain what happened in the past that can not be repeated -- and it is this ability to repeat an outcome in future and subsequent events, that has any value at all.  That's why there are so many geniuses with 20/20 hindsight -- and so very few, that see well into the future.  The future is where any knowledge will be tested, and not in the past -- where all the excuses and explanations will suffice -- because it no longer matters.

Yet that is where fools dwell -- largely in the past.  If it were up to them, they would do everything perfectly this time around -- but as to the future, they think it of no importance, because that is the unknowable they have no interest in finding out.  Knowledge only of the past, is a dead thing -- not worth remembering, because it is the future, we wish to explore -- and live.

That is where the course of the world is being decided -- in the future, and not reinventing the past -- even as correctly as one would in perfect 20/20 hindsight, which of course, means one wants to do nothing in the present moment where the future is unfolding and being shaped.  One is absent in this present moment -- and in every moment the future is being written.  In such a way, people write themselves out of relevance -- which is to be present at every moment that matters.  They are too busy rewriting the past -- in glorious tomes of what they would have done, if they were fully present then.

But life and the future, does not happen that way.  It is an extraordinary thing to run into a mind that is fully there -- and not preoccupied being somewhere else, doing something else, being someone else.  That's where reality hits the road -- and lives are proven and made.  The hope is always that they can make it better than it was before -- rather than endlessly repeating what they have always done before, with the same dismal results.  One hopes to break out of that chain of suffering and despair -- which is the great law of Karma, which is to get a different result, one has to do something different than what one has always done before -- with such disastrous results.

That is the only way that things can get better -- and not stay the same, and get worse.  But that is how many live their lives -- thinking there can be no other way of doing and being -- and they become one and the same.  That better being, is what one hopes to do.  Let's not get lost in all the entertainment and distractions -- that only take us farther away from each significant presence -- where all that really matters, happens.  Everything else is a delusion -- and many more become delusional in this way -- of living in the fantasy over the reality.  They come to prefer it as their default reality -- in which all their problems there, can be solve easily and perfectly -- even as the walls around them are collapsing.

That is the lure of the mass manipulators -- who create these appealing alternative worlds they can win, and exclusively dominate -- because it is a world in which only they inhabit.  It is their kingdom and refuge -- their Fortress of Solitude.  In it, they are Superman -- winning and overcoming at everything they do.  They are invulnerable.  What's not to like?

But the world we share, is not like that.  That requires a set of skills not to be the only important person there -- with all others there only to validate one's delusions of grandeur.  That is the familiar and comfortable world of 20/20 hindsight -- where one always gets it right.  So there is nothing to be learned from any mistakes.  They just get erased -- to maintain one's perfect record.  But going forward is still the problem.  One senses, they don't want to go forward, but are content with remaining where they are -- for eternity, and that is not possible.

One has to go forward, not to go backward, but remaining the same -- for all eternity, is not living, or life.  Life must go on.  We can choose to go (flow) with it, or fight it to our dying throes -- which is a much harder way to live, and eventually are battered into submission.  That's what every living being learns -- and in that process, learns to develop foresight -- and looks forward to their chances for finding out whether what they know, gives them a survival advantage.  They don't have to compete against all the others -- just against the person they are, and hope to get better.  That is the significance of their lives -- and each of us.

There is no mystery to life -- only this finding out -- each in their own way.  That is the right to life -- and to live it.