By Farouk Gulsara
A few years ago, upon the insistence of an old friend, my wife and I decided to visit her new home. She and her husband had designed and built a house on a vacant piece of land that they had bought.
They showed us around their labour of love. We were later taken aback when we were told that their live-in helper was occupying the master bedroom while they occupied her quarters. This strange arrangement came about when my friend had called in another friend, a vastu[1] specialist, for a casual visit. The visitor went beyond his call of duty to give his two cents’ worth of opinion. He asserted that the location of the master bedroom is wrong in a vashtu sense and would lead to marital disharmony. So, there went the hundred man-hours of planning to reward their marital union.
Just about that time, too, I was waiting for Malaysia’s number Uno feng shui master, who was about to share his outlook[2] for the year 2020, the year of the Metal Rat in the Chinese zodiac. It was an unremarkable report with the usual plus points in some areas and caution in others. Nowhere in his or other masters’ reports was there a tiny inkling of what Malaysians were heading into. It was the years when citizens were barbed-wired, quarantined, QR-coded, children missing the funerals of their parents who were afflicted with the Covid-19 virus and had their people flying white flags pleading for food and mercy.
That is the thing that has integrated humans from time immemorial. The desire to be in charge of their destiny and to understand this rudderless journey of life has got people believing all kinds of snake oil salesmen and fake gurus while losing their life savings doing that. And we are still struggling through this, clutching at straws.
It is intriguing that after major events, be it the 2001 tsunami, 2011 9/11 or Covid-19, some smart Alec would tell us that we had everything written in the past. They would refer to the Book of Prophecies and Nostradamus’s predictions, published in 1555. Again, all these become clear after the fact, as these predictions are in cryptic poems, subject to interpretation. Why is it that no experts decipher and decode all that is written there for the betterment of mankind?
So do the Vastu practitioners and Feng Shui sifu[3] who would tell us the obvious, like one should not buy a house at a T-junction. Of course not. The owners would risk being hit by stray cars driven by incompetent drivers or having difficulty exiting their compound. After a landslide, the know-it-all will state the obvious that it is bad Feng Shui to have a house facing a very steep hill.
Another thing that caught my mind recently is the animated TV series, The Simpsons, which has aired 37 seasons and over 800 episodes since 1989. In its half-hour cartoon, it managed to cover innumerable topics that affect the average middle-class American family: politics, pop culture and science. The interesting thing is that many of its outlandish stories appear to have ‘materialised’ from real life. Conspiracy theorists insist that those who witnessed the 2021 US Capitol Riot experienced a sense of deja vu, swearing they had seen a similar[4] situation in a 1996 episode of The Simpsons. Then the iconic photograph of President Trump, Saudi King Salman and President El-Sisi of Egypt holding a glowing orb in Riyadh in 2017. Again, this was a mirror image[5] of another 2002 episode of The Simpsons.
Do the scriptwriters have some kind of crystal ball that they can foresee future events? Of course not. Some researchers (whom others call conspiracy theorists) assert that it is part of predictive planning[6]. This psychological tool is to soften the societal changes in a pre-programmed future as decided by the powers-that-be. This psychological blueprint is also seen in movies like The Truman Show, The Matrix, Black Mirror and Westworld, which all depict dystopian futures.
Devices used by characters in the famous sci-fi TV series of the late 60s, Star Trek, have slowly been making their presence in the real world since the late 20th century. Handheld communicators (Video conferencing) and translation devices (Google Translate) are no longer alien tools. Next in line would be a teleportation kit. Were the storytellers here visionary, or did this series merely spur the younger generation to work toward this end?
Jules Verne, the French ‘prophet’ of science fiction, is credited for making many valid scientific predictions. He has been credited for being the second most translated writer in the world, after Agatha Christie. At a time when submarines were dangerous contraptions, he imagined Nautilus, an electric-powered submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869), which resembles present-day diesel- or nuclear-powered ones. Not to forget Captain Nemo’s underwater breathing suit, which was the nidus[7] for SCUBA (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus).
In The Moon-Voyage (1858), Verne correctly predicted Florida as the best launchpad for a Moon Mission, a conical space capsule and even the usage of a solar sail.
Maybe it is not all hocus pocus. Even 14 years before the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic sank on its maiden voyage, in 1898, Morgan Robertson wrote about a British liner named ‘Titan’ which went down after hitting an iceberg in his book Futility. Did the shipowners mastermind the disaster and copy the storyline to seek financial gain, as conspiracy theorists claim? Is this what they mean when they say that truth is stranger than fiction?
Other authors predicted the future [8] too. George Orwell in 1984 (1949) wrote about a world under constant government surveillance. Aldous Huxley, in the Brave New World (1931), showcased a time when antidepressants were widespread. John Brunner predicted school shootings, electric cars and hookup culture in his book, Stand on Zanzibar (1969).
These people were not magicians. They merely paid attention to their surroundings, read widely and believed in valid scientific evolution.
In the meantime, the rest of the population is stuck in their comfort zone. Still struggling with their bearings, running around like headless chickens, most stare in awe of all the things around them, confused. Like an ant perched on a leaf that is floating along a river aimlessly to the whims of the wind, these futuristic writers are trying to understand the head and tails of things.
Meanwhile, the simple man finds solace in knowing what lies ahead through palmistry, numerology, and reading olai palm leaves (Olai Chuvadi), believing that his path into the future will be smooth.
[1] Vastu shastra or feng shui is the science of making the best of the home by placing objects in the right place.
[2] https://theedgemalaysia.com/article/opportunities-and-risks-year-metal-rat
[3] master
[4] https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/the-simpsons-capitol-riots-prediction-cartoon-b1784874.html
[5] https://www.reuters.com/article/fact-check/the-simpsons-episodes-are-not-evidence-of-predictive-programing-idUSL1N2PN1VW/
[6] https://medium.com/cia-blackbook-consciousness-in-action/hollywoods-magic-mirror-predictive-programming-mass-conditioning-c07bbc2b5994
[7] https://divingmuseum.org/exhibits/20000-leagues-under-the-sea/
[8] https://thehustle.co/jules-verne-the-sci-fi-author-who-predicted-the-future
Farouk Gulsara is a daytime healer and a writer by night. After developing his left side of his brain almost half his lifetime, this johnny-come-lately decided to stimulate the non-dominant part of his remaining half. An author of two non-fiction books, Inside the twisted mind of Rifle Range Boy and Real Lessons from Reel Life, he writes regularly in his blog, Rifle Range Boy.
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