This book, appropriately written before the unpredictable events of 9/11, by a professor of history at the University of Toronto, addresses one of my favourite topics- the lack of predictability and the apparent randomness of everything that impacts our lives on this mediocre small rocky chunk of matter orbiting a medium-sized hot star on a small spur of a medium sized spiral galaxy. That may seem too bleak, cynical and pessimistic but is not nearly as bleak, cynical, and pessimistic as many of the predictions that have fortunately not yet come true in this documentary about our species inability to accurately predict almost anything. Wilson acknowledges that we all need a vision of the future to plan in the present- this documentary is not about the everyday personal planning for the future of ordinary individuals, but about those who set themselves up as experts in predictions for all of us, especially those who claim to have religious revelations about the Rapture, the Apocalypse, the Second Coming, and the end of the world. He acknowledges that he only deals with this from the perspective of largely Christian Anglo-American history, but the long history of predictions that have been proven false is dealt with in a scholarly, mocking, and often comical manner. And the escape clauses used by prophets to explain their apparent failures and retain or even increase their following when the date of the predicted calamity passes uneventfully are quite ingenious. But their secular Enlightenment philosopher compatriots did no better than the religious fanatics in predicting the future.
Much of the history of religious predicting involved, and continues to involve decoding the meaning of the bizarre events described in the Old Testament Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation, using strained arithmetic calculations that had to be recalculated when the timing proved wrong and the millennial reign of Christ did not develop on schedule. John Napier invented logarithms in the sixteenth century to identify the Beast in the Book of Revelation. According to Wilson, as of the time of writing at least eight million Americans continued to believe that the Second Coming would occur in their lifetime. Many of the millennialists in the Middle Ages were simply delusional megalomaniacs. It seems to me that the simple flawed mathematics that they used to predict the future in most of history has now been replaced by complicated computer algorithms, but should we expect them to be much more accurate? Are the confident tech gurus equally delusional?
The predictions of utopia as envisioned by the Marquis de Condorcet or dystopia as exemplified by Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and George Orwell, are discussed and their consequences were horrific, including the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution, the acceptance of eugenics leading to The Holocaust, and the Soviet Gulag, although George Orwell’s writing was intended as a forewarning.
I have childhood memories of being confused and skeptical listening in on discussions between my devout Baptist parents and my maternal uncle, an ordained minister of the Pilgrim Holiness church, about whether the Second Coming would occur before or after the millennium.
Wilson has some good advice for would-be prophets. “It is a good idea to avoid specifics such as the date of the end of the world. ….should someone get it right, there will be no one around to appreciate the call anyway.” And if you can backdate your predictions to make it seem like you predicted what has already happened, so much the better. Or pick a date well beyond your lifespan, if you are unconcerned about your posthumous reputation.
This is a clever fun book, as relevant now as it was when it was written.
The Passionate Reader 