Precognition – do we need the power?

More often than not a superpower that I have heard most people desire is the sight to foresee the future. Also called precognition, considering the unidirectionality of life, ‘future-sight’ does seem like an amazing power. After all, no matter how many different routes one takes in life, there is no coming back. Much like the popular video games of the early 2000s – Dave, PoP, etc. or even the newer hits like Temple Run, you cannot stop, you cannot turn back – the only way in life is ahead. A superpower then, to know what will come beforehand seems like such a great advantage! But on deeper thought, is it really so advantageous?

The thought of writing this article came to me while stuck in a traffic jam on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. It is a 95 KM access-controlled highway with max speeds of ~100 kmph and a traffic jam there is as unusual as a cold day in Mumbai! But here I was, stuck in an hour-long jam. You see, my trip began in Thane at 6:35 am. As usual, it was me, my car, and Google maps who were travelling together. At the beginning of my trip, G-maps showed me a journey of 3 hours and 40 minutes with the whole route as green as fresh pastures. 40 minutes into the journey, I received a ‘precognition’ from Google saying that I was going to get stuck in traffic for an hour. But instead of being mentally ready and prepared to face this oncoming predicament, here I was – angry, sad, and sulking that my trip was going to be so boring and slow. Each passing minute that I moved towards the big red patch on my car screen, was filled with dread. Instead of using the time I had to prepare for the traffic onslaught, I whiled it away in thinking how I was so unlucky and why every person had to step out with their cars on exactly that day! Precognition waste, right?

Imagine a similar instance in life if Google or some other tech giant could get us a Life Maps precognition device…!

Carpe diem – Seize the day!

Assuming the future stays hard locked and all that we humans do is play our part and accept destiny – for no matter what you’d do, the future would oppose and default to the same outcome!

What would you do if you’d know that you were going to get hit by a truck after 2 hours or the market was going to crash and you were going to lose a job the next day? What if a red patch in your life was coming your way and you were informed in advance? Would you use it to ready yourself well for the struggle or would you while it away in sadness and grief? Although I am sure most would answer the former, a more likely case builds up for the latter?(Millgram, et al. 2015). The fact that there is an oncoming sour patch in your life would most often dull the sweet-savory present part. Destroying today’s pleasure because of impending strife – haven’t the best-written volumes on it?

14 million six hundred and five!*

Let’s assume it the other way now. What if we in all our powers could actually change the future by our acts!

What if you did have precognition and you could work on it, prepare yourself and steer your life away from that ugly red patch. Now that would be some power! But then, the fact that you ended up choosing to act on the precognition changes the future thereby changing the entire context too! Your new actions have thus bred new futures. For every course correction for every red patch coming your way, you’d end up farther away from your destination than you ever planned. As Nicholas Cage in his movie ‘Next’ opines –

The problem with the future is that every time you look at it, it changes.

Now if that were the case, would precognition actually simplify our lives or complicate them further?

In my life, I have always believed that a man makes choices and these choices summate to his future. As choices by their very definition hold the power of change, so does the future. But the beautiful thing about these choices is that you cannot look beyond them. Every time you do, you end up changing the way the future is built. Life then, for me, is a mix of both the above assumptions but with a conclusion that remains the same. Foreseeing the future up until a choice is to be made seems like a clear advantage nonetheless but is still a recipe for destroying the present. The element of surprise in happiness, in sadness, in ecstasy, in grief, in knowledge, in ignorance, in life, and in death is what makes us ‘real’. And this reality is the womb of all our humanity. Thus, Google maps in my car while I travel is the most of precognition that I’d like in my life. For everything else, I will live and learn as I always have, because

The future is not something to predict but it is something to build.

Bibliography?and endnotes

Millgram, Joormann, Huppert, and Tamir. 2015. “Sad as a Matter of Choice? Emotion-Regulation Goals in Depression.”?Psychol Sci?26(8):1216-28.

Quotes from Franco Ongaro @ESA, H.G. the novel 'The Time Machine', and the movie 'Next'

*From Dr. Strange’s precognition ability to look at all possible futures against Thanos