BANGKOK – As the year draws to a close, Thailand’s professional soothsayers and astrologers have issued their annual predictions. Their unanimous verdict is that 2012 will be a great year for their industry, concurrent with it being a poor year for human intelligence, rational thought, and deductive reasoning.
“2012 is the year we’ve all been waiting for,” said fortune teller Varin Buaviratlert. “With the continued hype around the misinterpretation of the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world, people are genuinely terrified of fabricated dangers like no other time in recent history.”
According to Varin, the year 2012 also figures prominently in a number of pseudo-scientific belief systems such as numerology, New Age cosmology, and the last season of “The X-Files” where it was chosen as the year of the alien invasion.
“You’d think a TV show that ended a decade ago wouldn’t still freak people out,” he said, “but you’d be wrong.”
Additionally, the continuing challenges in the world economy and national politics will also make it a very good year for the unscientific prediction industry, said Army fortune teller Lieutenant General Pattrasilp Sudsa-ngaun.
“Thais really want predictions about the government and Thaksin because they’re in denial of reality,” he explained. “All I have to do is announce that I had a dream that Yingluck would be overthrown and within an hour I get 30,000 web hits and a thousand links from yellow-mad groups on Facebook. It’s the world’s easiest job.”
The recent flood disasters and threat of terrorism add up to a “perfect storm of public hunger for bullshit,” said fortune teller Paweena Vasanaruengsuk.
“The flooding made people feel unsafe in their own homes. Terrorism makes them feel unsafe away from their homes. And people like me thrive on exploiting people’s insecurities,” she said.
“People want certainty and a sense of control over their lives in these uncertain times. Of course, no one can actually provide that. But just having a false sense of it is worth money. Lots of money.”
Overriding all the other concerns for 2012 is the greatest anxiety of all for the Thai people, according to predictor Phanuwat Phanwichartkul.
“As a nation and a people we’re all concerned for the health of His Majesty,” Phanuwat explained. “But since we’re not allowed to discuss the thing that we fear the most, we displace those fears into other anxieties. Thais are all feeling an itch that they can’t scratch. So we scratch it. For a fee.”
Astrology Academy director Kornharis Buasuang noted that the human reaction to fear was to seek out familiar comforts, such as family or an assuring authority figure.
“Studies have shown that fewer than 5% of humans think rationally when they are scared,” he explained. “And with economic recession, global crises, a crumbling environment, political failures at every level, rumors about our beloved monarch, superstitions about aliens and ancient calendars, all of it amplified by the hysterical, anti-scientific bullhorn of the Internet, 2012 might see human society devolve into complete mental regression.”
“Which is good for us, of course,” he added.
