Foresight

Hindsight is clearer than foresight. Old saying with obvious validity. Being a humanist requires foresight. And that foresight may not be clear, but it is better than bumbling along with an acceptance of outdated assumptions about life and morality. Finding the place between foresight and myopic idealism is hard. Effective action with foresight is based on education, analysis and compassion for the living conditions in any environment. 

A glaring example of poor application of foresight is the bungling of the political arena by the Egyptian military. By trying to head off fundamentalism, the military overstepped and triggered cultural tribalism and vendettas. Nationalist cohesion is never achieved without bloodshed, since nations are arbitrary collections of diverse, often feuding, populations. However, that brand of cohesion is short-lived. This may have been foreseen with some intelligent analysis. 

Foresight, which is easily influenced by idealism, must be tempered by real experience of people and the world. Those who bill themselves successfully as psychics, for example, always modify their foresight with the inevitable variables of randomness. "You may find..." is a common lead to a psychic "prediction". This is not necessarily the hedging of a con artist. It can be the honed skill of a person who has seriously made foresight a focus of his/her life through daily practice. It is neither mystical nor fraudulent in every case. 

Hindsight, practiced rigorously and honestly, is crystal clear. It is the foundation of foresight in the practicing mind. Sherlock Holmes references past cases whenever he leaps to a brilliant prediction of a criminal's behavior. Paying honest attention to my own life's past and mindfully utilizing it in today's present leads to foresight into my potential future. It is not magical thinking. It is a scientific approach to my realities.