CHAPTER
2
DISCUSSION
Roles of Fortune Telling in the Society
Fortune Telling as Business
During
the ancient times, soothsayers were prized advisers to the Assyrians
(Wikipedia). With the rise of commercialism, the sale of fortune telling
practices adapted to survive in the business society and with the creation of
money, fortune-telling became a private service and a commodity within the
marketplace. Ronald H. Isaacs, an American rabbi and author, spoke out, “Since time
immemorial humans have longed to learn that which the future holds for them.
Thus, in ancient civilization, and even today with fortune telling as a true
profession, humankind continues to be curious about its future, both out of
sheer curiosity as well as out of desire to better prepare for it."
Fortune
telling is instantly called a “big business” which is “booming”. Fortune
telling reaches across all of these different markets. In all cultures, fortune
telling as a business is described as making money: these businesses are
charging anything for a consultation. Perhaps most interestingly, fortune
telling is outlined as a popular and positive business: it is a path of
entertainment as growing numbers of people seek both recreation and reassurance
and it is a popular past time.
In few
countries, it is mentioned in their legislation context that several conditions
must be first met by fortune tellers before they can operate as a business.
Some of the requirements would include 1,000 feet of a school property line or
be located within 1,000 feet of a church, place of worship or even another
fortunetelling establishment. While in the Philippines, the practice of fortune
telling can be located near churches or places of worship.
An essential component of addiction is money.
Traditionally, one finds fortune tellers on the street, sitting in front of
little stands, handing out advice in ten-minute of time, and ten minutes is
never enough especially if the fortune teller speaks so accurate or factual.
There are fortune tellers are paid for entertainment.
The act of “repeated” emotions to a fortune teller
is what makes the process so habit-forming. It’s like a tranquilizer to reduce
the fear of the unknown, but since the fear is never directly dealt with it
never goes away, and so the client has to continue seeking advice and pay for
the time and service of the fortune teller. The “how much?” question already
depends on the person who is willing to pay, what might be expensive to a
person is the opposite for others.
Fortune Telling as Counseling
The basic techniques of counseling (listen,
encourage feelings, reinforce good suggestions, discourage bad ones, giving
advice) are entirely compatible with fortune telling. Danny
L., and Lin Jorgensen found that “while there is considerable variation among
occupations and are over-represented in human service fields such as
counseling.
Counseling psychology focuses on
providing therapeutic treatments to clients who experience a wide variety of
symptoms. It is also one of the largest specialty areas within psychology.
The Society of Counseling
Psychology describes the field as "a psychological specialty
[that] facilitates personal and interpersonal functioning across the life span
with a focus on emotional, social, vocational, educational, health-related,
developmental and organizational concerns."
When
a fortune teller does not consider practice as “an entertainment thing”
describes clients as going in “looking for a real answer” to the serious
enquiries that they have. Other fortune teller discusses how some clients are
mentally ill, sometimes “suicidal”, and that they go to fortune tellers “lost
and looking for guidance”. Fortune teller insists that it is not a fortune
teller at all but a “spiritual counselor”, setting apart from the business
aspect of fortune telling by claiming that due to counseling status.
Secondly,
fortune telling as counseling is framed as claiming motivations that are driven
by something other than money. It was “not a financial” decision but the
“spiritual counselor” is described as claiming to be “motivated by fundamental
religious principles and beliefs”.
Furthermore,
fortune telling as counseling is depicted as fulfilling a role that is more
serious and beneficial than previously seen: the “psychics” hired to give
“readings” for the “real answers” that people seek take their jobs “very
seriously”. Fortune telling as counseling is described as “dealing with
people’s lives” when they come “looking for guidance” in such dire times as
when they are feeling “suicidal”. The “spiritual counselor” aide and help
people with their problems.
It can make the client to feel relaxed or untroubled and
cheered up because the fortune teller appeared to listen on the worries of the
client and gives guidance or advice. It can be a therapy for it has possible answers
to one’s dilemma or questions which provide relief and hope to a person which
can be associated with that of religion.
Fortune Telling as
Fraud
Fraud is a
false representation of a matter of fact—whether by words or by conduct, by
false or misleading allegations, or by concealment of what should have been
disclosed—that deceives and is intended to deceive another so that the
individual will act upon it to her or his legal injury. (Webster’s Dictionary)
If there are white lies which means lying for a good reason, fraud is as well
like a white offense which means it is a crime without anyone being hurt.
“The basic feature of the
scam involves diagnosing the victim (the "mark") with some sort of
secret problem that only that fortune teller can detect or diagnose, and then
charging the mark for ineffectual treatments. The fortune teller announces that
the mark is suffering from a curse that her magic can relieve, while
threatening dire consequences if the curse is not lifted.”(Wikipedia)
Here we see a different depiction of fortune telling. The
object is framed as fraud: some fortune tellers are described as “deliberately
ripping off consumers” by claiming to be “lifting a curse or removing a black
cloud‟, “casting spells, removing curses, and administering potions” to achieve
a list of outcomes such as to “recover property” or alter “luck”.
Fortune telling described as harmful: fraudulent fortune
telling is forceful and greedy by “demanding lucrative payments” for “removing a
black cloud‟; fraudulent fortune tellers specialize in fear by “removing curses
and administering potions” which are designed to such manipulative ends as “to
put bad luck on a person, shorten a person’s life and make one person marry or
divorce another”. Because the victim believed that
the fortune teller has God-given talent/powers then there is the willingness to
pay or giving everything to be able to remove or destruct the curse or evil.
The crime commences with the usual ‘reading’
process for a minimal fee. The fortune teller uses methods and props such as
Tarot cards, crystal ball, palm reading, horoscopes, numerology, etc. During
the session, the reader/fortune teller can apply cold reading ability; it is
the ability to gain information about the customer without that person
realizing that the reader is actually giving up the information. This alone is
an instance of fraud for it deceives or takes unfair advantage of the customer.
A long-term fraud or crime
results in the total psychological manipulation of the victim, which separates
them from any support from family or friends and keeps them very open or
vulnerable to any suggestions given by the reader.
The
psychology behind Fortune telling
Ambiguity. People
often face ambiguous information—information that is unclear and can be
reasonably interpreted in several different ways. People are often alert to settle this
uncertainty in their own minds; make up an answer and begin to believe it.
Fortune
telling insists on completing the story one way or another, often by making
unfounded assumptions and speculations. Fortune tellers susceptively make attribution errors- the error to believe they can
correctly know a person's purpose for behaving as they do, that later considered as
factual explanations. Partial or broken information, rumors, gossip, vague
statements and inconsistencies indicates present uncertainty every day.
If there’s something wrong,
the blame rests with the interpretation and not with the prediction. The
necessity for ratification forces people to look for instances when the
predictions have borne answers. Persons who tend to score high on mysticism
scales tend also to score high on such variables as complexity, openness to new
experience, breadth of interests, innovation, tolerance of ambiguity, and
creative personality.
Furthermore, they are likely to score high on
measures of hypnotism, absorption, and fantasy proneness, suspending the
process that distinguishes imaginings and real events, representing the
imaginable object as vividly as possible. Individuals high on
susceptibility of ambiguous statements are also more likely to having undergone
conversion, which for them is primarily realistic rather than a rational
phenomenon — a marked by notable alterations in perceptual, emotional, and idea
motor response patterns. Ambiguity and assumptions to
resolve or answer problems increases more the tolerance or lenience for
ambiguity as people work to resolve it.
Barnum
and Forer Effect. Barnum Effect is
the name given to a type of subjective validation in which a person finds
personal meaning in statements that could actually apply to many people. Psychologist
Bertram R. Forer found that people tend to accept vague or overly general
personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to them, without realizing that
the same description could be applicable to nearly everyone. Thus, the Forer
Effect refers to the tendency for people to rate sets of statements as highly
accurate for them personally even though the statements could apply to many
people. The difference between the Barnum and Forer Effects is that the former
describes a vague statement, whereas the latter describes how people react
psychologically to a Barnum (or vague) statements.
Fortunetellers
try to give a person some sense of relief through very broad statements and can
be taken and applied in so many ways. However, a person may take that reading
to heart, and as soon as something happens, big or small, they feel like their
reading was correct and may start to feel like they have some type of control
on what is to come.
People believe that fortune
telling predictions is applicable as the fortune teller refers to birth chart
or date of birth, palm lines, drawing or writing. A critical evaluation is when
the person realized that most of the fortune telling predictions or descriptions
stress on the positive traits of a person. It is such a generalized statement
that nobody would possibly deny, at least not in the sane frame of mind.
Similarly, good sense of
humor is yet another personality trait not many people would deny. Even though
negative traits are enlisted, they are carefully hidden by a bombard of
positive traits in such a way that is seldom noticeable. Most statements
made by fortune tellers are vague enough to relate to some or the other remote
incident of your life. The person or the client is the one who tends to relate
the forecasts and imageries to some events of life and end up getting
convinced.
The falsely start of
believing that the fortune teller has the ability to have an insight of one’s
personal life is when the person or client tends to make all the associations
and validations.
People tend to accept claims in relationship to the
desire that these are factual rather than in proportion to their empirical
accuracy. People tend to accept questionable and even false statements if
people deem those statements positive or flattering enough. People will even
give extremely liberal interpretations to vague or inconsistent claims in order
to help make sense out of them.
Human beings experience fear and anxiety when faced with
ambiguity and insecurity. A common and natural reaction given that brains are
constructed to make sense of the world and the information we collect.
Therefore, people often psychologically look for answers and provide a
reasonable picture of what it is seen, heard and otherwise observed, even
though a careful examination of the evidence would reveal the data to be vague,
confusing, inconsistent and even unintelligible. Consistent with these ideas
suggests that our belief systems help us find meaning in chaos, thereby coping
intellectually and emotionally with ambiguity and uncertainty.
Cold
Reading. "In the course of a
successful reading, the psychic may provide most of the words, but it is the
client that provides most of the meaning and all of the significance." --Ian Rowland (2000:
60)
Cold
reading refers to a set of techniques used by professional fortune tellers who
acts as manipulators to get a subject to
behave in a certain way or to think that the cold reader has some sort of
special ability that allows him to "mysteriously" know things about
the subject. Cold reading goes beyond the usual tools of manipulation:
suggestion and flattery. In cold reading, fortune tellers lean on their
subject's feelings and disposition to find more meaning in a situation than
there actually is.
The desire to make sense out of experience can
lead us to many wonderful discoveries, but it can also lead us to much
foolishness. The fortune teller who acts as the manipulator knows that his mark
will be inclined to try to make sense out of whatever he is told, no matter how
unbelievable or improbable.
Fortune
teller knows that people are generally self-centered, that tend to have
unrealistic views of one’s self, and that will generally accept claims about,
that reflect not only how people really think but how people wish and think of
what they want to be. Fortune teller also knows that for every several
predictions or claims he makes about you that you reject as being inaccurate,
he will make one that meets with your approval; and he knows that you are
likely to remember the hits he makes and forget the misses.
The
discrimination in the human mind is always at work. People pick and choose what
data to remember and what to give significance. In part, people do so because
of what was already believed or want to believe. And in order to make sense out
of what are being experienced.
People
are not manipulated simply because of susceptibility or innocence or just
because the signs and symbols of the manipulator are vague or ambiguous. Even
when the signs are clear and people are skeptical, it can still lead to
manipulation.
Fortune
tellers are as impressed by their correct predictions or "insights"
as are their clients and patients. People should remember, however, that just
as scientists can be wrong in their predictions, so fortune tellers can as well
be wrong in theirs.
Effects
of fortune telling.
The positive psychological
effects of fortune telling to people are: it helps to relieve
anxiety and promotes positive thoughts; it gives a person a sense of security
and confidence; belief in destiny helps render life a coherent narrative, which
infuses goals with a greater sense of purpose.
The
negative psychological effects of fortune telling to people are: People
have compulsions to do fortune telling over and over again, often interfering
with everyday life; it arises to the feeling of relaxation and laziness where
people rely on predictions rather than hard work; it can arise to depression,
mental disorder or symptoms of anxiety -- tension,
excessive worry, trouble sleeping, obsessive thoughts and exhaustion.
Loss
of Concentration. Indulging in predictions can have negative
impact on one’s way of life. A mind which conforms towards belief on
predictions lacks concentration. A person may not give a full or best output in
life because the focus and awareness is found on something else.
Lack
of interest. The knowledge of the unknown becomes the
exciting part in one’s life. One might start finding and discover things about
the answers in life which could lead to absence of focus and perseverance.
Mental
disorders. When a person’s personal experience in
fortune telling leads to a strong belief, it becomes a tough task to make the
person realize the reality from untruth. The foundation of personal experience
is closer to one’s intellect than realities. It can result to mental conditions
which may inhabit unnatural behaviors and unknown fears.
Hindering
the development of an individual’s personality. Instead
of acquiring virtues necessary for an individual to live in a society, the
individual is seeking beneficial tasks. The individual’s personality depends on
the necessary descriptions made by fortune teller to achieve advantage and
benefits in the future. One’s personality is now being shaped and developed by
the “words” of fortune telling.
One’s
belief strengthens another’s. Just like a communicable
disease, fortune telling can manifest itself through the word of mouth. For a
person who has slight inclination and knowledge towards belief in fortune
telling, a casual conversation with fortune telling can strengthen and spread
one’s on personal beliefs in such matters.
