My Future, My Arse!

Freud said that religion is a form of collective neurosis in which we regress back to a childhood state with protective father or mother figures in the form of gods. Perhaps, this definition can be extended to new age beliefs.

 I have always had ambivalent feelings about new age beliefs. On the up side, it helps people, to a certain extent, to deal with their existential anxiety and provide them with a re-assurance about the future. On the other hand, it lulls people into a very dangerous false sense of security and holds them back from actively making life’s decisions.But it is always interesting to me to see how these beliefs reincarnate in new forms.Take Rumpology for example. I came across an advertisement last week inviting readers to send a picture of their rear and a cheque for $125.00 if they want to find out what is in their future.  Rumpologists claim to have the ability to foretell one’s future by reading the characteristics of one’s buttocks!!! Apparently, they believe that the shape, lines, folds, marks, spots e.t.c. on the buttocks reveal a person’s love life, personality, past, future and fate among other things.

Rumpologists say that the art (or science?) of foretelling your fate through your buttocks was practiced in ancient India, Greece and the Middle East, but provide no evidence to support the claim. I would not be surprised to see a column soon in trashy magazines or tabloids asking readers to send pictures of their rear to be analysed by a celebrity rumpologist. Sir, you are predestined to be sad. Your future is bleak and I see no hope for you, the way your behind is shaped,” the keister expert would probably tell clients. If only people were born with perfect buttocks, their life would be perfect too.

 It saddens me to think that there might be people who are willing to let an ass, in this case theirs, run their lives. It is a pity that they do not choose to go about life making their own decisions to achieve results, but want someone else to reassure them about their future, make sense of life for them, tell them how to act, how to think, and how to feel.

Seriously, why take a crack at life if we believe that the course of our life is already charted?  Why not leave it as(s) is? Is it worth living our life if everything is, according to our posteriors, predestined?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, 26 August 2009 at 8:50 pm and is filed under Featured, General, Psychology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.