Posting, with permission, an article a cousin of mine wrote, which seems somewhat relevant to the original post to this thread. He emails them to me, so I don't have a link to the article I posted below. (BTW, it's pronounced Maydrick a brief bio and link to the paper he writes this column in.
http://www.grandrapidsmn.com/scene_and_screen/article_bf15c46a-dd60-11df-8430-001cc4c03286.html )
Where are the prophets? By Terry Mejdrich
Throughout human history all cultures produced individuals to warn of impending danger. They might have been called prophets, mystics, shamans, seers, psychics, diviners, forecasters, telepaths, or clairvoyant. In some cultures these individuals were believed to have divine connections. But divine or merely insightful, these people seem to have disappeared from the planet two thousand years ago. It would be nice to have a few such individuals around today to give us a heads up on where we are headed.
Often these cultures, at the time of the predictions, possessed no written language and it was in subsequent literate generations that the seers’ insights were written down, and well after the event actually happened. Over the span of hundreds of years, these oral traditions became legends with the likelihood of having added embellishments at each telling. Yet a large percent of these various legends have at their core at least a kernel of truth, and with some notable similarities.
What is notable are the recorded public reactions to the seers’ predictions. One would think that getting a detailed report of future events would be worthy of a celebration. Yet these visionaries were often met with hostility. From a personal safety standpoint, being a prophet was not always a wise career choice. People do not like to receive bad news that is disruptive of the status quo and sometimes react irrationally against the bearer. This is the mental picture behind the fallacy of reasoning known as ‘Kill the messenger.’ It is like vilifying or attacking a news person because he reported unpleasant news.
Accepting that some of those ancient legends may be more accurate than others, we are still left with the question of where are the prophets now when the human race seems even more bent on self-destruction. We could use a benevolent psychic at this juncture to help steer a safer course. Unless, of course, the future is predetermined and so a warning of impending doom would therefore be of little use. If that is the case, one has to wonder what the point of the prophet really is. If the future is pre-set, then there is nothing one can do to personally change it and so the prophet may as well keep his information to himself.
But if the point of a seer is to provide a warning of imminent danger so that we might take heed and then alter our lives to avoid that danger, then we have to conclude that the future is not set in stone, and we have the opportunity to make course corrections as needed. And, of course, we do have seers today, though they are not recognized as such.
Today’s forecasters of future events do not get their information by channeling to a divine entity, but by years of study and dedication to become knowledgeable in an area of scientific research. Given credible information, it is possible to predict the future, and scientists do it all the time. The more we become familiar with the workings of our environment, the more we begin to accurately predict the consequences of natural events and our own actions. This is true for everyone, not just scientists. What’s likely to happen if we walk on thin ice? Get addicted to drugs? Don’t get enough exercise? Pollute the environment? Get into a ‘rut’? Each of us becomes a seer if we keep an open mind and we have enough information to make a reasonable prediction and enlightened decision.
Like the prophets of old, modern seers can only provide the information. It is left to the individual to accept, ignore, or reject it. At present the environmental ‘ice’ we’re venturing out onto is very thin, yet we seem not to believe, just as the general populations in the old legends, that we are at great risk. The warnings of scientists are ignored or even berated, even by candidates in the ongoing national primary.
Yet it doesn’t take a prophet or telepath or a scientist to realize we live in pivotal times, though it does take two open eyes with the ability and desire to see through the political fog. From human degradation of the environment to violent social struggles, we face great challenges made ever more so by the sheer number of people on the planet competing for space and resources. It would be interesting to fast foreword about a thousand years into the future to see what legends were written down about our time, and whether or not today’s seers were vindicated or ignored.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120889/
After dying in a car crash a widowed man searches the afterlife for his wife. 
