Vision

Pagans defines vision as “The ability to broaden one’s perspective to have greater understanding of our place and role in the cosmos, relating to the past, present, and future.“

“What is past is prologue.” The present is the nexus of the past and future. To know the future means understanding the past. Our present flows from our past. Our future arrives out of our lives today.

The virtue of vision is demonstrated by how the United States sets monetary policy. The economists at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (The Fed, i.e. the Central Bank) divine the future economy of the U.S. with mathematical models based on past events. The economists collect data on many economic indicators. These time series often contain information from the present to about one hundred years in the past. From the study of this data, the economists devise forecasting (divining) models to predict economic trends of the future.

When The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meets, the economists run their models with the latest data. They present their findings to the FOMC, much like the Roman Diviners who presented their findings to the Roman Senate and People.

Then, the FOMC discusses the present economic situation of the country. They argue over the economists’ conclusions. After a discussion of their own ideas of the future, the FOMC sets U.S. monetary policy for the next two months. The sitting FOMC has become the nexus of the past FOMC’s decisions and the future FOMC’s policies. What the FOMC decides will affect all of us since the world economy is based, in part, on the soundness of the U.S. dollar.

The Norse concept of orlog and weaving your wyrd is demonstrated in the FOMC’s work. What affects our present are our choices in the past. What determines our future is our understanding of our past, and the choices we make now.

Members of the FOMC: The Chairman, Vice-Chair, and 7 Monetary Governors of the Fed, and 12 Federal Reserve Bank Presidents.