There is only one man in all of history who was prophetic, and he never saw himself in that light. Among many other things, Tocqueville foresaw a battle for the world between America and Russia. And, he warned that were Europe to return, from it’s then current madness and dysfunction, to the system of the despotism of one man, all the restraints that formerly weighed upon such a man would have been removed, and Europe would see abominations it had never wittnessed before.
But for the rest of us, take ourselves to 1900, and then predict what would happen in the Twentieth Century. How foolish, and how impossible. That is the lesson, and it is an important one.
If security exists at all, it derives from one’s own ability to perform, not predict.