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Vol.31 Bullying, Discrimination,
                        and Selection.
Vol.30 Fortune-Telling.
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Vol.30 Fortune-Telling.
  Fortune-telling has been recently popular, especially among young people. "If you write something bad about fortune-telling, the followers will mad at you,” said one of my colleagues. However, seeing the recent craziness on fortune-telling makes me concerned about Japan’s future. That’s why I’m willing to talk about it.

 There are old sayings such as “Whether hit or miss, it's still fortune-telling," "Anything viewed through the eyes of faith seems perfect," and many more similar ones. I’ve heard a lot of stories that reinforce those sayings. We also say, “It's all darkness one step ahead." That means you never know what might happen next and explains what life is all about. If everything can be perfectly predicted, there would be no point in playing gambles like lottery and horse-racing, and even investing in stocks. I imagine that an accurate fortune-teller, if ever existed, make prognostications after carefully studying a person's clothing, look on the face, and words.
 Sometimes, you must reach a conclusion but can’t no matter how much you try. On such an occasion, you may want to leave it to chance like fortune-telling or rolling a dice. If you do everything based on fortune-telling, however, even before trying to conclude yourself, you would depend on people and society for all your life.

 Businessmen and businesswomen make a decision every day. They develop their decision-making skills through the experience and waste no time in fortune-telling. Nevertheless, women occasionally rely on fortune-telling. I think this is partly because of historical background that women had a lower social status than men and mostly stayed at home doing the housework and raising children.

 Today, women have the equal rights with men and have made advances in society. Since gender equality means independence and self-responsibility of both men and women, they should never blame each other and should think and decide by themselves without resorting to fortune-telling.
End.
Masaru Sugaya

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