A number of readers sent me emails about my prediction that McCain would win the US Presidency. As I wrote in my comment in response to one of the comments, I was pleasantly surprised but as I have stated in the entry, elections are really hard to call. There are after all 153 million people to take into consideration. But, following the results, I also reviewed my analysis to see where I had gone wrong and what had sent me barking up the wrong BaZi tree as it were.

As a consultant, there are definitely some occasions when I’ve made a call one way, and the client proves me wrong. A good recent example is a client whom I advised on the challenges of romantic relationships – I’ve recently heard she’s getting married. Now, more often than not, with something like this, I’m more than happy to be wrong about having told her that there was a low possibility by way of relationships in the year. I’d rather she got something when she wasn’t expecting something, than be expecting something, and got nothing. As a consultant, I  do not ever claim to always be right, or that I am always right (although I am occasionally guilty of this!). Indeed, as stated above, there are some instances where I am happy to be proven wrong. But I certainly wouldn’t want to be proven wrong on having failed to tell a client something unfavourable. I’d rather they get the bad news, and then it turns out to be not so bad, then tell them it’s okay and it turns out rotten. (although if John McCain was my client, I’m sure he’d be asking for his money back, to which i would say, erm, you ran a lousy campaign according to everyone!)

Someone might argue that we BaZi consultants can essentially ‘spin’ our way out of anything. But the fact is that our interpretation and advice carries only a 33% weightage in the Grand Scheme of Things. There are other factors (the Man Luck and Earth Luck factors notably) that we don’t get a say over or which we sometimes cannot compute into the equation. And equally, there can be reasons for a person to get an opposite outcome as a result of their Man Luck, be it through lowering of expectations or through simply taking the right action. So whilst it is true that we BaZi consultants are sometimes known to ‘spin’ (it is an essential skill of the profession, being able to ‘chuen wan’ and ‘tou huen’ as they say in Cantonese – ‘spin’ by any other name).

In the case of America Votes 2008, post-election analysis (read the analysis of the Washington Post, Newsweek, Huffington Post, New York Times) suggests that McCain ran a terrible campaign and that he was basically sunk by straying off message, not being serious enough about the economy, and the joint rotten apples Sarah Palin and George W Bush (hmmm, a Friends star problem?). Hindsight of course is 20-20 and I’ll also be looking at these issues, and how they can be reverse engineered into the chart to glean some information. But the point I’m trying to make here is this: Luck may be on your side, but if you screw up in real life, you’re not going to get much done.

But the bottom line on the wrong call for me, is a combination of factors. And they all make for an interesting learning experience for me. (PS: Sarah Palin if you are reading this – I am sure that I’ll be able to make a decent call on the elections come 2012 if you stand) And whenever you’ve made a call, and then hear of an error, the first thing to do is review the chart, and see what has been over-looked. And so that’s what I have been doing since America Voted. How did I make the error that I did, and what did I over-look in my evaluation?

I arrived at the conclusion that it was several factors that influenced my decision to favour McCain over Obama in my analysis. And there are of course some questions which relate to the whole business of making a call on an election based on BaZi which as a student of the subject, I continue to study and give thought to. Fortunately I haven’t had any clients yet who want to run for President of the USA!

Analyst’s Own Pre-Conceived Notions

This is technically not supposed to be a consideration in any analysis but it usually is. That is why different consultants often arrive at different conclusions or perceive a chart differently. Their own chart affects their perception of the individual’s chart. For example, a person with a Direct Resource structure will perceive a Direct Resource chart differently from a person with a Seven Killings Structure. In my case, Ia niggling consideration at the back of my head was my belief (disproven on November 4th) that white Americans would have a great deal of difficulty voting in a race neutral manner. (sidenote: 43% of whites voted Obama, and 55% voted McCain so that’s not a totally wrong perception – where I got it round my neck perhaps was that I forgot the Hispanic, black, Asian, and Pink Votes). And that coloured (pardon the pun) my BaZi conclusion.

I also strongly believed that Obama was the wrong person to go into the White House with the US in the kind of turmoil that it was. I believed Obama was a president for better times, when his message of hope and change could actually become more than a message (yes, my cynic-optimist conflicted personality double-talking there). I saw McCain as a great sacrificial lamb president – a one term guy to go in there, suck up the crap and leave. So again, my personal view probably coloured my interpretation and indirectly influenced me to look for an answer to support my view.

Prioritisation of Combinations over Other Considerations such as Useful God and Gasp! Favourable and Unfavourable Elements!

Again, as a instructor, I harp upon the point to students that ONE COMBINATION DOES NOT MAKE A CONCLUSION.
And of course, I ignored my own advice.

Now, as a consultant, sometimes you have to do this. You make a call as to what you prioritise in terms of how you arrive at a conclusion in a chart. Just like a doctor, when trying to decide which limb or organ to save, has to make a decision on what are the priorities in life the person they’re operating on should hold on to. But the prioritisation of one factor over another should not be at the expense of the common sense basics. And this is the mistake I made here. I prioritised and favoured one factor heavily over others.

The year is not favourable to McCain. His chart needs Fire, and there is only implied Fire in the year from the Wu-Zi combination. So the year does contain his Useful God or elements that are favourable to him. By contrast, Obama’s chart, which is very dry, needs Water. Specifically it needs Gui 癸. And in the month that he was elected, Ren, appears on Stem in the Ren Xu month – not quite Gui but still Water. And let’s not forget that it is a Wu Zi year, wherein the Zi 子 contains Gui. The election also took place very close to the cusp of the transition over to the Gui Hai month, wherein Gui, the Useful God element, appears on Stem. And Hai 亥 in itself is not that negative either, forming a sentimental combination with the Goat 未 in his chart to produce his Influence element, which is Wood.

Aiya – actually very straightforward!

Now, I know I’m going to get quizzed on the Favourable-Unfavourable Element issue since I’ve written elsewhere in my blog that favourable and unfavourable elements are not really that significant in terms of it’s value as information and that we don’t even have it on the radar when it comes to a consultation. I would maintain this viewpoint still, especially as that particular blog entry was written specifically in the context of the use of the unfavourable/favourable information by individuals with little or no knowledge of BaZi. And the emphasis on Favourable-Unfavourable elements is clearly as a starting point for analysis, never a decisive point. Even here, in my post-mortem of my mistake, I would argue that i over-looked the Useful God point first, and then the Favourable-Unfavourable Elements point second, rather than the other way around.

The complicated thing about Favourable and Unfavourable Elements this: it that it’s a good place to start, but not a good place to form a conclusion, but at the same time it’s an important fall back. In essence: you don’t pay a huge amount of attention to it but you can’t ignore it at the same time. (memo to self!) But this is something which I would say applies to practitioners or students who are at quite an advanced level of study and familiar with concepts like Useful God and Regulating Useful God. The problem with Favourable and Unfavourable Elements in the hands of BaZi students who only know this is that that is ALL they use to base their conclusion on and it isn’t always necessarily valid when you go deeper into the analysis.

The Perception of What Good Luck Means

As I indicated the next day, I also have become significantly influenced by the idea that sometimes, bad outcomes = Good Luck. Again, as consultants, it’s not uncommon to change your ideas about how certain things should be read/interpreted in the context of a chart. Doctors change their ideas about how illnesses are best treated after doing many cases. The same is with BaZi consultants. And of late my trend of thought has been to favour the idea that combining with the Year’s Pillar or Grand Duke indicates a positive year. Again, this is a very bare basics simple concept. Essentially, I take the view that if you are in Combination with the Grand Duke, then things go well for you. Of course, if you are also in a favourable Year Pillar or 10 Year Luck Pillar, then things go sparklingly well for you. By definition, all outcomes are positive and there are no negatives. But if you are say, in not that favourable a Year Pillar, and not that favourable a 10 Year Luck pillar, then you will get negative outcomes and disappointments, but these turn out to be a silver lining in the cloud.

It’s open to debate how you perceive this to be honest. Do you want to be the first African-American President of the United States, but essentially inherit a bankrupt nation laden with so many problems that you have no idea where to start fixing? (Bullying Punishment anyone?). Or is simply the act of having entered the history books, and entered the pantheon of US President, the most powerful person on Earth, something worth doing, even if you end up with a rotten score in the history books? (George W Bush case in point – two terms, but remembered forever as the man who destroyed the GOP and essentially, ruined America’s image around the world).

What means good luck?

Is it Good Luck to have escaped having to be the President who must fix everything but may ultimately please no one and may not even fix anything effectively because there’s too much broken? Is it Good Luck to be a president who’s hands are going to be tied by the deeds of his predecessors for at least the next 2 years? (bear in mind, Obama now effectively carries the hopes and dreams of blacks in America – how great a task is that?)

Is it good luck to have everything, but in order to do that, to have to give up everything? Borrowing an example from the Dark Knight, it is worthwhile being hated, in order to achieve your true goal?

Do you want to die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain?

Okay, I’m being dramatic. There is no true answer to this question because in a sense, the definition of Good Luck is individual and in a sense, heavily dependent on your own BaZi, which shapes your perceptions. If power is what motivates and drives you, then it is what you want, maybe at any cost. If change is what you desire to achieve, then it is worthwhile having a shot at it, even if it means failure perhaps. If money is what matters, then maybe you feel that having all the money in the world is worthwhile having, even if it means giving up a lot of other things – the house with a picket fence, normal wife and kids who don’t require a shrink from Day Zero.

Questions and Ideas I’m Still Pondering

After the election results came out, I spent some time chatting and discussing the analysis I had done and where I had gone wrong with a fellow consultant. And we arrived at the conclusion that the challenge with calling something like an election remains how the question is framed. In a sense, maybe BaZi is not designed to function within a context of a democratic society, where people make decisions not necessarily based on what is BEST, but what they feel to be right at the time (an interesting book that discusses this idea is The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowieki). Because really, neither McCain nor Obama technically would make a good Emperor!

Equally, if Obama and McCain sat down before me, and said – should I run for US president? I would probably answer no, even if the chance of success is there. But then again, is it a relevant point that both candidates would not be entering a particularly good luck pillar in their lives? I would imagine so, although this has more to do with the fate of the country, than anything else.

Or could the argument be made that both of them stood an even chance, since their charts both indicated a possibility of success (both in Officer Luck) but that it came down to the Man Luck, which is how they ran their campaigns? Both Obama and McCain have a problem of a Harm in their charts from the Goat-Rat Harm but why did McCain’s harm cause him more problems than Obama’s Harm?

If anything, maybe the moral of the story is that the consultant’s political views (assuming they are a political creature) perhaps weigh in more heavily than one realises. Impartiality and purity of the answer derived from a BaZi chart sometimes requires a context-less situation. In short, you have to be able to look at the chart as a total political ignoramus, unbiased by any viewpoints, in order to perhaps arrive at the accurate conclusion.

And with that, I say, Romney and Palin in 2012!!!