Predictive Narratives and Magical Thinking as Coping Mechanisms in Lebanon’s Radical Uncertainty (2019-2024)
Human beings have attempted to foresee the future for millennia. From oracles and weather auguries to market algorithms and climate models, the desire to predict has remained a core element of human cognition and governance. Yet contemporary crises, ecological, political, and financial, have exposed the fundamental limitations of predictive accuracy. In radically uncertain contexts, such as Lebanon, prediction does not function as an instrument of knowledge but as a tool of emotional orientation, social navigation, and political legitimacy. This project investigates how non-empirical forecasts, speculative, magical, superstitious, or conspiratorial, emerge and circulate within the Lebanese media landscape, and how belief in them (or strategic acquiescence to them) informs decision-making processes and emotional regulation. It employs a mixed-methods approach, including historical inquiry, media content analysis, digital network tracing, and qualitative interviews with key media figures, to explore the production, dissemination, and reception of non-empirical predictions.