Yes, this reminds me that it is often stated, even by professionals in the relevant fields, that people fear public speaking more than death. I am not sure how they manage to measure this and I am skeptical. But I believe the fear of public speaking is incredibly high precisely because through the eyes and ears of others we fear getting a very strong, uncontrolled glimpse of what we are. Politicians and stand up comics and actors have spend so much time controlling what they show, they are not risking showing their true selves when getting up in front of the crowd. Though all three will go through, in most cases, a hellish transition period.
Of course you cannot turn weaknesses into strengths if you don’t want to notice the weaknesses at all.
We manage impressions and manipulate other people, as much as we can - by hiding things that are facets of us and claiming things that are not true about ourselves - much more as a rule that most of us want to admit or notice at all. If they think I am X, then it is easier for me to think I am X. And this is especially true in relation to not being X. Trying to get other people to think ‘I am not X’ is the root of so much social behavior.
What’s tucked away in the 12th house?
What is Saturn sitting on?
When Pluto transits a natal planet or the ASC or MC, do you want to deny your own Plutonic facets? Well, good luck cause then they come home to roost from the outside.
Anyone whose responses (and responses to criticism) could all be looked as ‘I’m just…’ likely has a huge un-integrated shadow.
Astrology is a bit like LSD I a sense, it will fuck you up in some way. Truth, beheld like that, is just able to fry your ego.
This is why it is used as a weapon. More perhaps than as a healing tool.
A brainwash programme of the Pentagon will first of all go into the natal chart.
I suppose it is a kind of death but one you have to live with.
Many high representative politicians have gone through an extensive mind-moulding neurolinguistic programming trajectory before they attained that MC Hammer attitude.
And there are so many of them, in almost everybody.
So much so that each strength is also a thousand weaknesses.
Yes - and still - even when we engage these things knowingly its not going to be easy or even successful necessarily.
Sometimes I do think it is more useful to not know ones own chart.
But then, it is the truth, and it’s just too fascinating.
2] Does the placement and the movement of stars and planets and other celestial bodies impact on our personality at birth? Are they pertinent in making decisions regarding some of the most important events in our life?
Let’s ask the scientists.
Now, in regard to the flat-Earthers, has the truth of their claim been established by science beyond all doubt?
But what of the claims of the astrologers? What have the scientists been able to come up with here in order to demonstrate the veracity of their claims.
And, if some have, link me to them.
As for doing astrology, what does that entail in regard to the decisions that you make over the course of living your life? Cite some examples of what knowledge you have been able to glean from these celestial bodies. And why and how you are convinced that there is no other possible explanation for what did in fact unfold.
Again, I’m not dismissing astrology as necessarily false. After all, an explanation for the very existence of existence itself conjures up all sorts of really, really mysterious possibilities. God being the most common. But mere mortals have also attributed “reality” to such surreal things like solipsism, sim worlds, dream world and worlds inhabited by “oracles”.
that’s a good open-minded point, biggs. it’s along the lines of: if we can’t explain how everything works, we might be wrong about how something in particular works. so for all we know, there might be something to the astrology. ah but here’s the thing. part of that system of how everything works must involve a particular circumstance that makes us unable to know how everything works (cue things like falsifiability, fallacious inductive reasoning, etc.). in that case, we might be right about astrology, but wouldn’t know how, in which case we’d have made a lucky guess. the problem with lucky guesses is minimal in the case of astrology - i mean it’s not the kind of thing where we’d suffer tremendous dangers if we got it wrong… it’s not like sending a shuttle into space. but it does allow charlatans to pretend they know what’s going on with it, and that’s offensive to an honest intellectual. we honest intellectuals don’t like to guess, see, so we don’t bother with shit we can’t be sure of. and we sure as shit don’t say ‘see, i told ya so’ when the stock market crash happens to coincide with the position of mercury.
other than that, i will tell you that astrology is probably true because i happen to have a very powerful chart. if i had a bunch of lame signs and placements instead, i’d tell you it was false. i’m sure you understand.
Most people dont associate astrology with self knowledge because they dont regard it as a serious discipline
But most people also dont want to look into the abyss because they are afraid of what they might see there
They think that psychology or philosophy or religion are ways of understanding the abyss rather than astrology
And so those are the areas they would avoid if they had an irrational fear of self knowledge and not astrology
In Defense of Astrology
by HILARY CARITO in the Lesley College Public Post
Or is the surface all there is?
So, again, we are back to pinning down where to draw line between the information that is fundamentally attributable to these “celestial bodies”, and what “I” am able to do with this information that is not fundamentally attributable to them. Which is why I would need someone who believes in astrology to take me through their day and explain where they themselves draw the line in regard to the particular behaviors they choose. Especially given a context in which those who do not share their own sign choose something entirely different. Finally, in a context in which those behaviors comes into conflict over value judgments.
So, the fact that you have this illness – how much is that is attributable to the position and movement of celestial bodies? How would someone who believed in astrology situate the current COVID-19/coronavirus outbreaks in their frame of mind.
Bingo!
It’s somewhat analogous to those who argue that God made them who and what their are so who are mere mortals to tell them to be otherwise. Or, as with the existence of commandments in most religious scriptures, is there something about the position and movement of heavenly bodies that allows – requires? – believers to choose behaviors that are more acceptable? More likely to play to their own advantage in whatever astrologers conceive the afterlife to be?
World Transits 2000–2020 An Overview by Richard Theodore Tarnas (born February 21, 1950) a cultural historian known for his books The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View and Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View. In 1968 Tarnas entered Harvard, graduating with an A.B. cum laude in 1972. Tarnas is professor of philosophy and psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and is the founding director of its graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness.
“So, the fact that you have this illness – how much is that is attributable to the position and movement of celestial bodies? How would someone who believed in astrology situate the current COVID-19/coronavirus outbreaks in their frame of mind.”
The virus broke out exactly as the apocalyptic conjunction of Saturn-Jupiter-Mars-Pluto the astrologers have been anticipating for years occurred.
As far as personal afflictions with it, of course thats in the personal transits.
What does not “believing” in astrology mean? As that pertains to a particular context that most of us here will be familiar with.
Also, take the “decades of research” there in turn. Scientific research.
In other words, a set of circumstances involving human interaction. There we can focus in turn on the distinction that I make between astrology in the either/or world and astrology in the is/ought world.
Astrology as it relates to the laws of nature, the “in fact” empirical world around us, the logical rules of language, mathematics etc., and astrology as it relates to the components of my own moral philosophy: dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
Again, I’m less interested in what people think or believe or claim to know about astrology and more in regard to what they are actually able to demonstrate – scientifically, philosophically – that all rational men and women are obligated to believe about it. Linking us, for example, to actual experiences and experiments they themselves have had, have tried or are familiar with.
Also, just out of curiosity, how do you imagine astrology fitting into your own life, given that which is of most importance to me philosophically — morality here and now, immortality there and then.
And go into some detail regarding the behaviors that you chose in a particular context of late. The existential relationship between “I” and the celestial bodies.
“It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe.” NASA
Where does astrology fit into all of this? Given that 95% of the universe is not even “normal matter”?
Astrology Critics Don’t Even Know What They’re Criticizing
The urge to cry ‘pseudoscience!’ may be about something else entirely
Stephanie Georgopulos
Nov 15, 2019
No getting around this of course. Natural cycles explain many things. From the four seasons weatherwise here in Baltimore to the wet and the dry seasons in other parts of the world. Sunspots on the Sun, the shifts in Earth’s magnetic field, ice ages. And so many more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cycles
And they impact on human interactions in many profound ways. They precipitate consequences that can be both predicted and measured. We can prepare for them.
The question here then is how are the cycles embedded in things that astrologers predict and measure able to be demonstrated as in fact something that all rational men and women are obligated to defend.
Ah, but my “thing” with astrology – as with philosophy, science and religion – shifts the discussion instead to the world of identity, conflicting value judgments and political economy. What can astrologers tell me about the existential interaction between the celestial bodies and the behaviors that I choose on this side of the grave as that becomes embedded in the fate of “I” on the other side of the grave?
Given a particular set of circumstances that the astrologers themselves would be familiar with.
Astrology Critics Don’t Even Know What They’re Criticizing
The urge to cry ‘pseudoscience!’ may be about something else entirely
Stephanie Georgopulos
Nov 15, 2019
Really, I challenge anyone here who subscribes to astrology on any level to intertwine these points into actual experiences from their own lives.
You have acquired this “fluency” in regard to the “language of energy”. How then are the constructed words applicable to behaviors you choose in the either/or world? And, of more importance to me, to the reactions of others who criticize the behaviors that you choose in regard to conflicting goods in the is/ought world.
Note how through astrology in these contexts, you have in fact achieved an “expanded awareness”. Of what exactly? How specifically do the celestial bodies facilitate your acquiring a “clearer picture of who you are”.
And in regard to a particular context in which human behaviors do come into conflict over moral and political value judgments, how might the celestial bodies allow one to acquire a more perfect understanding not only of why we behave as we do but how perhaps we ought to behave as well.
Astrology Critics Don’t Even Know What They’re Criticizing
The urge to cry ‘pseudoscience!’ may be about something else entirely
Stephanie Georgopulos
Nov 15, 2019
Yes, that is one way to put it. I don’t pretend to have a sophisticated understanding of astrology. And I wouldn’t doubt at all that many of my assumptions about it are flawed.
But let those who do claim to have a sophisticated, unflawed understanding of it, take their assumptions out into the world of human interactions and note the manner in which astrology is able to react in a sophisticated and unflawed manner given the existential juncture that is of most interest to me: identity, value judgments and political economy.
Sure, that’s a reasonable set of assumptions as well. So, let astronomers and astrologers focus in on a particular aspect of the universe and give their own explanations for why the celestial bodies behave as they do. But not many astronomers then take that leap from celestial bodies to the bodies that we ourselves make the trek in from the cradle to the grave. Bodies out in a world that encompasses acquiring a sense of self, an “I” that often comes into conflict morally and politically with others who sense themselves to be very, very different. It is here that astrology is of most interest to me.
Okay, okay. But in regard to astrology given a specific “situation” that we might find ourselves in, what is it rational to believe? And how is this belief then reasonably demonstrated?
hey people only stopped “believing” astrology when there tsjurttsj wes saying ok we burn u if you don’t quit teaching it.
When science overtook the tschurch in the late 1800s astrology rose up right along with it and will keep rizering …
people people don’t want it to be true like truth is so many times a bully.
Notice how he uses the word ‘sophisticated’ which the writer of the article did not use. The writer of the article talks about flawed assumptions. The OP of this thread is a dismissal, which includes mind reading of people who believe in astrology. That’s someone who feels confident dismissing something he now admits he doesn’t know much about. That’s what the article is talking about.
He is trolling. He could ask for justifications from astrologers in his OP, with dismissing and mind reading first. What he is doing is starting off with a charged post intended to trigger defensiveness and off balance responses. If he was interested, and knows little, he could just ask for information. But he does not do this. He is not interested. He wants something else.
And here suddenly astrology must be unflawed? And note the bizzare language: Let those who claim to have a sophisticated…etc. As if they bear some onus.
And here he slides from social scientists to astronomers, and he doesn’t seem to understand that astrology does not weigh in on why celestial bodies behave as they do.
Every time what he considers an objectivism is approached it is done with a mass of assumptions on his part. When this is pointed out, none of that matters. He is allowed to use his belief system to make claims about the internal motivations and experiences of all the people in a group, but other people must demonstrate to all rational people whatever they believe. He has no onus, for some reason. He regularly and systematically slides the points made by others into ones convenient to him: straw men, red herrings, weaker versions of their positions and more fallacies.
At the same time his litmus test for what all rational people should be convinced by is whether he is convinced by something. Someone who uses fallacies and feels no need to justify his positions and judgments and mind reading is perhaps not the best first litmus test of rationality.
Sure, if this is what you believe. And, in believing it, that more or less becomes all the “demonstration” needed to make it true. In your head.
But it doesn’t have much to do with the points I raise about astrology above.
It doesn’t bring astrology out into the world of human interactions revolving the things that interest me: identity, value judgments and political economy.
It doesn’t delve into how astrologers assess the existence of “I” on the other side of the grave.
