This past week it has felt impossible to detach from world events, as though a forcefield above my head was compelling me to pay attention & get involved. This has been interspersed with waves of tears. I hope current events are just a blip which soon blows over. But sometimes there is the panicked fear that things have gone too far and we can never go back. I don’t know which is real, but I believe people always have to fight for what is good, regardless. I doubt God likes surrender monkeys.
Perhaps most disturbing is the suppression of speech. So many people suddenly being removed from twitter, facebook & youtube. The President himself, random conservatives like Ron Paul, youtube channels which covered election fraud (nothing screams This Election Wasn’t Fraudulent like erasing all fraud related content). In fact I got removed from Facebook myself while writing this. It is just for 24 hours, but I won’t be surprised if a permanent ban is around the corner. They took down the entire platform of Parler which was dedicated to non-censorship. Can you believe this is our new reality? I can’t. And when I think about all the places it could lead it is hard not to cry. I guess I always took freedom of speech for granted. Now I find I am censoring myself even in private conversations- oh don’t use that violent metaphor- facebook might be reading this. Oh don’t use the color black as an adjective- they might think you are racist. Everything you say in private could be released publicly. Phrases which are socially acceptable when you use them could be dredged up years in the future to show you are a horrible person.
Do you ever try googling something then realize that all 100,000,000 articles which pop up are saying the exact same thing? Do you ever try to search for the other side of the coin and come up empty handed? Recently, I was googling to find out who killed Ashli Babbitt, for example, and all I could find were articles on what a bad person she was. She had road rage. She believed in conspiracies. It was her own damn fault some creepy guy wearing a suit & black gloves suddenly stepped out from around the corner to shoot her dead. Never mind that she was just doing what people have been doing all year. Never mind that she was unarmed & he gave her no warning, no chance to retreat. Never mind that there were three cops standing behind her, not trying to restrain her nor seeming particularly disturbed by her presence. That bitch deserved what she got. And if you don’t agree you are a nazi.
And what is a nazi? A skinhead? A German nationalist from the 1940s who wants to take over the world and eliminate Jews? No one knows. It is a word. Castro’s supporters called their enemies ‘worms.’ Speech has officially divorced physical reality. There are no truths or lies anymore, because most things have no specific meaning to begin with. You are a nazi! You are a white supremacist! You don’t believe in Science!!! You don’t believe in Climate Change!!! You don’t believe gender is assigned at birth!!! You don’t believe Experts!!! When you break them things down, none of these claims really have a concrete meaning, making it impossible to defend oneself against them. And also impossible to be sincere in claiming them.
And then we have the weird magic of believing words change reality. Pronouns change a person’s gender. Calling Ashli Babbitt a terrorist overrides the fact that she was entering unarmed into a building full of trained soldiers. Saying Trump was calling for violence overrides the fact that his final tweets (the ones which got him banned) were calling for peace & telling protesters to go home. Saying the word science makes something science. Science is no longer the study of the material world. It is a word on a rainbow flag, tattooed on the hearts of Believers. Call a person a white supremacist and they are one. In fact the only way to NOT be a white supremacist is to believe that we live in a white supremacy and attack others for their role in this.
Basically, nothing makes sense anymore. It is both rage-filled and nonsensical like a dark Alice in Wonderland, my least favorite book of all time. I have a soft gelatinous head and I hate it when people lie. It makes me feel all pretzeled up.
Another thing tying me in knots is that I still have an emotional attachment to people on the left. I grew up in a republican house & always idealized democrats as tender-hearted unicorn people. Now I see them scapegoating conservatives- as though to lay down justifications for future violence against them. (He was a nazi! She was a white supremacist!). And I don’t know how to process this. These are people I have LIKED. In some cases, a LOT. And now they are casting me and others I care for in a subhuman light, reality be damned. I want to believe it is a spell they are under and soon they will wake up. I just wish I could understand it and make some sense of it in my mind. I thought they used to be nice normal people. What happened? When and how did they decide they are surrounded by nazis and white supremacists whom they must defeat? If I could just understand and make some sense of my reality I would feel a lot better. Then I would know if I need to cut them out of my heart for good or just wait for the spell to break.
Tag: Donald Trump
Neptune is the planet which rules society’s ideals- the traits that are valued and rewarded. As I wrote in a previous post, Neptune is currently (from 2011 to 2025) travelling through the sign of Pisces, causing sensitivity, compassion, victimhood and sometimes even insanity to be treated as virtues.
In 2025, Neptune moves into Aries, which should produce a drastic change in the qualities we value and demonize in others.
Pisces, as I discussed earlier, is an impractical, idealistic sign ruled by feelings, tears, and dreams. Pisces doesn’t understand why we fight wars. Pisces doesn’t understand why only people with money have nice things. Pisces doesn’t understand why football players tackle each other or people want weapons to defend themselves. Pisces doesn’t know why suicide is wrong, because for Pisces life is not an ultimate value. Pisces rules peace, freedom from pain, and death.
Aries, on the other hand, is a warrior, and lives in the physical world of animals where survival is the chief concern. He rewards those traits which help to ensure survival, such as strength, vigor, bravery, hard work and aggression. Also, those traits that lead to survival on a group level, such as patriotism.
Under Aries, people will show off their strengths, rather than using their weaknesses to get attention. The stories of abuse and mistreatment will give way to tales of victory and triumph. Rugged activities like camping, hunting, and boxing, may become more popular than yoga, meditation, and therapy. Excessive focus on feelings will be seen as self-serving and unproductive. Compassion will no longer be the chief indicator of goodness, but rather a good person will be one who is productive, hardworking and brave.
So here are a few tips to consider, to help prepare for the changes ahead. Maybe with some slight adjustments, in 2025 you could become the ideal person!
- Forget about feelings, spirituality and the inner world. The external, physical world will become the only one that matters and you will be judged by your competency in it.
- Beef up your survival skills. Grow food, hunt, cook, build your own home, shoot your own intruders. Maybe move to West Virginia!
- Develop a work ethic. Under Aries, people will be expected to carry their own weight, and preferably the weight of a few others as well. Welfare may fall out of favor.
- Be macho. The macho man may come back as an ideal while the desirability of effeminate men may plummet. Even for women, independence, bravery, pride and ballsiness may be favored.
- Be a meathead. Consider focusing on classic meathead concerns, like big muscles, fast cars, switchblades and a willingness to fight.
- Get in shape. Physical fitness and athleticism may become prime traits for people to possess. This would be a great time to stop writing in your journal and start playing basketball!
- Become a patriot. To Pisces, who rules selflessness, patriotism is a vice. Pisces wants us to sacrifice ourselves for the good of others and if we should die in the process, all the better! But with Aries we return to the practical value of putting one’s own person, family and country first.
- Consider a trade. With Neptune in physical Aries, those who work with their hands will rise in stature. So consider becoming a plumber, carpenter or electrician. Also, jobs that require bravery, like policing, soldiering and firefighting will be held in high esteem.
- Don’t go to college (unless you need to). Not only will trades once again rise in value, but knowledge (like women’s studies) that doesn’t hold a practical value may be viewed as suspect.
- With food, go back to basics. Eat what is practical, affordable and reasonably healthy. Like a peanut butter sandwich. Those who spend a large chunk of their energy acquiring trendy foods may be seen as delicate and self-serving.
- Be a person of action. Aries is all about action. Don’t expect to be judged on your professed feelings and beliefs any longer. Be someone who can make a tangible difference. Be willing to show your love by pulling people from a mudslide, rather than calling them by their preferred pronoun.
The downside to Aries is that he does rule violence and war. He can also make people so brave and hot-headed that they become foolish, rushing into a fight when it would be better to hold back. Aries rules survival- but not stability. That will not become an ideal until 2039, when Neptune moves into Taurus. That will be the time to earn respect by being as wealthy, fat, boring and stable as humanly possible. To buy land and a big house stuffed to the brim with Things. But Aries will not judge people on their bank account, only their willingness to rise to the needs of the moment.
Also…
- Although Neptune won’t officially enter Aries until 2025, we should start feeling the effects trickle in earlier. In a sense, each sign is just a natural response to the excesses of the sign that came before it. The more people in society play a victimized Piscean role, floating through an inner world of pain, the more others are compelled to seek something brisk and capable. Perhaps Donald Trump is the first piece of the Aries forces that are to come. If so, resistance to him is futile, because he represents a course correction which is as necessary as it is inevitable.
- Wherever Neptune goes, it reawakens forgotten values, but also tends to take ideas to ridiculous extremes. Neptune in Aries is certain to bring us lots of crazy fads and notions just as Neptune in Pisces did. I only hope it does not bring danger. It is no comfort that the last time Neptune entered Aries was the start of the Civil War.
Categories
Feminism
I see feminism as being the natural, inflammatory response of a society that needs to flush out an excess of fashion designers.
Officially, feminism is about wage discrepancies and political power, yet it only seems to arise in places where women are made to feel neurotic about their physical appearance. Eventually, they reach a fork in the road where they either have to become a feminist or have that extra rib removed. By nature, women are designed to be sensitive towards what men think and feel about them. It hurts to feel that you aren’t perfectly beautiful and lovable the way god made you. And- even if you are a celebrated beauty- it hurts to feel beautiful only because you match certain objective standards that could be met by anyone. It makes you interchangeable, a commodity. I think people become feminists from the perception that men are shallow and incapable of true love, therefore it is dangerous to risk being dependent on them.
Here in West Virginia, there is really no feminism to speak of, but no need for it either. Thin or fat, old or young, neatly dressed or wild looking, the women seem unselfconscious about their appearance. They are confident that simply being alive and female will suffice to attract men to them. Judging by the number of children they have, it seems they are right. It is strange, but, while living here I have yet to hear a single man or woman praise or critique anyone’s appearance, including their own.
Of course this may stem from the fact that hillbillies devote less of their brain to imagining how other people see them in general, probably a necessary trait for thriving in secluded areas where admirers and applause are hard to come by. From what I can tell, they derive less pleasure from making a good impression, and less pain from making a bad one. Hence, the classic Appalachian front yard, filled with sofas, rusted pieces of metal, and semi-broken toys. Once I asked a neighbor about her landscaping style. She explained that storing junk in your front yard creates more space inside your house, and keeps the backyard free for games and picnics.
Putting your worst foot forward also creates a sort of protective psychological coating, similar to the No Tresspassing signs that adorn every property. It tells people upfront that you aren’t going to bend yourself out of shape to put on the ritz for them, and if they want a cup of sugar they should go elsewhere. Which is an important vibe to put off. Living in the same mountain crevice can get rather intimate and you really need to have a bit of a barbed wire feeling about you or your neighbors will be cleaning out your fridge before you know it.
But anyway, back to feminism….
The myth of sexism, I think, is that it flourishes among backwoods country people and square religious Midwesterners. My observations, however, have led me to believe the opposite, that sexism- like many contagious diseases- begins in the largest, most cosmopolitan cities who then export it through movies, music, and fashion to the rest of the country.
Of course, this depends on your definition of sexism. To some, sexism is defined by the genders having complementary roles rather than identical ones. To me, it is a mental disease that causes women to have low self-esteem which they then attempt to fortify through male approval. Sometimes they do this through excessive focus on their physical appearance, and sometimes through trying to adopt masculine traits that they don’t actually possess. The classic movie heroine, gunning people down in a leather bikini, would be doing both. In a non-sexist society, females can be pudgy and have no greater ambition in life than to create an “Under the Sea” theme for their child’s birthday party. And their husbands can feel very, very proud of them for doing this.
Of course, the urban worldview causes psychological stress to men as well. They may no longer feel that being a good husband and providing for their family is enough, but instead feel pressure to worm their way towards the top of the human pyramid. These pressures may also exist in the country, but they are not as strong. It is much less exhilarating to sit atop a tiny pyramid and much less painful to live at its bottom.
Which is why I don’t see sexism as being a problem, in and of itself, in our society. It is just one of the many inevitable side effects that occur when a whole cluster of people try to source their self-esteem from being better than each other. We could start a social movement to make all sexist sentiments go away, but since they would probably be replaced by ideas just as offensive, why bother?
On the other hand, while I don’t recommend trying to wipe it from the planet altogether, I do think there are two little steps we can take to diminish the power of sexism in our own spheres and thus render feminism unnecessary.
1) I think a number of “mental diseases” could be cured just by people expressing themselves more honestly and more frequently. One thing I have noticed with men especially, is that it tends to be the most obnoxious and also the most sexist of them (Donald Trump) who are always running their mouths, while the “better” men tend to remain quiet. This sometimes gives the impression that Trump’s thoughts are representative of men in general. As Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
2) On a personal level, we should relish the poisonous ideas of our group mind to the extent that they spur us on towards greater mental independence. After kicking their babies out of the nest, eagles remove the soft filling to reveal a bed of thorns. When the little birds try to fly back to mommy and daddy, their bodies get cut up and bloodied. Likewise, our group mind is filled with ideas that tend to cut into our self-esteem, and the older you get, the less they seem to flatter you. Perhaps this is by design. These thorns push us, once we are ready, away from the mucoid comfort of conformity, and out into the big blue world to perceive and believe what no one else has before.