SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 22)
Know when you’re coming from belief, and when you’re coming from knowledge. Somewhere in the high 90th percentile of people live like they have no idea what I am talking about, though you cannot afford the luxury of ignorance. I say this because you run the risk of being driven by belief, at the expense of what is true and verifiable. It’s not any excuse that many believe “there is no such thing as the truth.” That’s a good assignment for students to discuss in postmodernist philosophy class. I mean verifying in the most practical ways what you believe against facts that you can identify. I mean reading the fine print, reading between the lines, and remembering what people say to you. I also mean belief in the biggest sense—for example, your relationship to your cosmology. I’ve only heard about five hundred people tell me they weren’t influenced by religion, while they spend their lives acting out the irrationality, guilt and obsessive conduct that can have few other sources. Therefore, reconcile your ideas about life with the actual facts about how you treat people and how you want to be treated. One thing about beliefs is that they tend to be fixed like epoxy, or change every 10 minutes. I suggest you be suspicious in either case, and engage yourself in a reasoning process of evolving your ideas consciously as new information becomes available. Don’t just move on and forget; remember where you’ve been, because before long, it will become significant.
This article appears in October 2012.
