We now have our first tangible result of full digital conditions: a Frankenstein monster of every vile or repressive political stance has been designated president-elect. A national Muslim registry? Really? Rounding up Mexicans?
This has been an exhausting year. It's been agonizing enduring the attacks on women, on darker-skinned people, on Muslims, on veterans. It was enough that this got broadcast on TV and the Internet month after month. Now it's about to become national policy.
We have experienced a shock as individuals and to the collective mind.
This shock is not limited in its effects by partisan viewpoints. Everyone is feeling it, or will be, but only some people are saying what they're experiencing and how they feel.
We all know that change is upon us. We all know it's been a long time since anything radically shifted the trajectory our culture.
Remember that in order to move society in one direction, something must come loose and be movable in any direction. There is no ratchet mechanism that says things must always click toward one particular side of the spectrum. There's the relationship between the manipulators and the manipulated: this is something we must look at carefully. Anyone concerned about fake news on the Internet needs to learn how to fact-check for themselves. There is only so much of your power you can give away and still have any. Figuring out what's true is now a top-level survival skill.
The kind of shock we're experiencing is difficult to understand if we try to perceive it through prior labels or categories, particularly political. The terms we have and try to use—liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, independent—are meaningless now. They are merely used to divide people.
Many other social concepts are also falling apart, everything from notions like gay, straight, career, job, married, single: they lack the seemingly clean lines they used to have. And we all know that time—the most important boundary of all—ain't what it used to be, which means our concept and experience of time is changing.
Three References to Astrology
Let's put an anchor down into the long-range astrology on which I'll base the rest of my analysis. This consists of several main factors and many supporting ones. I will offer you three in this discussion. The common threads involve slow-movers Uranus, Pluto, and Eris, all of which have precedents for revolution.
First let's consider the Uranus-Eris conjunction. This is a ridiculously potent aspect associated with digital conditions, identity chaos and an explosion of self-discovery. The current alignment completes and also resets a cycle that began in 1927-1928, at the dawn of the broadcast era. (Think: the War of the Worlds radio broadcast of 1938 being at the beginning of the most recent cycle.)
Uranus conjunct Eris is at its peak now, and will be so through 2017, with obvious effects building, rippling, and reverberating beyond the end of the decade. My research has the early rumblings of this aspect starting in 2007. You might think this is funny, but my basis chart is that of the introduction of the iPhone. That event was the water line between "there is an Internet" and "we now live at the bottom of a digital ocean, please pass the oxygen."
The most toxic effect of this aspect is that we're being trained by our technology to be chilly little robots. We become like our tools, and our tools are now all robotic devices. The greatest potential is a wave of self-awareness rippling through the culture. On the most intimate, inward level, this is the choice we have. There is not much room for compromise between the two.
Next is Pluto in Capricorn. That's the sensation of the foundation of society crumbling. This commenced in the summer of 2008, and coincided with the revelation of what was quaintly known then as the subprime mortgage crisis, which became the failures of the banks and the Great Recession. Pluto is only halfway through Capricorn. It enters Aquarius beginning in 2023. Between now and then, we're likely to witness an accelerating shock to institutions, some of which will fall.
Last is a series of alignments that involve Pluto and Eris, which happen in 2020 and 2021. First is Saturn conjunct Pluto, then Pluto square Eris, and finally Jupiter conjunct Pluto. There are no words for this, except to say that it's as potent as astrology gets. What we are seeing play out in politics today is merely the warm-up act.
