Update - 12/02/2007
I posted this an age and a half ago as a result of my intense hatred for all things astrological and fatalistic. I resent the silly pages towards the back of women's magazines, the ACME'destiny-in-a-box' solution to having to take decisions that might affect the next few hours, the laissez-faire approach to life that is induced by a fervent belief in fate. The minute I spotted a Hate Quest I remembered this node and felt that althought it might not have been written with sufficient mire, wielding a pen dipped in wrath and tearing at my parchment with the vicious strokes of an infuriated hen-dragon, my feelings of intense disgust should emerge in the end. Here goes.
Horoscopes are a practical approach to
astrology and its supposed influence on
fate, that unfortunately guide the lives of many by describing one of seven common situations and blaming it on the position of a particular
star on a particular
date. I am curious to know, if my destiny is so heavily related to a factor as random as my birth date, why there aren't
hordes of people born on the 22nd of
February queuing up to take my job, to go out with my
girlfriend and to snatch my
chocolate ice-cream out of my hands, since they too were destined to eat it.
Prejudice of ideas does, unfortunately, lead to one modifying
her behaviour in accordance with what an astrologer had to say. "Help will come from unexpected
quarters this week" will make her more
receptive to, and less suspicious towards the hundreds of helping hands that we normally refuse out of
pride and basic
mistrust. Then listen while she attributes this stroke of luck to the position of
Jupiter.
How about a new approach that separates people by their role in society? This seems to be a more reliable criterion by which one can attempt mass predictions and is logistically easier to manage collective destinies. The column would read something like this:
The Unemployed
This week will see
the start of an intense
and fulfilling romance
in the workplace....
It might serve as an incentive to find a
job and modify the destiny of those in need of a job rather than of all those
hapless individuals who were
perchance born on the same date, regardless of their needs, desires or
marital status. Do
marriages break when a receptive
young lady is suddenly on the lookout for an intense relationship at work when her relationship with her
husband happens to be undergoing a brief, probably
transient, stressful period?
Lawyers
This week will be an
opportunity to perform
an act of kindness towards
a new acquaintance. This shall
not seem like the best course
of action but will be ultimately
rewarding.
I needn't go into much detail here but the rewards that
patience with clients offers over the prospects of immediate
cash benefit both of the involved parties. It is a pity that most lawyers I know are far too rational to bother with horoscopes and are so convinced of their status of
quasi-
deity that they know that they're in control of their
destiny. Good for them.
Telephone Salesgirl
It might be a good idea
to remember the golden rule:
Do unto others as you'd have
them do to you. This should be
your guiding light this week.
Now that would minimise the amount of calls to convince us about the benefits of a
life-insurance-
policy-including-
funeral-
expenses that have the
uncanny habit of striking half way through
dinner.
We are
preoccupied with
belief and
religion,
fate and
destiny,
good and
evil and other concepts
to distraction, yet rarely pause to
disentangle the
barbed hooks of all that is
spiritual from the confused
fishing line of our
rationality. So if I believe in one
almighty and
benevolent God who knows All and decides All, then how can I
simultaneously believe in the effect of a
barren ball of
molten rock a million miles away? It is true that
priests and
rabbis and other members of the
clergy have found a convenient way of going about the unexplained or inexplicable by blaming it on some god or other (others in some cases) while taking the merit for all that happens the way we wanted.
“Why did the lion eat my brother?”
“Because Aslan the Lion god decided that it was his time to be consumed”
“Why was I spared in the very same attack?”
“Because I was praying for you, oh powerful hunter.”
“Were you not praying for my brother too?”
“But Aslan the Lion god thought that he hadn’t offered sacrifices according to the ancient ritual”
And so
religions evolved and
converged, then
bickered and
diverged and in general followed the
tortuous history that we all know and
revere. The religion that we were fed as children, along with healthy doses of
cod liver oil and the
antics of
the Dukes of Hazzard, served to mould us in a way that kept us mentally “
healthy”, avoiding
evil and seeking
truth, so help me God. We grew in the knowledge that the
deity we believe in and fear will guide us and will keep us from harm, accepting, on the other hand, that the harm that befalls us is God’s will and we receive it with a
resigned impotence. How is it then, despite fervent prayer and adoration of
artefacts that represent our very own deity, that we can give two hoots about what the clever
usurpers of our
predisposition to
superstition decide to feed us? Is it the stars or is it God that decides?
This leads to another equally
ineffable query. Are we
polytheistic by nature despite our firm declarations to the contrary?
Polytheism lasted much longer than
monotheism has been around, with gods that stemmed from nature being around ever since man the farmer had the time to look around him and wonder about the scale of all that surrounded him. Monotheism is a much more recent concept, and was only introduced four thousand years ago. We do, however, unwittingly regress to the
primeval polytheistic nature by splitting God up into
tangible Saints and the other
ecclesiastical nonsense that we revert to when in need of immediate
succour.
Are the stars and resulting horoscopes merely an addition to this desire to
hedge our bets when attempting to believe in that which we can’t see or feel? We’re not quite sure who or what is actually operating the strings in the
cosmic puppet show so we’re cautious not to make unnecessary enemies. It is true that belief is, by its very nature, uncertain but querying this is regarded as
heresy so we don’t dare express this. Since it happens to everyone at some point or another, the wholesale dishing out of a Saint for every occasion not only reduced the fervour of belief in a single God, but paved the way for other
pagan superstitions to enter our lives,
aided and
abetted by
residual belief in one of the oldest gods known to man, the stars in the sky.