Since Neptune moved into Pisces, the United States has been in a strange, hyperbolic interlude with it’s culture wars: the Komen Foundation sullied its own reputation by revealing its right-wing roots with a botched attempt to defund breast cancer screening at Planned Parenthood.
Rick Santorum and the Republican presidential nominees tried to top that, promising to ban contraception and family planning to appeal to their Christian Right base. Republicans in Congress doubled down trying to prevent women from getting any contraception at all — from health providers or health insurers.
Trying to absorb and condense the magnitude of bullshit from these temporal drifts backwards — the reliquary of the cognitive dissonance and religious fanaticism of the past decade — was too much even for my nerves. As the presidential primaries warm up with all this overheated stimulus, I’m suffering from a bout of outrage fatigue. We have been there and done that for over ten years.
This is how we got here in the first place — policies so bad and a nation so divided we’re stuck and not functional enough to deal with our national economic or global problems effectively. Yet, the revolutionary square of Uranus and Pluto has begun, the year and election of 2008 has happened. So has Tahrir Square, the Wisconsin revolt and the process to recall Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, the ending of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, and the Occupy Movement. Step backwards with a wedge issue like contraception? You have got to be kidding me.
The Greeks have a word for explaining the odd, self-defeating and misogynistic political and cultural episodes of these last two weeks since Neptune moved into its home sign. The word is akrasia (pronounced ah-krah-SEE-yah). It’s the condition where having lost your will, you act against your better judgment. You know what’s best to do, yet you do something else. It would be one thing if there were a solid, serious idea among any one of the Republicans presidential nominees to fix what needs fixing, but the turnstile they use to enter into the arena for serious discussion on how to solve our national, economic and environmental problems leads them right back to the curb. The single issue they’re using right now, like a shipwreck survivor clinging to the ruins of the boat, is the freedom of religion (to subjugate women). They are a party trapped by their own delusion and their rabidly religious base, with no new ideas.
No individual or society is immune to akrasia. We do it every day. We reach for that extra lump of sugar to sweeten our coffee when our blood glucose levels are too high for health. We vote for politicians who promote the same failed policies that caused a calamitous breakdown of the economy in the first place. Catholic bishops decry the criminal greed of Wall Street and the economic hardship they’ve caused for millions, yet the still refuse to allow women the ability to plan a family so that the family’s economic resources are not further strained. These are neither left turns nor right turns but wrong turns and outdated notions.
Oddly enough, in leaving its role as mass deluder in the sign of Aquarius, Neptune’s return to Pisces in partnership with Chiron has illuminated this month’s culture war rehash like sunlight on a coral reef. We’re seeing it for what it is, a ruse to divide us, and we’re not buying it. We’re no longer fighting a mass delusion of fear like we were ten years ago, but recognizing that fear was used and is now being recycled in an attempt to suck us back into losing our will. But with Uranus in Aries — ain’t gonna happen.
We all know by now who is trying to do all of this. When Grover Norquist — the guy who wanted to cut government down to a size small enough to drown in a bathtub — admonishes the base at the Conservative Political Action Conference to “just elect any idiot as President who will do what he’s told,” the curtain is not only pulled back on the Mighty Oz and his diabolical machinations, his underwear is found down at his ankles. Don’t ask me what I imagine him doing to the little dog.
I am liking this new world of Neptune, where with Chiron we’re raising the bar of our awareness. But like everything else, only focused energy can move through the traps and riptides of the wedge issues of the past still swirling about in this new open sea and this election year. Cognitive dissonance — the feeling that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, such as believing lies when you know and repress the truth — seems like decades ago, yet it was practiced as late as last year with the debt limit crisis that almost took down the world’s economy. We’re seeing hints and glimmers of awareness, like the overwhelming outpouring of support for Planned Parenthood after the Komen ‘attack’, and the polling that showed that over 90 percent of Catholic women already use or have used some form of birth control. In fact, nothing has so united women more than the very attacks being foisted on us.
So we have to keep moving ahead, forward, visualizing our path and keeping our energy targeted there. Good ideas — for a world in trouble and in the midst of change — could be recognized for what they are, and old tired ideas, beliefs already proven fallible, can finally be put to rest: trickle-down economics, an unregulated free market, denying a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body, the medieval view of women in general. We have lost so much already. We can not afford to lose our wills. Most of us by now have awakened and re-embraced our belief in ourselves and are already in the fight. We have nothing left to lose but the United States of Akrasia, which made most of us fearful and closed, losing our faith and trust of each other. Time is truly ripe and ready to form a new country of fully aware and inventive minds and hearts, open to knowledge, freedom, compassion and growth. That to me sounds like a more perfect union.
Zerosity:
I am a great admirer of the way the Greeks have of naming states of social and personal existence. I am keeping a hold of those words.
From Anu Garg’s archives at A Word A Day, I offer two more “a” words of Greek origin to add to the vocabulary of the times:
acedia (uh-SEE-dee-uh) noun : Spiritual torpor and apathy; ennui.
[Late Latin, from Greek akedeia, indifference : a- + kedos, care.]
http://wordsmith.org/words/acedia.html
ataraxia (at-uh-RAK-see-uh) also ataraxy, noun : A state of freedom from disturbance of mind. [From Greek ataraktos (not disturbed), from tarassein (to disturb).]
http://wordsmith.org/words/ataraxia.html
http://wordsmith.org/awad/archives.html
Acedia has been a favorite word for several years. Ataraxia – well, now that’s a destination state in these days.
JannKinz
I’m wanting to stay barefoot in warm creative waters and it took some doing today to splash myself in the cold shower of politics. It was “Akrasia” that called me to you and so glad to have a name for much of what I have lived – more dramatically than a lump of sugar in my coffee. And haven’t we all? Thank you for your article, and especially for this concept of Lost Will that needed to be called out; by name.
Thank you, Fe.
By the way, I love the blurb about you, Fe. That makes it personal and the link to your other posts is very helpful too!
Fe – I like the entire concept of ‘akrasia’ as you have put forth so well. Also known in colloquial American English as “shooting your own foot off.” Akrasia is so much shorter… 🙂
Very apt words to describe what is going on around us.
Yikes, Fe! Elizabeth Warren?? Dare to Dream!
Judith:
Absolutely right. It’s as if the Repubs believe women can’t read.
Be:
I read through your post line by line to absorb all of it because as you say, there it goes. Women are NOT having it. This may indeed lead us, I hope, to a woman Presidential nominee for the 2016 election — hope and pray that Elizabeth Warren hears the call.
Hi Fe,
I’m liking your new word Akrasia. I like learning new stuff and it seems to be plentiful, if you’re up to it. Not everyone is, as you point out so well. No doubt we all need to evolve, and that’s true for the good old USA too. Taking pot shots at the female population is so archaic. Yet, you make the important point that these latest attacks only serve to unite us and probably that’s it’s sole (soul) purpose. To unite us and make us more conscious of how far we have come and how far we still have to go before we all are accepted as equal in all ways; not just by gender, but by race, religion, nationality and age. I’m kinda sensitive to that age part.
I can’t believe sometimes, how clearly astrology can describe where we are at any given point in the evolution process. In this case, we can look at the U.S. (Sibly) Solar Return which happened on the U.S. birthday (more or less) this year. Mars sits in the 9th house of Law and Religion and is trined by Saturn who represents the old guard and tradition and is noted for his lack of give and take. However, the good old boys didn’t factor in (so unconscious of them!) that the Moon was square Mars in that chart. Emotions, women, the tides, you name it, everything the Moon represents was hurled at the foolish Mars for his churlish actions. As an added insult, this foolish SR Mars is also conjunct the natal U.S Sibly Uranus. Foolish? Quite. However, I do believe it is part of the Universe’s big plan.
The U.S. Solar Return Mars is in the 9th house alright, but it is in the sign of Gemini, who isn’t adapted to the 9th house ways of looking at the big picture and isn’t aware that little details (like who sits on the panel) need to be considered before decisions are made. This Mars has the support of Saturn in Libra but he has some pretty old-fashioned attitudes about equality himself. However, the ruler of Mars’ sign Gemini is Mercury, and in this chart Mercury is in Leo but he’s also conjunct the U.S. North Node whose purpose is to point us in the direction of soul growth.
Mercury is also the focal point of a yod (Finger of God) aspect pattern. The sextile in this chart between Pluto and Chiron is connected to Mercury like a bow is connected to an arrow; it provides the force of energy that propels and points the arrow, in this case Mercury, and that produces a beyond-human-awareness kind of energy. Neptune is conjunct Chiron so it is the symbolic power of 3 “beyond-Saturn’s-understanding” planets pointing it’s Mercury in Leo arrow at the U.S. north node. Like the domino factor, hair-trigger Mars kicks in the rage of the feminine Moon, who from Virgo is opposite Chiron and Neptune in Pisces. She thus activates the sextile between Chiron/Neptune and Pluto who draws that Mercury arrow and let’s it fly. Instant soul, instant karma, instant evolution.
be.
Fe, excellent as always. Love your writing!
Yeti! So glad to see you back here! I have missed your voice!
As one of those 100,000 (and more) who fought back, I say “Hear-hear!” We have to stay the course because the consequences (if we don’t) are too awful to contemplate; especially for our daughters (and granddaughters).
It’s hard to believe the right-wing thinks going after women rights and their health issues is a winning ticket. Pelosi put out the call and 100,000 of us hit back in less than 24 hours. And still — because they’re afraid to look perhaps? — they blather on as if we were meek little things, asking for permission from the stern patriarchy.
As Sarah Palin would say — WTF??
I find this very encouraging. Thanks for a good read and conversation, kiddo. Excellent, as always
Len:
I found the word akrasia by accident. It was originally in an emailer I subscribe to about Paleo lifestyle. When I first read the definition I had an EUREKA! moment, and I almost wish the word had Latin roots instead of Greek, which makes you pronounce every syllable. The Latin version, which you spelled out, is quite quite fitting.
Here’s a link to Juan Cole and the selective adaptation of Catholic orthodoxy by Mr. Santorum:
http://www.juancole.com/2012/02/top-ten-catholic-teachings-santorum-rejects-while-obsessing-about-birth-control.html
Yeti:
Agreed with Len. Missed you and glad to see you here!
The Republicans have done something more than stir up their base’s anger. They’ve stirred up the anger of women, no matter the party. I think we’re going to watch some very interesting political theater this next year, not the least of which is the Republican convention itself. We shall see how long rabid anger can be sustained, particularly this year.
Fe: Thank you for another inspiring and educational piece that leaves me more coherent and focused than before reading it. Nobody sends me back to school like you do, and it is a privilege and a pleasure when you do. Thank you, not only for an valuable addition to my vocabulary but also how to pronounce it (my mistake would have been ah-crazy-ah) and a context that will not be forgotten.
yeti: Good to hear from you again. Your valuable contributing comment is appreciated as a wake-up call and well-taken advice for my well-being.
“The Republican party is fueled by one thing and one thing alone, voter anger. It doesn’t matter if voters are angry because the government is doing too much, as people making over $75,000 feel, or if they feel that government is doing too little, as people making under $30,000 feel. As long as they can keep a good portion of the electorate angry, they have a chance of winning.”
from http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/02/16/poor-republicans-angry-at-government-because-government-doesnt-do-enough/
I’ve always noticed my republican stepdad’s lack of control over his anger. This puts it in perspective. It’s manufactured anger and it works. When people are constantly pissed off they can’t think clearly enough to do what’s good for them. Being angry all the time is already horrible for your health and relationships. So sad.