Sun Conjunct Eris and the Computer as LSD
It is rare in the history of astrology that we know about a new planet — that we know of its existence, much less have a concept of what it’s about. Today the Sun is conjunct Eris, first seen in 2004, officially discovered in 2005, and named in 2006.
In January 2007, working with Cosmos and Psyche author Richard Tarnas (who gave me a personal class on postmodernism, which I did not understand), I published the first monograph about it — before any other astrologer had a clue.
I even made the front page of The Wall Street Journal (not my best interview).
At its essence, Eris is about what’s happened to us as a result of overexposure to digital technology. The change has been gradual, like insanity slowly setting in over a period of several decades.
To some it has barely been noticeable — they don’t think about these things, they have no basis for comparison, or they have no recollection of how life was before our psyches were shattered by all of this technology. Not just shattered: all AI devices are based on robotics. A robot is not a tin can rumbling around; it is a series of instructions. And when we immerse ourselves in robotics all day, we become like robots. And if you are human, that is pretty damned weird.
Let’s put it this way. If your cat started acting like a robot, you would think there was something seriously wrong. But if you act like one, well, you’re just behaving like everyone else, and there is nobody to notice.
The way I remember things, civil society was doing pretty good until 2011, when the “smart” phone came out and soon after, everyone was walking around with a computer in their pocket. (There were other problems, like hardly anyone noticing the problems with 9/11, which worked great as CGI but not under the laws of physics.)
It’s not merely that those imbibing it were obsessed by it, and then total dependency was pushed on us. Today, this extends to being expected to present vaccine and testing records for a disease that nobody has.
Back in the 1960s, the world’s first media philosopher, Marshall McLuhan, said that the computer was LSD for the businessman. This was at a time when everyone — kids, politicians, professors, everyone — were tripping out on a VERY powerful hallucinogenic drug. As a consultant in the computing field (for IBM among others) he noticed that the technology was having a similar effect on the kinds of square businessmen who would never even think of dropping acid.
Now all of society is on this drug. We are living in a dream plane — the digital astral plane, where all the rules of physical reality are suspended, and where we never come down, because there is no ground (of consciousness) to come down to.
As I said on my program Friday night, we are all tripping balls.
Faithfully,
