Two catch-ups from yesterday: what I meant by the health care debate being boring, and what I meant by Uranus in Pisces being persistent, or how it needs to persist.
It’s true that the health care debate has been interesting to the degree that it’s flushed out some startling viewpoints and has sparked some conversation, but the main thing it reveals is this.
If the government does anything except militarize, and particularly if it helps people or strives to, there is a faction that’s going to scream about socialism. And since the government has, for the past year, spent somewhere around a trillion dollars buying/bailing out banks and automotive companies, this is a ridiculous assertion; it reveals a selfish streak so deep the only way out of it would be for a person to actually need government assistance and finally put the argument down; and it betrays a deeper addiction to perpetual warfare and paranoia.
This is not just getting boring, it’s been boring for a long time. I am being polite in my choice of this word.
An interesting health care debate would include a discussion about how complimentary care prevents disease for a fraction the cost of “curing” it; it would include something about nutrition and its role in health; it would include a conversation about how we might reduce some of the stress we are under, not just so we might live better (naughty, in a puritanical society) but how we might reduce the stress on the health care system that comes from how we abuse our bodies and our minds.
The fact that so many people spend so much money out of pocket on complimentary care — at the acupuncturist, the massage therapist, the herbalist, and so on, is not coming up anywhere I’ve seen. This, because it’s not scientifically established, because a massage therapist can’t reattach someone’s head, or because the pharmaceuticals don’t profit at all from massage therapy? This is really a conversation about who profits and how much, and I think we need to call it that. It’s not, at this point, a conversation about what is actually good for us. For a reference point, have a look at a film called Who Killed the Electric Car?
As for the Pisces factor: we’ve lived with Uranus in Pisces for about six years, but I’m going to propose that we really don’t understand this influence. This is because Pisces is so difficult to discern even on a clear day. Its nature is not just twofold but manifold. (Most of the signs are dualistic, starting with the dilemma-styled horns of Aries and Taurus; moving onto the twins of Gemini; and the yin-yang of Cancer.) We seem to have this thing about dualism and we get nervous when it seems to founder. One example is the way that the intersex issue has come to the surface during Uranus in Pisces. We have gone from the perception of two nifty genders to perceiving a spectrum of possibilities and options.
We don’t know what the Uranus in Pisces side of the equation represents, but I would propose that at least it represents fertile chaos. Often when there is a desperate or mendacious attempt to maintain the status quo or law and order, the best remedy is a bit of anarchy to bring out the nature of the beast. What we are perceiving as confusion and chaos in the discussion about health care may be the thing that raises the level of the conversation to where it needs to be, or opens the way for what we need to be talking about. Why is mainstream healthcare all so expensive? What are the real options to $700 prescriptions?
Over the next day or three, we might be getting a look at the Saturn factor, as we have the relatively rare phenomenon of a New Moon precisely conjunct Saturn, this time, in Virgo. To me the interesting angle of this debate is how we relate to government in the form of a parent. That is really a question about our psychology.
There is something adolescent about this debate; it’s like the kids want to spend their money on anything they want and resent anyone saying that we have to spend some of our money on taking care of the community. One of the things this conversation highlights is a missing factor — a theory of community to go along with all this taxation and bureaucracy that we live with; a theory that might include some concept of sustainability. And that, among other things, is what needs to persist.
Thank you, be! I am always humbled by the generosity here … inspires me greatly.
There is so much confusion and shame associated with mental illness that it’s hard to know resolution. We hear bits about post-pardom and bi-polar but not so much about that level of depression that is masked by drinking and drugs. It just seems like we are lightyears away from answers here as nobody’s talking about how we go about healing.
It’s especially tough through times of upheaval and tumult to help those who are in freak-mode. Somehow along the way they have been taught to keep their distance and so they join rallies carrying placcards decrying HITLER and OBAMACARE … the pain these people must be experiencing is palpable.
One day … we’ll get it together for them/us.
Under Uranus in Aquarius, the Internet was established as a popular phenomenon in a passive way – you would read it (truthout, the onion, the big news sites). Under Uranus in Pisces, it has become a more populist entity, you co-create it (blogs, flickr, wiki, post secret, etc.); that was Web 2.0; and at the same time it’s taken on more of both a commercial quality (which I partially attribute to Pisces), and also more of a dreamscape/fantasy world (all about Pisces, though part of that is Neptune in Aquarius rather than Uranus in Aquarius). Sariel Raven, who comments over at Book of Blue and sometimes here, has some interesting thoughts about how the Net is a vast field of experimentation, particularly for exploring sexual fantasy and this being a vital way that people are learning how to come out of their psychic boxes. She has the most positive view of internet sex that I’ve run across…perhaps she’ll share a few more of her thoughts on this.
Eric, I completely agree with your point. I was just focusing on the topic raised in this particular post. On a more positive side, Uranus in Pisces may also be associated with some of the inspired and create use of online technology, innovations in the art world, and in new forms spirituality. I also believe the Uranus’ ingress into the mutable signs is associated with the birth of a new generation, in this case a new Artist/Adaptive generation. (See Strauss and Howe’s Generations Theory for more details on this.) That’s just what I can think of off the top of my head, but I’m sure there’s a great deal more. 🙂
marymack – AMEN! Thanks for bringing up the needs of the mentally and emotionally disturbed among us. My friend the pharmacist is going into a specialty field where, as a consultant to physicians, she can speak with folks taking the kinds of drugs prescribed in these cases; taking the time to explain to them about their use and to answer questions that the physicians don’t have time to do. She feels very strongly, as you do, that this health care area is sadly neglected. All in due time.
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On the very positive side, I feel sure that President Obama, a mars in virgo, entertains a very limited amount of bs and thus has read the writing on the wall and taken back control of the bill. Can I get an amen! He and his people seems very adept at strategy and they must have sized up the level of insanity over this issue and decided that we are not going to get a productive debate … ever … in this climate. Change will come (thank you Uranus) and those who resist are getting hysterical and can not be reached in this state. These people, I recall the woman at the McCain rally with disheveled state insisting that Obama was a terrorist – heartbreaking, really, the madness that lives in some, and it warmed my heart to see McCain (whose folks had been stirring up these people) took the time to calm her and disabuse her of some of her crazy.
Which brings me to my point – I’ve been patiently waiting for the debate to include mental health and I suppose it’s clear this conversation is just not going to happen. For my part, I don’t want anything to derail the progress and so I keep my questions to myself but really there are so many who need help and they’re just not getting it; no, not drugs, but real help to live with stress and uncertainty, make their way through the chaos. The level of anger I feel at those neocons using the vulnerable in this way makes me a little wacky … but I have to let that go for now.
Perhaps we have to do this incrementally, health care reform, and have faith that Obama is the vehicle for change. Please god(dess)
I think it’s important to remember that in astrology, most factors will have multiple significations. How we construct a narrative out of certain of those significations is called interpretation. In this sense, Uranus in Pisces can represent both progressive and regressive forces. Yet I think they will have a similar effect, of provoking progress, even if it seems in a backwards way, or by revealing these bizarre facets of the American psyche.
For people studying astrology, the multi-layer, double or triple signification of a single factor, is one of the most difficult things to grasp. It’s not just that one would have to learn “what Uranus in Pisces means,” but also that one would have to see it two or three different ways, and maintain awareness of them at the same time.
The mirror effect of Saturn and Uranus opposing one another came up during the election as the conversation about who represented what factor — McCain or Obama. There seemed to be a feeling that Obama more closely resembled Saturn in Virgo than did McCain, despite Obama being a more progressive candidate. And if you look at Saturn and Uranus, they do have a way of mimicking one another, despite their prevailing reputations.
As I suggested in the comments of a post several weeks ago, I think Uranus in Pisces in the context of the health care debate has to do with some of the more far fetched and crazy ideas we’re hearing from the right. You know, the death panels, the “you lie!” comment, the tea party protest movement, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh’s stark raving mad rants, and so on and so forth. I could literally go on for days with examples. Uranus is associated with revolutionary radicalism. In Pisces, it’s rapidly bringing to the surface all kinds of quite literally crazy ideas buried in the American psyche, notions which would otherwise be confined to the national subconscious (ie. they wouldn’t see the light of day for the most part). As we know, a lot of these ideas and fears are nothing but figments of the right’s warped imagination, also a Piscean phenomenon. Only with Uranus in Pisces could someone yell at their Congressman, “Get your filthy government hands off my Medicare!” completely unaware that Medicare is a government program. In brief, Uranus in Pisces is expressed in part through the right’s revolutionary furor against figments of their own imagination which they have projected on society but which do not actually exist in objective reality. If you want to see what this looks like in practice, watch Max Blumenthal’s clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UASS1qFAIQ8&feature=player_embedded#t=85
For that matter, watch any of the clips on his playlist. This isn’t just a phenomenon of the American right.