Hi all, I’ve done a special edition audio summing up this very weird and fun week in astrology. I sum up the link between the Tucson shootings and the appearance of the sidereal horoscope — that is, the “your sign is wrong” hoax. By the way — I was quoted by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune today, which picked up my quotes from an Associated Press article distributed worldwide.
Here ya go. It’s currently in the new player — we will add a link to the old player shortly.
[audio: http://planetwaves.fm/podcast/110115.mp3
A brilliant audio Eric – Just what I needed this morning. It was interesting and inspiring. Thanks.
Well it’s an interesting and thought-provoking audio, so thanks for that, Eric.
I’m not sure I understand all the connections you were making, or maybe I an trying to make connections where they were not intended.
When you cited Wilhelm Reich, I thought you were going to say that our own govt is sexually oppressive (or has a purity agenda), but you didn’t really go there.
Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. The govt does have an overt sexual agenda when it comes to kids and what they can be taught in school, and it had one with Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, but most grown-ups in this culture don’t run into any kind of direct seuxal messages from the govt.
So I guess you were just using Reich to make the point that a culture that is sexually oppressive (whether because of the govt or not) has the effect of making people weak and of creating a “mystical longing” in them.
I’m with you on that point, only I think our culture’s sexual inhibitions are much bigger than America, they come down to us from all kinds of influences and institutions throughout history. Some of them are DONE to us but some of them WE DO to ourselves.
Sexual repression is a big cultural mash-up, it’s not just the result of some right wing loonies. I mean, I would like to pin it on them, believe me, but they are probably at least as much the victims of sexual repression as the perpetrators of it.
Anyhow, I agree that Loughner without question was sexually messed up. But I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on what sort of oppression you think he was dealing with that would have had the effect of turning him — or someone in general — into a mass murderer.
We’re all sexually confused or messed up or inhibited in some way or another but most of us don’t go out and shoot people, thank god.
I think his insanity clearly had characteristics of sexual repression but was it caused by sexual repression? Certainly it would have made his craziness harder to bear, but I don’t know that repression caused the insanity. Maybe, but I don’t know.
And while I buy Wilhelm Reich’s argument (or the extension of his argument) that a sexually repressive culture can weaken people and tend to disempower them, I don’t know that it then follows that a repressive culture will make people more likely to strike out in violence. Maybe, but I don’t know.
I suspect much violence is due directly, explicitly, to the way that we glorify violence — little about this is subtle or indirect. We make movies and video games and TV shows that make violence look like a big adenalin rush, with no bad consequences, and bingo! We get people behaving violentlly.
Loughner may have bought that gun because he desperately needed to feel good about himself, and the television and movies that he had seen showed him that he would be cool and powerful if he used a gun. It could have been that simple.
Finally I guess you were linking the timing of the news story of the “wacky horoscopes” to Loughner because you think maybe it was an expression of the “mystical longing” of the masses of the sort that Wilhelm Riech talked about.
Maybe. That’s an imaginative analysis, and I like it, and it’s part of the fun of Planet Waves, that you draw connections between widely disparate things that don’t seem on the surface to be connected to one another.
Yeti: “wouldn’t you say that the mystical longing in our culture is channeled mostly into buying things?” Yep I certainly agree, and *they* have the cheek to call it retail therapy now. It always was specifically designed as therapy and promoted as such, a balm for getting through your mind numbing existence, but therapy of a more subtle kind. I cringe these days at their use of spiritual terminology that keep society’s shopping addictions going full throttle.
An example of a commercial might go like this: “Experience bliss and true inner freedom when you take this car (no, they usually say *This baby*, right?) out on the road” The advertisement is aired, usually when big time sports are on, showing the *sexy* car out on the road, meandering the desert or some pristine countryside, going full throttle *and*…….. there’s never another damn car in sight to hamper or curb your freedom. Pure fabricated bliss people (in your dreams….). Just sign your life away on the dotted line.
Talk about tapping into some mystical longing of a disenfranchised populous that you created in the first bloody place.
Here’s are the lyrics of a song by Bronski Beat, Love and Money, with the last line saying it all:
“Work for money spend money
Spend for love love for money
Pain and love love and pain
Pain and lust lust for money
Love and money
Love and money
Exploit for money kill for love
Love for money exploited love
Love and money
Love and money
Burning me up
Oooh it’s burning me up
Bruning me up
Oooh it’s burning me up
Work for money spend money
Spend for love love for money
Money is the root of all evil”
yeti – it’s late & i’m sleepy, but just wanted to say thanks for your input.
For sure. We could find lots of manifestations as well but clearly – that is primary.
Though – our main export is warfare. Apparently people – I still cannot for the life of me figure out how, because my dad uses words with more than three letters – found its profferer fatherly and charismatic.
Also…wouldn’t you say that the mystical longing in our culture is channeled mostly into buying things? Not just charismatic leaders and aggression, but shopping and lifestyle images, products that must be purchased and not found or made.
When we live in a society that is *consumed* with all things commercial and has little or no regard for reflection and inner growth, then how do we manage to become aware of people in our communities that suffer deep psychic pain; the ticking time bombs like Loughner was. We are so shackled to a perverse way of living…..more aptly called dying. Myself, I struggled with a sense of belonging *forever* and a day and it sucked big time. Thoughts turn in on themselves and frustration and anxiety grows deep and dark from that place, when no meaningful connection is made with another human being.
Who knows what can turn it around but if we don’t rehumanise ourselves and soon, then the ship might just sail on by.
Eric,
I thought you’d find this interesting given your focus on the sexuality angle and his image of women:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/us/16loughner.html?pagewanted=6&_r=3&hp
“At a small local branch of a major bank, for example, the tellers would have their fingers on the alarm button whenever they saw him approaching.
It was not just his appearance — the pale shaved head and eyebrows — that unnerved them. It was also the aggressive, often sexist things that he said, including asserting that women should not be allowed to hold positions of power or authority.
One individual with knowledge of the situation said Mr. Loughner once got into a dispute with a female branch employee after she told him that a request of his would violate bank policy. He brusquely challenged the woman, telling her that she should not have any power. ”
FNORDEarlier in the article it describes his mother as doting and his father as scary and reclusive. Saturn in the 8th house of the murder chart screams “look to the father.” It’s probably from him that Jared got his ideas that women shouldn’t have any power. People were so wary of the elder Loughner that it was said if your ball lands in the Loughner yard, you leave it there. It doesn’t say much about the father, but it does say that Jared hated being at home.
The article’s tone is playing dumb. The author’s attitude is baffled. I guess that’s the safe thing to do when you’re writing for a reputable news outlet and you don’t have any hard evidence. I’m an astrologer so I’m already on the fringe. I think this kid was abused by his dad and his mom played cover-up. It’s a leap I know to make that kind of accusation, but is it? If you don’t believe in astrology it’s easier to turn a blind eye to the possibility I guess. That solar eclipse conjunct Nessus in Virgo in Jared’s chart has sexual abuse written all over it. Sexual abuse is the easiest way to break a human’s sense of where the ground is and fuck up their sense of boundaries.
His care-free smile beaming all over the internet is a reflection of our culture’s sickness. The sickness that can make excuses for war while people starve and lose their livelihoods and homes to bankers playing casino with investments. Consider that many a day some civilian in Afghanistan and Iraq experiences loved ones being shot or bombed by Americans, some of whom aren’t even our military but paid contractors who are in it primarily to make money for their shareholders. It’s the same sickness that allows people to turn a blind eye to a kid screaming for attention and healing by the strangeness of his behavior. His grin is a reflection of how we so often fail to care for each other and the planet that provides all of our resources.
Access to mental-emotional health is less important to Wall Street than making money any way they can. News outlets probably have a surge in profits whenever something like this happens so in a way the powers of Wall Street have a vested interest in sustaining disasters and bad times for as many people as possible. The impulse to spend money on useless shit is made that much stronger the scarier the atrocities transmitted between advertisements. ATROCITY! ***new cars are SEXY*** ATROCITY! ***buying this beer will get you laid*** FEAR AND TREMBLING!!! ***our pharmaceuticals will smooth out your pain…etc. Add the environment of gun shows where you can buy guns without a background check with so many cracks in the social awareness and care for our neighbors and we’re surprised when someone goes and shoots up a group of people in America? Come on.FNORD
Yes.
Thanks, Eric.
Great commentary, Eric! Thank you. Nice music, too.