I’ve just finished the Friday lead article for Planet Waves Astrology News, called “Steal Your Face: The Astrology of Privacy.” The article explores the way that people have been growing more psychic at the same time that the Internet has been dissolving boundaries. I cover the legal concept of privacy (which datesВ back to 1890), and then look at the astrology of the Internet. Finally, I explore the astrology of Facebook, using the chart for the day the social networking site was launched. The article will be distributed, along with the horoscopes and another excellent edition of Planet Waves Astrology News, to subscribers on Friday morning.
Here is a short excerpt from the article:
Some very powerful astrology led to this, particularly the series of Uranus-Neptune conjunctions in 1993, which were in Capricorn. This represented a breakdown of the traditions, boundaries and compartments represented by Capricorn, which would make room for something else. That something else started to emerge when planets began arriving in Aquarius, beginning with Uranus in 1995. The Internet seemed to descend upon us like an entity taking root on the planet and in consciousness. To me this represents a technological revolution and a social shift. Both Uranus and Aquarius represent groups, and the Net became the biggest group revolution in the history of the world.
Then in 1998 Neptune arrived in Aquarius and the real fun started: the Net began expanding wildly, and social boundaries and structures began melting away. Neptune (among other important themes) is about creating illusions, and suddenly many people had one or more alter egos, leading to today’s standard of having an identity for every occasion. Part of this illusion involves maintaining the notion of privacy in the midst of a total meltdown of privacy.
Nowhere is this contradiction so beautifully displayed as in the Facebook experience. The other day someone sent me an activist video warning about the evils of Facebook, including the fact that they keep all their information. I’ve never liked Facebook, but this had nothing to do with how they keep data. I figure everyone does, and just about everyone online makes and archives numerous backups of their systems. Yet many people seem to be in a tizzy about this: you know, how they type in all their personal details into a public database, complete with photographs and videos, then worry about how other people might find out about it. This, without ever bothering to set the privacy settings that Facebook provides (and which it says that 80% of users ignore).
In light of this, I think we need a new concept of privacy. We need to understand that in a world where most of what we say and do ends up in a database, that privacy is merely a scrim; a thin veil. I would also propose that we question why exactly we’re worried that someone might know a certain fact, or why we find it acceptable that some people know certain things about us and unacceptable that others know the same information. There seem to be two opposing forces in the psyche, one of which wants to lie or give a specific version of events to nearly everyone, and one of which wants to publicize the details of our lives and be totally transparent.
Musicman 1 – Fascinating! Five Faces… and right on with my experiences since late 1980’s in science and 2nd stage of computing to today and broaching 6th/7th world of computing. There was a reason scientists were always considered unsociable, geeks, now it has simply spread across society much like a virus.
But, there is a way out, and that is to “know oneself” and thus not get caught in what anyone else thinks or says or wants of another, now, as ever, and as you indicate from the theory, be consultative, friendly and formal.
I have friends that found husbands and wives in the online environment, manifested into flesh and now have children. For me, I need eye contact and no amount of profiling online in early 90’s or 2000’s or today will ever bring me a mate. That’s just me. Trick is not to feel badly about that by others who are uncomfortable and want to solve my “problem”. I don’t see it as a problem.
I want people in my life who are honest and direct, and I don’t get that feeling online in dating arenas and often not in person either. For example, I asked a question I knew the answer to last week and the person lied to me. It wasn’t a big deal because the content related to their decision anyway, but it pointed out that they were uncomfortable with themselves. Made me sad and I realized we had come as far as we ever would because its not my job (joos) to force them to change.
Anywhooo, I do combine and use all my powers to gain greater understanding of situations, peoples, etc, and that’s all any of us really can do – internet, dreaming, meditating, talking, writing snail mail letters. Mix it up!
Trick == Perspective!
The View of the Horizon is the Lover!
a friend sent this a while ago, because i had sent her many of the same complaints
http://www.newsweek.com/id/183180/page/1
yeah even though i’m in the definite social networking age-group, and have been using a computer for the last 11 yrs about 90-100 hrs/week for my work, i still dont participate in it. it just doesnt draw my interest in the way i want to meet people. i tried online dating for years after getting my first computer in ’97 (b/c i never met anyone in person even though being very socially active in high school/college in the 90s) and nothing ever happened. i kept profiles up and still never got responses from anyone who had anything in common.
i signed up for friendster when it first launched like 7 yrs ago or something (b/c some friends convinced me to join since they were already members) and not 1 thing ever came out of it. total waste except that i got lots of spam email from cheesy, ugly russian girls who wanted to find any random american husband so they could move here (even though none of them ever looked at any of my interests), and then spam from porn & dating sites disguising themselves as actual girls. but friendster didnt show any of your info except your first name & pic. then came myspace and i just hated the layout of those profiles & info, and the superficial nature of the whole site. i dont know what facebook does with personal info, but i’m over the whole online social networking thing anyway.
The Five Faces Of Joos
Joos was a Dutch linguist who worked in the area of Psycho-linguistics. He postulated a theory that we have five faces…through which we filter our emotive experience. He concluded that …if you use the middle three….Formal….Consultative….and Friendly…..then you maintain control over the internal emotional environment in which you live. Communications are straightforward…and usually manageable.
If however…..you go to intimate….you can never get them out again….you have surrendered your personal private space. Frozen…engenders similar peaks of emotion…and thus the hiatus in some way compromises the sanctity of ones personal space.
What the internet does is to allow one to use all five of these faces…without the eyecontact….or the accountability. The safety of the ethernet allows for emotional outpouring…without the emotional impact of the response. There is certainly no additional non-verbal communication that comes from eye contact or body language. The projection of the emotional response is in the hands of the individual. This really is masturbation!!
It becomes a sterilised or pasteurised version of the experience. We had the corresponding version in the 1960s…with the invention of the transistor radio. This minituarised toy did indeed minimise everything including the experience!!
The inherent danger of the social internet is the lack of preparation it gives for the wider world environment.
I took a workshop recently…where I asked 20 young people in a room…to text each other…..in total silence!!
Fantastic…..5-10 word insults traded around the room producing fits of laughter….!!
I then asked them to switch off ther mobile phones….and each in turn speak for 1 minute on a subject of their choice.
The results were truly frightening…!!
Conversation…with all of its dangers…eye-contact….body language……intimate… frozen danger boundaries et al. is now a completely endangered species…!!
PH
this is just too uncanny with its timing… i’m simultaneously on facebook right now, and had posted a status update about some oxtail stew i’d made, with the comment, “mmmm… tail.” a friend commented on it, and next thing i know, my brother is commenting on how weird it is to think of his sister getting some tail. LOL! *sigh* well, if he hadn’t figured it out bynow, it was about time. 😉
I’m really looking forward to reading this article tomorrow. I’m one of those strange folk that don’t “do” the social network scene, but I have young adult children, and over one hundred high school students every year who do, and it amazes me what they put out there! Because I am quite open, my students feel free to share with me what’s really on their computers and cell phones…good thing I’m not shocked easily! There have been increasing news articles about sex-texts amongst teens, which I know are very prevalent, and I’m wondering where this is going to lead (if anywhere) legally.