Monday, October 27, 2008

Pluto in Capricorn: the End of Democracy as an Ideology?

I was just watching some American protesters making the serious point that Barack Obama is not to be trusted because his middle name is Hussein. Never underestimate some people’s capacity for stupidity. They really do believe stuff that most of us would consider comic exaggeration. Like Barack sounds like Iraq, and Obama sounds like Osama, so he must be a terrorist! But you also have to give Americans credit for showing up Sarah Palin for the idiot she is, albeit an intelligent idiot. A well-known comic, Tina Fey, has created a hugely popular and scarily accurate impersonation of her. In one of her sketches that got a lot of laughs all she had to do was recite part of a speech that Sarah Palin had actually made.

As Pluto finally moves from Sagittarius to Capricorn, we are leaving an era of fundamentalism and ideology, and entering a period of pragmatism. The ideology of unregulated markets has been receiving its death blows in recent months. Democracy as an ideology also needs a few death blows. Not that I’m against democracy per se. I’m against the worship of it. It works, sort of, and it’s better than some systems. But it also means that idiots who think that Obama’s middle name is suspicious get a say in who runs the country. And, being an Absolute Truth, it gets used as grounds for invading other countries because they are not democracies.

Democracy has gained ground as an Absolute Truth because its main protagonists, Europe and the USA, also happened to be rich and capitalist. Therefore democracy becomes equated with that great virtue, wealth, and the capitalist system that has produced it. This has been particularly so since the West’s triumph in the Cold War.

However, now we have the rise of China, which is not a democracy, but which is becoming very wealthy through capitalism. So this will relativise democracy, it will no longer be the One True Path. So this may be a theme of Pluto in Capricorn: the undoing of some of the West’s hubris about its own political system, and a more accurate understanding of it as a political approach that works quite well in some ways and under certain circumstances, but not in others. i.e. a pragmatic, Capricornian understanding.


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9 comments:

Diane L said...

Never underestimate some people’s capacity for stupidity. They really do believe stuff that most of us would consider comic exaggeration.

Ha! Totally agree! :-)

Capricorn pragmatism is going to come as an extremely rude shock to lots of people, albeit well deserved in many cases.

Anonymous said...

Obama's no intellectual hotshot. See Michelle Malkin's article on his gaffes.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MWZjY2YzZWVkMjdkMDEzMGQ0MjJkNTUyN2FkNmMzYTc=

Or what about the inconvenient fact that he has sat at the feet of the maniac Jeremiah Wright for the last 20 years.

Barry Goddard said...

Yes, he had to dodge round the Wright thing. But Wright is like the lunatic in the corner who has some truths to say, and Obama denied them. There'll be a price for that.

But it's got nothing to do with his middle name!

Anonymous said...

It's surreal that those who accuse Obama of being a secret muslim, don't see any contradiction in also slamming him for having Reverend Wright as his spiritual mentor for 20 years, or being married and having his daughters christened in his church by him.

Anonymous said...

As an American who wants to see the best of humanity represented in our nation's leader I'm voting for Obama. It's not so much for the rescue of the economy, which is going FLUSH for the next 10 - 15 years no matter who is elected. It's more because the most disadvantaged in this country are the Blacks.

When young Black children see a president that looks like them, they will feel the hope and pride that we white folks have taken for granted for over 200 years. From a spiritual point of view it takes a lot of courage to be born Black in America. The souls who have chosen to come here in Black bodies have accepted a burden that we white ethnics have never had to consider. A rising tide lifts all boats, to use an unmitigated cliche. When we see the Black people (descendents of those who were brought here against their will) lifted to the level of dignity that we whites have enjoyed for 200+ years then we can start thinking in terms of "US" instead of us vs. them.

Go Obama in '08 - maybe not for the practical reasons of Pluto in Capricorn but for the upcoming reasons of Pluto in Aquarius! Blaze that trail!

Anonymous said...

Do you really think Sarah Palin is intelligent?

Barry Goddard said...

All right, she's clever, probably got A grades at school. That's what I meant.

Anonymous said...

re the thing on names:

Whilst I don't personally think theres anything in it, is it really so different from astrology? (i.e. seeing meanings in co-incidences).

Barry Goddard said...

Yes, good point. I guess the difference is that with astrology you need to dance lightly on the symbols, they don't 'prove' anything. All symbolical thinking needs to be like that to be helpful. To be literal and black-and-white wih the meanings of your symbols I'd call psychologically primitive, which is what those protesters were doing.