Wednesday, August 10, 2011

English Monsters from the Deep

It is interesting how unclear the reasons have been for the civil disorder in England. The worst is now over, even though the disorder has spread across the country, because London, which gave a lead, is now quiet. Forcibly so.

No doubt reasons will be given, but just the fact that we don’t really know says quite a lot. It started with alleged police racism in Tottenham, but turned into disorder by all sorts of people, burning down businesses and looting. The austerity measures are clearly an element here. And resentment against the Tory government. Last night 3 Asian men were run over and killed as they left a mosque in Birmingham. That seems like racism.

The point is that ‘reason’ has been left behind and we are dealing with something archaic and collective. People who would not normally riot and loot are doing so. The news showed quite unlikely people in the police cells.

This is what is fascinating. When the collective takes over, people’s usual sense of who they are switches off. It is exactly what happened in Nazi Germany, at a time, like now, of national insecurity. A responsible government opposes and contains these energies. The Nazis used these mob energies against the enemy within. Right now, the British government could, if it wanted, set up a pogrom with the greatest of ease.

It is a rare moment when the dark side of the collective rears its head, and people forget who they are. It is an amnesia, and in the coming months we will see interviews with many people saying they do not know what came over them. It shows how fragile is our civilised consciousness, even after decades of liberal democracy and what some might see as political evolution.

The rioters were just the tip of the iceberg. For every rioter, there were probably hundreds more who could have been drawn in if the circumstances were there, and thousands more who were tempted. The government will isolate the rioters off as an unrepresentative aberration; but in fact it is saying something big about the English collective unconscious. Nothing happened in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, and this shows we are separate races, that it was a racial, tribal phenomenon.

So firstly, there is such a thing as the English race. And secondly, something is going on in its collective unconscious. As in Nazi Germany, people are feeling insecure and powerless. Usually we see attacks on minorities in such circumstances. But what we have in this case is a new element brought in by a new type of society, the ‘consumer society’: greed. Looting has been so characteristic of this unrest, and it is probably a consumerised twist to the pogrom mentality.

The important lesson in these events is that they are saying something about the English collectively: our general nature beneath the ‘civilised’ surface; and something particular about how threatened people are feeling about present circumstances.

It is easy to put it ‘out there’ and just blame the rioters. It’s like in a family that is unconscious. The family neurosis is often embodied by just one member, the black sheep, putting it safely ‘out there’, so that nobody has to look at themselves.

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We saw in the 1930s how Uranus square Pluto gave rise to the same primitive collective energies to which each one of us is vulnerable, even if we let others do it for us. How many people are secretly satisfied by the rioting? Perhaps those who damn it most? Uranus square Pluto will be interacting with the charts of all the major powers in the next few years (including China, which has Sun at 7 Libra). We will be seeing a lot more of what we have been experiencing in England. Why in England right now? Because Mars has been in early Cancer, forming a t-square with Uranus and Pluto: this configuration forms a hard aspect to the UK Sun, MC and Asc at 7-10 Libra/Capricorn, and in particular to the UK Angular Uranus at 1 Libra, a planet of unrest.

The monsters of the old myths, like Grendel, live within us, and emerge when the protective shell of a secure society is weakened. What is happening in the collective now in England is a great moment for collective and personal self-knowledge.


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7 comments:

Anon and Ever said...

Mmmmm... What you say about the race does not convince me, perhaps there is a specific English way of reaction, this is possible, but riots are all over the world, even in Chile and I do not think we cans peak of a “Chilean” race, even if someone may speak of a “Chili” racing... in the mouth, Hot Chili...

Jokes apart, there are systemic facts in question today and the response is what I call blind conservativism or far right wing swallowing the Erath and leading to disaster... In fact, their is a no-response at all...

If you cancel the emerging eruption in action in a moment you cannot “erase” the telluric powerful forces in action! As if they never were... No, they are, they are, and will be... Increasingly be, in a form or another...

“The Rebellion of the masses” is Back, ladies and gentlemen...

Samaya said...

yes it certainly feels that people don t quite know why they are rioting about. It feems that there s a lot of fear and destruction feeding from what is going on in the news around the globe where protests, violence and destruction is ongoing, there is a tapping into that energy. And though it doesnt say anything more about the origins of the more personal or national anger that lead us into the weird events in the UK, it certainly reminds us how easy it is for us humans to avoid being self reflective and make conscious choices on our responses. We forget we can either create love based actions or at least intelligently challenging protests, rather than chaos based ones.

Anonymous said...

Humbly, this is a non measurable variable in economics, ever present in third world countries were there is dispair, no jobs, no opportunities. Examples, Brasil, Argentina where these events happen every two or three years, on the clock. One thing is true though, this reaction almost always happens suddenly, its born out of an everyday incident and it always catches law and order unprepared. So sorry to see this for they are destroying the very thing that might of given them an opportunity. Without being sarcastic, I would like to believe this because otherwise, we would have to start planning moving to Mars? Maybe?

Anonymous said...

I honestly think this is class warfare. The income and opportunity gap between rich and poor keeps growing. The governments are aligned with multi-national corporations. The motive is all about profit, and humanity, community, and the public good have been left far behind.

Anonymous said...

Our priorities are all messed up in the west. We should be fixing the planet and our communities instead of destroying them. Nobody gives a damn about these people and the pontificating from the conservative right only exacerbates the unrest. Same thing is happening in the US, the corporations and military industrial complex run everything and want to see funding for everything else dry up.

Anonymous said...

On dutch television was a very nice young woman who lives in Croydon. She said that the younsters who are causing problems now are the ones who often grow up without a father and who get seldom corrected or disciplined when they misbehave. Yesterday on the BBC a man said: the parents can't even spell discipline, let alone exercise it. The whole rioting thing strikes me as a deeprooted capricorn crisis. The father, hard work to earn what you want, limits en boundaries.
Pluto in Capricorb signals rather urgently what went wrong the last couple of years in the upbringing of our younsters.
Maria Koekkoek
Amsterdam

gawd_almighty said...

I think the 'grievances that led to the riots also have a lot to do with the advertising industry, which basically serves to make everyone depressed if they cannot afford this or that consumer item. The initial killing was just the catalyst. The problem is that we have a society (as do many other countries) in which our desires and resulting emotional states are created and controlled by astute advertising executives. Having said that, I also agree with Maria from Amsterdam; there are lots of causes at work here.
Michael