posted: February 12, 2003
There's nothing quite so insidiously depressing as being informed that by some elusive cosmic dice-throw, you're doomed. You were born on the wrong day, wrong year, wrong month, wrong hour. The Universe has already made up its mind and, regardless of how hard you try, you're fucked. Which is why I hate Astrology.
Oh, some people get along very well with it. But not me. Not only does it negate the concept of Free Will, but it's sneaky about it. If you beat the odds today and your horoscope proved wrong, it's not because it is wrong, but because some factor you were unaware of intervened. And yet it oozes into your head and gives you the creeps anyhow because, well, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Or maybe it's just that Astrology doesn't like me. At various points in my life, people have demanded that I at least "give it a chance" and the result is pretty much always the same: you're smart, you're creative, you're pretty, but your life is always going to be a bowl of shit; oh, you'll succeed eventually, but you're doomed in the end. Gosh, sorry.
Realistically, isn't everyone doomed? I mean, fuck it, we are going to die, aren't we? And if that's not doom, then what is? It has nothing to do with whether your Venus has been trined by Pluto or what-have-you (and what is Pluto doing with his trine up my Venus, anyway?! Get the Hell out of there, y'pervert!) Or if you were born in the year of the Dog, but the hour of the Monkey in the month of the Chicken (which probably makes you a bit of a mental zookeeper if not a perv of a whole different kind.)
If there was any validity to Astrology, it wouldn't matter what any of us did, ever. We could all just flop down and have a good wallow, because the people destined to be successful would be and those destined to be unsuccessful would be, too, so why put out an effort? We could all be eating theoretical bon-bons and getting fat or staying thin as was pre-determined and we'd never have to go to the gym.
If this is true, then putting out no effort is the same as working your ass off (and don't I wish that that were the case). But what about the people who are determining their own fate? Or seem to be. Those people who work their tails off to rise above their circumstances surely weren't going to just float to the top like cream with no effort at all. Or it is still more of the same cosmic joke? Are the Powers That Be giggling up a storm in some corner lounge about the good one they've put over on Plato, Wollstonecraft, Locke and Mill? Is it all just another form of crap-shoot? A very elaborate deceit?
If so, it's a damned clever one. We go about deceiving ourselves that we created our lives by our own choice, that we can go where and how we chose, if only we work hard enough. Well, I can't say that doesn't have an occasional fatalistic appeal of it's own, but it isn't very satisfying.
Astrology, be it Western or Eastern or something in-between, is just not satisfyingly mentally-crunchy enough for me, I guess. It is too easy, too pat, too prone to being colored by fast-talking, astrolabe-spinning, spiritual three-card-monte artists (keep your eye on the Lucky Fate! Pick the right card and be a winnah!). Too much like the sort of breakfast cereal which goes mushy in milk.
I guess I was born under the sign of the Bad Sport....
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