David Brook's op ed piece in the New York Times on March 14, 2014 caught my eye..It begins.."We are in a remarkable shift in how Americans see the world and their own country's role in the world." Brooks continues that according to the most recent Pew Research Center survey, for the first time in 50 years, Americans say that we should be less involved in world affairs. Survey results convey the sentiment that our influence in helping to solve the world's problems is declining; and that survey takers think we are "doing too much" trying to solve the world's problems.
The survey also suggests that we have lost faith in the idea that American political and military institutions can "fix" things in other countries. The American people now believe that there are severe restrictions on what the military can do. The Obama administration is proposing a reduction in the military budget which would bring the size of the US Army to its lowest level since 1940, and people from both parties, who took the survey, are in agreement.
Brooks continues that this trend is not just a result of the post-Iraq disillusionment but part of a longer term cultural shift involving the transfer of power from one generation to another. The baby boomers came out of WWII trusting in big governmental institutions and unions which operated with "top down management". Today's polling results and the millennial generation are more likely to believe that history is being made from the bottom up, not from the top down. People-to people contacts either in public squares or through the internet are creating the force of change in contrast to the hierarchical, autocratic system in place since WWII.
The irony is that those political and corporate heads of large institutions and organizations, still think they are in charge. Being removed and insulated from the masses, they are not getting the shift that is occurring. Brooks says that this swarm of people is very difficult to lead and can only be summoned to swarm by someone who arouses intense moral loyality-and maybe even then only for a short time..thus we have become leaderless. Where is George Washington when we need him?
This essentially leaderless approach is the overarching sentiment of the Aquarian Age that we are entering into. Unlike the 18th century, power today rests with the masses of people, forming consensus, when and where they can. The military is useless in such situations-in fact the clash between the two different approaches is where the bloodshed occurs.
We are in a transitional phase, with the two different leadership styles colliding, as we have seen all over the globe since January 2011 when the Tunisian fruit seller set himself on fire to protest excessive governmental intrusion. These collisions and changes in the social order have been part of every cultural shift around the globe. The shifts coincide with planets Uranus and Pluto forming a geometric pattern to one another as they orbit around the Sun.
These "Epochs of Revolution" as Rick Tarnas calls the times of radical social change, occur when Pluto and Uranus are forming a geometric pattern in the sky. These revolutionary and rebellious times have fallen at the French Revolution 1787-1798; between 1845-1856 when a wave of revolutionary impulse arose with mass insurrections and radical social movements in every capital in Europe; again in 1896-1900, with the proliferation of progressive and radical labor movements, the rising of the socialists movement, militant women's and black civil rights movements. The last time, before now, that these two planets were in contact was during the 60's, another period of widespread social change.
Since 2011 and through March of 2015 we are in a similar pattern with the above mentioned periods, with Pluto and Uranus again forming a pattern, symbolically coinciding with social unrest, some of which Brooks wrote about. (He even mentions 50 years ago, which would put us in the 60's). A radical shift is occurring in Americans viewpoints about our place in the world.
This month on the 21st these two planets form their 5th of 7 exact aspects, which this time is occurring during a biannual eclipse season, when emotional pressure and intensity characterize events. Sudden disruptions and interruptions are characteristic of both the Pluto/Uranus energy and the Full Moon Lunar eclipse on the 15th, followed by the New Moon Solar Eclipse on the 29th.
But "these best of times and worst of times" are not all crisis and trauma as there is also a very beautiful triangle in water signs-the feeling signs- forming with Venus, Jupiter and Saturn.. Through these intense times we have an opportunity to be compassionate and loving towards those who are experiencing the most severe crises and everyone else we meet everyday.
