I had a moment of acute understanding as I was reading David Brooks' op-ed piece in the NY Times, May 31st entitled The Segementation Century. Brooks discusses writer Reinhold Neibuhr's 1949 thesis that historical forces would bring about "the unification of mankind". A solution to the fierce nationalism of the 2 world wars was the thought that by forcing countries to work together (EU and UN), harmony would prevail as their values merged. This anticipated moral, cultural and political convergence never materialized, however, as demonstrated by the news stories from Europe that country after country is facing the prospect of returning to their own currency and leaving the EU experiment.
In fact current polling, Brooks says, by the Pew Research Centers and a World's Value Survey speak about the world becoming more segementated and fractured not less so, even as technology has brought the far corners of the world into our living rooms and started revolutions; we have become less and less trusting of one another. This is true even in this country, where even as we are exposed to an ever increasing variety of contrasting perspectives, we seem to react by narrowing our perspective and confining ourselves to listen only to those who speak our familiar values.
As an astrologer, Neibuhr's thesis "the unification of mankind" is completely understandable as an ideal characteristic of the coming of the "Age of Aquarius". Aquarius is a humanitarian sign, concerned with principles of equality, fairness, justice for all and a redistribution of wealth. I realized as I was reading the piece that in order for us to get to that 'better" place what is not working has to break up. This breakup began in the fall of 2008 with Pluto's sign change into conservative Capricorn and the global financial crisis brought on by excessive greed. The country voted in Obama with the hope that the new era had begun, but one cannot have a new era without the disintegration of the old ways. (Think Bastille)
This "heating up" of the breaking up of the systems, corporations, governments, countries is the stage we are about to begin as planets Uranus and Pluto form a 90 angle 7 times between Sunday June 24th and March 2015. They came to within one degree of each other last year at the Arab Spring, European Summer and Occupy Wall Street Fall. Uranus and Pluto were exactly together in 1965-66, with extended time period being 1960-1972, when this new cycle began. For the next 3 years we will be living through the birth pangs of that seminal period, the sixties, when there was something 'in the air" that for those old enough to remember, was completely different than times before or after. This new order was magical but suddenly disappeared until now when the 2 planets that started it come back together again to make what was only potential then more realistic and sustainable. Some of us will be experiencing it more strongly than others as long standing corruption becomes less and less tolerable as seen from other times in history when these 2 planets were together. (For extended reading please see Cosmo and Psyche by Richard Tarnas)
The conjunctions or oppositions between these 2 planets also occurred between 1533-1545 as the Reformation swept through Europe; 1643-1654 with the English and Puritan Revolutions; 1787-1798, the US Constitution, The French Declaration of the Rights of Man, the French Revolution and the beginnings of the world wide call for the end of slavery; 1845-56 when there were revolutionary upheavals in almost every capital in Europe, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Dresden, Prague, Rome, Milan and China, Japan, India, and the Ottoman Empire; the years 1896-1907 also saw these 2 planets aligned when all the progressive and radical labor movements throughout Europe and North America were born as well as the militant women's movement and black civil rights movements and Boxer Rebellion in China, the Russian Revolution and Gandhi in India.
The stage has been set now again in these next 3 years for the sudden rise and empowerment of youth and counter culture movements, when great social political revolutions occurred, with the rising and falling of empires, where the balance of power shifted suddenly. Our era will be no different than previous ones. We are called to live through it, each of us playing a part in the hopes that the unification of mankind will actually happen, not forced this time, but hashed out with workable solutions that can be sustained. The world is not coming to an end in 2012 but reforming itself again.
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