Greetings USED KARMA readers - and those of you who access this column through John Derrickson's PsyPlan(tm) site (http://www.psyplan.com)! It is sad to recall that a non-seat belted airline passenger was killed recently during an episode of severe turbulence. She literally hit the ceiling. Gruesome as this imagery is, it provides the perfect metaphor for what we all can expect in 1998, so be prepared. However, if you put safety first you'll be in for the ride of your life on the social change express.
Aquarius is the sign of social consciousness, friends and shared vision. Its ruler, Uranus, is the planet of flashes of insight and eccentric genius. The outer planets - Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, move slowly around the sun and affect entire generations. Thus the outer planets are more societal than individual. By February of 1998 three of the outer planets - Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - will be in Aquarius. This bodes well for a major restructuring of society along more equitable lines. How will this change come about? Through consciousness, of course!
All human action results from decision-making. Humans make decisions based on data, which they then process into information. Thus information is only as good as the underlying data out of which it was created. Human decisions are only as good as the underlying information that informed those decisions. With Pluto making its journey through Sagittarius, the truth about a great many things is coming out in interesting ways. Much of the truth was hidden during the years that Pluto was in secretive, manipulative Scorpio is coming out and changing people's perceptions, and thus society. New data and information will emerge that will cause people to change their attitudes and evolve society for the betterment of all.
With more truth coming out, people are able to use it to obtain better information. With the outer planets in Aquarius people are going to be using information for the benefit of all people.
Venus went retrograde in Aquarius on December 27, 1997. It remains retrograde until February 6, 1998. However, Venus goes retrograde in Capricorn on January 10, 1998, and then goes direct in Capricorn on February 6. Venus returns to Aquarius on March 5, 1998. Why is this important?
As regular readers know, the phenomenon of planetary retrograde is an optical illusion. Because the planets have elliptical orbits instead of circular ones, there are times when a planet is orbiting the sun, yet it looks to us here on Earth as if it is backing up in its cycle. It isn't really backing up, of course, but from our earthbound perspective, planets can look as if they are. The retrograde motion signifies a time of introspection regarding the areas of life governed by the retrograde planet. This introspective time also signifies a gathering of forces to be applied when the planet goes direct.
Because Venus is a fast moving planet (it spends about a month in each sign) and because planetary retrogrades for fast moving planets last a few weeks, it is possible for Venus to go retrograde in more than one sign, as it will in early 1998. Venus is the planet of love, affection, relationships, pleasure, beauty, harmony and sociability. When Venus is retrograde in Aquarius, people go internal with respect to love and relationships, as well as how that love is expressed in social, friendly, original and intuitive ways. The calendar year 1998 starts with people marshaling their energies in all the areas Venus rules so that when Venus goes direct they can direct those energies of love and beauty in a positive way for all of society. You can expect art and popular culture to manifest themes of social responsibility and love and beauty for all.
In addition, Venus will continue backing up into Capricorn. Capricorn, an earth sign, is very practical and precise and nurturing. (Capricorn rules such things as government and mathematics.) Capricorn is also ambitious, responsible, efficient and patient. Venus retrograde in Capricorn is a time to go internal regarding the things one wants to achieve when Venus goes direct. During this retrograde Venus cycle people will be contemplating ways to use love, art and beauty in practical and precise ways to create more functional and equitable social and governmental systems. You can expect to see more of a public backlash against the government's draconian welfare policy, as well as more activism for a higher minimum wage and higher wages for workers. Last year's UPS strike was the first step in a better-organized, politically active labor movement not only domestically, but worldwide.
It is interesting to see how the exigencies of broadcast television and Hollywood affect the art that gets created. For example, television shows have the obligatory Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas shows. Movies with Christmas themes are released at the end of the year. However, as the United States and many European countries experience more refugees and immigrants from non-western countries, there is more cultural sharing, more cultural tolerance and more cultural interaction. Why? Because immigrants constitute a market that business wants to exploit. In addition, anti-discrimination laws are being increasingly enforced as immigrants join together to demand their rights. It will be interesting to see Hollywood and its progeny continue to evolve toward multicultural inclusion. (Now if they can just get past one-dimensional stereotypes. It is fascinating to see how many of the "black" television shows are written by white people and Jews. And the inclusion of a gay character in prime time has not exactly eliminated prejudice against and mistreatment of the gay community.)
One of the things that will continue to drive multicultural consciousness in electronic media is the ongoing convergence of computer, communication and broadcast technology. For example, data streaming technology has overcome the shortcomings of having to spend too much time downloading large files of audio and video content (to say nothing of taking up all the disk space on your hard drive!) Set-top boxes and cable modems are catching on. More and more people are getting connected to The Internet and are experiencing The Web in their workplaces, their homes, their local libraries and Internet cafes and restaurants. You can even get Internet access in Tombouctou, Mali, a location reported by locals and visitors alike to be the other end of nowhere - truly one of the most isolated places on the planet.
As international governments struggle to understand the potentials of these new communications media and the commercial problems and opportunities they present, many nations are concluding that the wild frontier of cyberspace is best left unregulated. Of course, all the existing areas of law still apply to it (i.e., fraud, libel, theft, misrepresentation, passing off, false advertising, prohibitions against gambling, obscenity and yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theater - to name a few) but how can one sanely apply existing laws of copyright, intellectual property and privacy to this new medium? The commercial forces of profit are increasingly at war with the interests of the common user. Recent developments put the commercial forces ahead of the little guy (such as the "no electronic theft" act and the proposed redraft to Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code). However, the issues will emerge in the public eye, and the outcry will be so great that legislatures everywhere will be forced to hear the voice of the people.
It seems that people are willing to give up certain privacy assurances for the convenience and excitement of linking computers and communicating with millions of people around the world. In fact, the whole notion of privacy is undergoing major transformation. Cities and municipalities are installing cameras to catch speeders and discourage the street drug trade. Government satellites can view everything on Earth to a fairly fine resolution. They even have technology that can see inside buildings! It is rather frightening to think about massive amounts of information being catalogued about a great many people - suppose they develop the tools to analyze it dynamically, without human intervention? And what would they DO with that information if they had it? Would they use it to create a totalitarian regime?
Well, you can breathe easily, folks. The beauty of the Internet is that people will continue to defy private or governmental attempts to censor their speech online. Serious artists are increasingly making their presence known in cyberspace. Philosophers are grappling with the notion of creative expression for which there are ONLY copies and no actual original. (That ought to cause some people in the mainstream art dealer community to lose some sleep!) The wonders of computer and information technology will continue to inform our consciousness as the Internet and the Web become increasingly conscious of themselves.
The wonderful thing about information is that it is inherently addictive and eternally renewable, so it is always in demand and supply. Social groups and communities evolve online around shared information interests, crossing also socio-economic and national boundaries. This is a new moment in history where humanity is redefining itself as a global culture with shared interests, instead of internecine rivalries and intrigues. Watch for old social taboos to fall away overnight and people increase their desire and ability to understand one another in purely human, not cultural, terms.
By dealing with each other on a personal level and being exposed to a greater diversity of cultures through personal relationships, people will begin to select the positive things from many cultures as they learn to discard the negative things in their own. Xenophobia will diminish as people excite in learning about and from one another. This will pave the way for the extraterrestrials to reveal their presence on Earth, their relationship to us and the truth about human creation and evolution - to say nothing of putting us on the path to world peace.
Copyright 1998 Marcy J. Gordon. All rights reserved. The author wants you to know you are free to copy and distribute this article for noncommercial purposes, provided you reproduce it in its entirety and credit the author. For quotation permission, please contact the author at mgordon@pipeline.com.
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