PSYCHICBABBLE(sm)
by Marcy J. Gordon
New Moon in Taurus 1996 Issue
Mars and The Unabomber
Introduction
Greetings USED KARMA readers! Last month in this space I predicted increased political activity and labor organizing. If The New York Times is to be believed, this prediction has grown wings and taken flight. Students at Columbia University went on a hunger strike for educational programs that will more fully reflect the ethnic composition of their student body. Workers went on strike at Yale University for better wages and working conditions. GM workers staged a wildcat strike at one GM plant with notable results to GM's bottom line. Health care workers went on strike in San Francisco. It seems there has been more labor activity in the last six months than in the last six years.
Previous issues of this column have stressed Sagittarius' influence on powerful Pluto in bringing out truths that were hidden and repressed during Pluto's late flight through Scorpio. A recent illustration of this principle occurred last month, when it was announced that National Archives will receive 201 hours of previously unreleased secret tapes made by former president and continued national embarrassment, Richard Nixon. According to David Corn's article in the May 20 issue of “The Nation,” these tapes have been referred to as the “abuses of governmental power” tapes. Historians will be poring over this material with excitement and enthusiasm, and will be publishing their results regarding this important and disturbing segment of our nation's history.
It is my intuitive impression that these Nixon tapes contain fodder that can not only end Bob Dole's presidential ambitions, but will herald his demise as a political leader. These tapes will reveal the truth about the depth and breadth of Dole's moral relativism, exposing secrets that will be truly embarrassing not only to Senator Dole, but to the entire Republican Party. Unfortunately, the Nixon estate has cut a savvy political deal with the National Archives that will delay the release of these 201 hours until after November's presidential election. This is clearly a brazenly political move on the part of the Nixon estate lawyers. Tricky Dick Nixon continues to manipulate American political reality from beyond the grave, but these actions only serve to delay the inevitable. Therefore I predict that, even without benefit of the “abuses of governmental power” tapes, embarrassing truths about Bob Dole will nonetheless begin to surface in mid-summer and that this information will devastate his chances of unseating President Clinton.
Likewise, Pluto's cleansing energy and the disinfecting power of the centaur's obsession with truth will haunt America's biggest witch-hunter, Alphonse D'Amato. D'Amato will also be publicly humiliated and unceremoniously stripped of political influence when his Whitewater Committee is forced to reveal that the entire Whitewater affair is a tempest in a teapot, not a Teapot Dome. This is going to be extremely embarrassing after wasting so much taxpayer money on a Whitewater red herring fishing expedition.
The Sad Tale of the Unabomber
One of last month's most illustrious examples of Pluto in Sagittarius is the FBI's capture of Ted Kaczynski, the Harvard-educated mathematician and former college professor, in connection with a spate of university, airline and executive bombings. It is interesting to note that Mr. Kaczynski was captured on April 3, a date imbued with interesting astrological significance. The Moon was full in Libra. Libra is ruled by Venus. Venus is about harmony, devotion and affection. Libra is about diplomacy, cooperation, idealism and helpfulness, so it is not surprising that Libra rules social affairs. In addition to a full Moon full in Libra, but there was also a full lunar eclipse. Eclipses are very powerful events.
The April 3 eclipse was particularly significant, as master astrologer Maya Del Mar, writing in the April 1996 issue of The Celestine Journal (Volume 3, Issue 4) so eloquently explains:
This is an exceedingly active day of connecting with people, which leads to a total lunar eclipse in the middle of those signs which are in the middle of the zodiac. BALANCE is now the challenge and the key. Do opposing urges and points of view (inner and outer) fight each other, or do we accept the challenge and use today's high energy to work at coordination, cooperation, and compromise?...
Passionate red suits tonight's energy, which is expansive and explosive. We may find ourselves suddenly thrown into a new situation where we must learn to cooperate. At the same time, warrior Mars, the red planet, is now conjoined sun in Aries, where it can be rash and impulsive. This eclipse sets up that conflict which opens us to new directions, big time, in regard to the Libra-Aries polarity of others and self, peace and war, accord and aggression.
Capricorn continues as the theater of operations in all social structures and institutions such as government, economics, and business. Great energy is available now to fight for a cause. Constructively, we can use nonviolent, non-harming means to fight for peace, justice and cooperation towards practical ends and within given social frameworks.
Each of us can assertively pursue our own agendas, at the same time working constructively with others, particularly in institutional settings. At its best, the power to create lasting peace based on the recognition of real needs along with the willingness to cooperate is now at a peak. This is a marvelous opportunity to actively work with Insight Eight, focusing on others in a way that sends them energy.
The Sabian Symbol for 15 Libra is CIRCULAR PATHS. Coming to terms with the inevitability of establishing steady rhythms of social activity. We deal with repetitive activity, but that activity may either bind or free the consciousness of the actor. It can mean BOREDOM or TRANSPERSONAL PEACE in action.
(The foregoing was reprinted with permission from Maya Del Mar.) For those of you who are not familiar with The Celestine Prophecy material by James Redfield, Insight Eight is called “The Interpersonal Ethic.” Its essence is that we can uplift others in personal relationships through the power of our own energy and the energy of nature. In so doing, we increase the chances of experiencing what Redfield calls “guiding coincidences” that increase our wisdom and improve the quality of our lives.
Isn't it interesting that the alleged Unabomber was captured under such an astrological climate? As Ms. Del Mar rightly points out, the Libra-Aries polarity exemplifies the issues surrounding the Unabomber case -- self and others, peace and war, accord and aggression. In addition, the capture occurred during the heightened aggressive energies of Sun-Mars conjunction in Aries that this column examined last month. The fact that Ted Kaczynski was apprehended without violence illustrates Ms. Del Mar's observation that Capricorn's influence can result in nonviolent solutions to further a cause. From the Government's point of view, catching the Unabomber was a priority because he posed a threat to our entire society as well as to targeted individuals and nearby innocent bystanders.
The Unabomber case is a perfect opportunity for all of us to reframe judgment into compassion. We live in a society that tends to blame victims instead of examining the root causes of their distress. For example, the fuss over the draconian anti-terrorist legislation that Congress fought over last month illustrates a total lack of understanding about the origins of terrorism. Terrorists are not born -- they are made. Terrorists are the victims of social, political and economic repression. If the repression continues long enough, the energy of the accumulated anger becomes overwhelming and literally explodes in the form of firearms and firebombs. Terrorists use destruction as a desperate attempt to call attention to their plights. If the oppressors had been willing to listen to and address the grievances of the oppressed, then former victims of oppression would have become productive members of society instead of destructive ones.
Noted Swiss psychologist Ann Miller risked her entire career by publishing the thesis that modern society and modern psychology both adopt a “blame the victim” mentality, and that child abuse is an integral part of western child-rearing practices. For years she was excoriated by her profession for this true and powerful insight. Today Dr. Miller is hailed as a visionary and her ideas are accepted by the mainstream of her profession, even if they still all too infrequently integrated into psychotherapeutic practice and procedure. The reason I am mentioning Alice Miller is that her work so beautifully explains the motivations of a Hitler or a Ted Kaczynski in a manner that allows us to view social deviants with compassion instead of judgment and hatred. I highly recommend reading everything Alice Miller every wrote. However, if your reading time is limited and you can only read one of her books, be sure to read For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (Farrar Straus Giroux 1989).
Is Teddy Kaczynski the Unabomber? We have no way of knowing. However, his personal life issues illustrate the Mars-Libra polarities, giving us all an opportunity to break the cycle of knee-jerk condemnation in favor of compassionate understanding. Perhaps Teddy Kaczynski was ultimately victimized by the prodigy of his own intellect. Reared in a working-class neighborhood by an ambitious, perfectionistic mother who stressed intellectual values and education, Ted was always being pushed to succeed academically. This obsessive push to excel in school completely obliterated all other aspects of a normal teenage life. Due to his brilliance, Ted skipped grades. By the time Ted reached college he was handsomely prepared intellectually for the college experience, but was woefully unprepared emotionally.
Ted's situation reflects a basic failure of our educational system, which treats students as disembodied minds totally divorced from their physical, emotional and spiritual bodies. Academically gifted children are treated as trained monkeys. We delight in their intellectual tricks, but give little thought to the emotional toll these performances take on a young psyche. For Ted Kaczynski the entire path of academic excellence was one of social isolation. He was forced to sublimate all his biologically normal sexual and emotional adolescent feelings into finding solutions to complex, wholly abstract mathematical problems. Ted was immersed in the world of pure form to the total exclusion of any meaningful social or emotional content. This extreme development of the mental body went hand in hand with a complete denial of the emotional body. The magnitude of this imbalance resulted in terrorist acts.
Ted's brilliant academic career was cut short by social problems resulting from his extreme sexual repression. In addition, Ted's father committed suicide, a traumatic event for a socially functional person (which Ted clearly was not). Ted's father's suicide embittered Ted toward his mother. Perhaps Ted blamed her for his father's death. While Ted did date two women briefly, he was dismissed from employment twice for writing lewd and obscene limericks about these women and posting those writings publicly in the workplace. How unfortunate that Ted's managers and co-workers, themselves steeped in the “blame the victim” mentality of western society, failed to see these actions as a desperate call for help.
Ted's failure in the workplace, which was but a reflection of his failure to form emotionally satisfying friendships with others and experience meaningful emotional relationships with women, combined with years of an impoverished, anti-social existence, led to an intolerable build-up of sexual and emotional repression. Remember, Mars rules war, sexuality and aggression. The buildup of this fiery Mars energy in Ted Kaczynski's psyche was expressed in carefully planned and truly ingenious explosions of actual fire.
Instead of viewing Ted Kaczynski as external to ourselves, we need to see him as part of us. We need to learn what he has been trying to show us through his violent acts. The lesson of the Unabomer's terrorism is to instruct us to examine our own sexual and emotional repression and to develop strategies to release them. His terrorism is also imploring us to pay more attention to our fellow humans so we can read their cries for help before their need and frustration become destructive. Try to imagine what Ted Kaczynski could have accomplished in the last twenty years if he had received help when he needed it, instead of receiving more approbation and revilement from his fellow humans resulting from the disturbances produced by unhealthy childhood experiences.
Copyright 1996 Marcy J. Gordon, except as otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Certain sections of this article were reprinted with permission from their respective authors. The author has no republication rights in connection with these excerpts. Therefore YOU CANNOT COPY AND REDISTRIBUTE THIS ARTICLE as you usually can with this column. You may, however, obtain permission to reprint selected portions of the non-quoted text of this article by contacting the author at mgordon@pipeline.com.