Let us now discuss cancel culture

Just in case you somehow forgot, people are permanent transits. If astrology is a giant clock that tells us the energy of the moment instead of the time, we're all wristwatches that have stopped at the moment of our birth, wandering around, interacting with one another.

With that established, it's reasonable to assume that current culture is dictated by people in their late teens to mid twenties, who have the most time and energy to devote to establishing or propagating whatever the current climate is, right? We in agreement there? Great.

Another reminder, or if you're new, an announcement: I consider Pluto signs to be indicative of what age group you belong to instead of the dumb names assigned to them (Boomer, Zoomer, Millennial, 🤢). The people born in 1997 - 2004 have Pluto in Sagittarius, which is about capital T-Truth. Establishing what is True intellectually, morally, emotionally, etc. is going to involve high highs and low lows throughout their entire lives. That's Pluto's whole thing: euphoric highs and the most desolate of lows with very little in between. Sagittarius is about belief systems, higher education, intuition, and whatever broadens your mind, so that you become more knowledgeable than before. But since it's Pluto, those things don't go well. Think about it: we used to be able to trust that the news we were reading or watching was truthful without question. Is that the case anymore? That's a Pluto in Sagittarius issue. (When Pluto goes through a sign it tends to drastically alter, or in some cases, obliterate things that are in the category of a sign. Like what the advent of the internet did to traditional news, in this example.)

Sagittarius does like to get on its high horse about its belief system. If a fire sign is *right* about something, it's unlikely to consider alternatives unless it gets knocked off that horse. Ever tried arguing with a fire sign about whose belief is right? There are other ways to waste your time, but this is a pretty good one.

So this is part of cancel culture: I know the truth, and it's a feeling of life or death emotionally for me to continue believing I'm right.

But wait, there's more.

From 1998 - 2011, Neptune was in Aquarius. This is a fixed air sign, also about Truth, but not so much about beliefs. Aquarius cares about the highest truth that we can aspire to, but it does NOT care so much about whether this truth is humanly achievable. Aquarius does very well with developing a vision of a perfect world: Aquarians are the ones organizing groups and governments, because they have the vision for what could be if like-minded people get together and do something magnificent. But they sometimes fail to account for the fact that humans are humans. So let's say an Aquarian develops a vision (a very Neptune thing) for a new recycling program that they're convinced is going to save the planet. They come up with 10 categories of recycling, so every resident gets 10 different bins, and residents have to do their own sorting and if one thing's sorted incorrectly, that bin is rejected. Well, this is possibly revolutionary, but it's complicated and expects that the average resident cares as much as the Aquarian, which is when things start to come apart.

Where we have Neptune, we tend to be disillusioned at some point in life. Not to poke at other generations, but those with Neptune in Capricorn are being thoroughly disillusioned by the organizations they worked so hard for status in not caring so much about their personal needs or well-being in COVID times (and before COVID times, but it's REALLY obvious now). Neptune in Sagittarius had a beliefs/religion/education will save them thing (pick one! or several!) and that didn't work out. I can keep going. Neptune in Aquarius seeks salvation in strict adherence to ideals. Well, guess what's in Aquarius now? Saturn, which loves to shit on bad ideas. And guess what's coming to Aquarius soon? Pluto, which loves to explode ideals that are unworkable.

I've mentioned this before, but what often happens is a parent's Neptune sign will be their child's Pluto sign. This is not 100% true across the board, but it's one of my favorite cosmic jokes: the thing that the parents have illusions about and prefer to float through is the thing their child has no illusions about, and can't afford to have any. So the children of the Neptune in Aquarius people (meaning people who aren’t born yet) will be so concerned about fitting in and getting along that they'll never want to cancel something or someone, and they'll be screaming at their parents when they see them doing this.

I would be doing you a disservice if I left out the fact that Uranus was in Aquarius, its home sign, from 1995 - 2003. Uranus in Aquarius is going do to its own thing regardless of what anyone thinks about it. So for those of us who (fondly?) remember the 90s, that's when technology was constantly exciting. Every year, things seemed to get better than the year before. Uranus in Aquarius was awesome for invention, and people with Uranus in Aquarius are great at seeing what could be. They’re extremely open-minded but can become rigid about how open-minded they expect other people to be (or the energy can be used the other way: narrow-minded and militant about it). The challenge with Neptune's influence is making your vision real and workable for everyone.

In other words, forgetting that people are PEOPLE and not ideals who should be perfect at all times is a big part of the issue.

To recap: the people behind cancel culture have a lot of emotions about being right about something, a lot of idealism wrapped up in being Aquarian (accepting of all), and in some cases, some rigid-ass beliefs about what it means to be open-minded and inclusive. So the question is: is it realistic, workable, and sustainable to have incredibly high ideals?

So, personal example from back when these transits were active in the sky: in my friend group, one of my oldest friends was cheating on her boyfriend with her ex-boyfriend, all of whom were in the group. I got wind of this, had a lot of opinions about it, and then ran my mouth in a high and mighty manner, informing the boyfriend and disparaging my friend. Outcome: I had my ideals to keep me warm at night and that's about it, because I was minus one friend and the group broke up because of the whole incident, since there were multiple sides to take in this feud. I have since gotten a lot better at minding my business. Does this sound like some high school shit? Good, because it was. 😉

XO,J