The obviousness of primary drivers

I read The Anxious Generation out of curiosity (I am not a parent and I am not here to tell you what to do with your kids) and something jumped out to me that made sense and also made me laugh from an astrology standpoint: the author, Jonathan Haidt, put the line of demarcation where young people grew up primarily online and are experiencing a lot of anxiety and issues connecting with other humans as 1995. That's the year that Pluto left Scorpio for Sagittarius. Or, to put it another way: Pluto left a social sign for a universal sign.

Pluto and Neptune are our primary drivers. Whichever sign Pluto is in is your "generation." I don't care what the news tells you or what they want to call it: X, Alpha, whatever. Whatever sign your Pluto is in is the collection of issues that light a fire under the butt for better or worse. Whatever sign your Neptune is in is what you aspire to and have illusions about. Once you see it, you can't unsee it, and it's like a broken record.

Pluto entered the social sign Leo in 1937 and stayed in a social sign until 1995, making it critically important to relate to other people for everyone born in this time period. People born previous to 1937 have/had Pluto in a personal sign (Pluto entered Aries in 1822), so their battles (literally) were fought over personal preferences and getting their needs met (or not). Those of us alive would be most familiar with the food-harding Plutos in Cancer from this group. My grandmother with Pluto in Cancer would mail herself food when she was coming to stay with my family: bacon and crates of oranges, which offended my mother (her daughter), but she was just Pluto in Cancer-ing. But really, Pluto in Cancer people found deep personal meaning in the connections that they made and their sense of belonging in families, groups, society, etc. If you listen to recordings of them talking about their experiences (think: World War II survivors) you'll hear what I'm talking about.

Back to 1995 and later: Pluto and Neptune in universal signs mean that your battles are fought, won, lost, etc. by how well you fit in with the collective. Or which direction society goes impacts you for better or worse, and you feel that PERSONALLY (these people still have suns, moons, Mercury, etc. so can still personalize things). How do you personalize impersonal stuff? You take whatever's floating out there in the collective and you decide how you feel about it and what from it you want to incorporate into your day-to-day.

It is kind of funny that Jonathan Haidt, undoubtably a man with his primary driver in a social sign (b. 1963), appalled that young people aren't as motivated to relate to each other. As I've said before, if you were born after 1995, it's extremely possible to have zero planets in social signs, and for some, no planets at all in personal and social signs, so you're not big on those concerns and it's all about what the collective is doing. It's super unbalanced, yes, but no energy = no action.

Having lived through Neptune (illusions) in Aquarius, I remember the widespread "omg the internet! we can connect so quickly to anyone in the world!" and how, now that Pluto is rolling through Aquarius, we see the downside of that: "omg we're so disconnected from each other because these instant connections made us forget that other people are humans with needs and feelings and bodies!" It rewired our brains in a dehumanizing way (all of us, but ESPECIALLY people without any planets in personal and social signs) and we are seeing the fallout of that, partially because people who aren't terribly connected to their own humanity vote.

Yes, we have pressing societal problems, and I'm not trying to diminish that, but the way the solar system is set up currently, Neptune goes through a sign first, giving us the gift of illusions, and Pluto follows it 20 or 30-something years later (currently) and knocks people born with Neptune in a sign for a loop. So I'll pick on a different sign: people born 1942 - 1956 have/had Neptune in Libra, so had illusions about peace, love, and harmony. Some of them grew up to be hippies. But a lot of them have hangups about whether or not someone or something is "nice," so they'll often be very reluctant to say they don't like someone or something, or in other words, tell the truth. Also, don't even get me started on the illusions about marriage that some of them still hold on to with a vice grip (that you need to be married to be complete as a human being). Pluto rolled through Libra in 1971 - 1984, and a lot of these people got divorced back then: the bubble burst. Some of them managed to regrow their dumb bubbles or held on to their illusions for dear life, and I will happily introduce you to a few people whose Neptune illusions are getting in the way of their ability to relate to other people because they continue to hope for a harmonious utopia to appear for us all. I sometimes say stuff that's not nice just to hear the huffing amongst my septuagenarian friends, but mostly I behave myself and try not to roll my eyes when my married-since-during-college early morning pool friend specifies that her sister-in-law is a second marriage, in a tone loaded with meaning. This lady and her husband share a single cell phone and display other deeply enmeshed properties, but it works for them and their bubble. They do love each other. There are others who really don't but stuck with it because they have illusions that they'll get some sort of trophy for longevity of enduring marital misery.

"Oh wow, think of the possibilities" (Neptune) segues into "oh shit that's a PROBLEM" (Pluto). As I wrote about before, one of the cosmic jokes we have going given the sky lineup is that many parents have Neptune in the sign that their children have Pluto in, which can really influence the bursting of the bubble for parents, if they have a constant Pluto reminder that their dreams didn't pan out.

Cosmic jokes! I didn't set up the solar system, I just talk about it.