proximoception: (Default)
proximoception ([personal profile] proximoception) wrote2009-12-21 12:59 pm

(no subject)

This would have been my father's 76th. We never gave him enough presents. It got to the point where we tried to institute a compensatory summer half-birthday called Dad's Day (he dismissed Father's Day as Hallmark commercialism) but he was uncooperative.

[identity profile] proximoception.livejournal.com 2009-12-21 10:40 pm (UTC)(link)
So you don't believe in it?

[identity profile] andalus.livejournal.com 2009-12-21 11:12 pm (UTC)(link)
there's not anything to it that can be believed, it's got no truth-value to it. Do the movements of the planets control the behavior of people on earth? Heck no, only an idiot would believe that. Do the movements of the planets describe the behavior of people? Well how can you believe or disbelieve that, it's a metaphor, it has no truth-value, it makes no predictions. Do the movements of the planets demonstrably describe the behavior of people? No, no way in hell, it's utterly subjective. Therefore Jacob can gain insight on himself through the metaphor of capricorn without actually believing that capricorn is the reason for the insight. Because everyone knows that when "your sun is in capricorn" your sun isn't actually in capricorn (precession of the equinoxes), nor are there only 12 constellations on the ecliptic, nor do they divide the sky into 12 equal parts.

So in short: no, i dont believe in astrology.

[identity profile] proximoception.livejournal.com 2009-12-22 06:53 pm (UTC)(link)
You can disbelieve in (non-random, stable) correspondences between astral relationships and those in people's lives/minds. You can also believe in it, and many, many do. I respect what, say, Crowley was able to do with tarot and what, kaleidoscope-based, random personality-readings in his novels, but in both cases wasn't the person reading a personality basically just a) looking closely at a person they knew and b) using the reading method as a mere excuse to reach past direct observation? Becomes something close to a listing of random adjectives or images and then choosing a few.

Which may be fine, but there must be more honest ways to handle that, in life. Because an awful lot of people don't see it that way.