(no subject)

[proximoception]

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.

Comments

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

Any idea how close to the cusp of the two Zodiac signs he was born?

[wolodymyr.livejournal.com]

God, that's...what's with the particular flavor of heartstruck frustration some fathers get so good at evoking? How old was he when you tried Dad's Day?

Some dads seem to get into that - not taking presents - which is why Jay's taking a Snuggie for the team has been semi-presently on my mind since it was confessed.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I think it was a few years ago. Who's Jay?

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I just know the date, not the time or sign.

If you're saying you believe in astrology I'm going to send you deprogramming pamphlets. Though andalus did last I checked, and jones_casey clearly believes in something.

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

That'd be me.

And about the above... I'm not wired for belief, but symbols are powerful. What the readers say about Capricorns always seems to fit without any shoehorning.

[andalus.livejournal.com]

it's not that i believe in it, it's that I love looking at systems. humans will find connections in any old thing and with human behaivior they devised a system so vast and intricate it could explain anything.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Hi Jay!

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

So you don't believe in it?

[andalus.livejournal.com]

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.

jones_casey clearly believes in something.

[jones-casey.livejournal.com]

the perfect way to put it.

and similarly, andalus' commentary is perfect.

no, i don't believe that roughly four hundred million people born in the same stretch of days are identical.

i do believe that the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible and that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: jones_casey clearly believes in something.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Doesn't mean any given magical explanation will ever be vindicated by technology.