Obama, 2012 and the Saturn-Uranus face-off

You may ask, what has Obama to do with 2012 and today's exact Saturn-Uranus opposition, which has been much touted across the Astroblogosphere in the past six months. Here's the connection that I can see - and bear in mind that I don't profess to be an advanced astrologer (though I'm slowly getting there - just took NCGR's level one exam towards professional certification this past Sunday):

Re. 2012 and the dreaded end of the Mayan Long Count, etc: President Barack Obama could be the metaphorical pole-shift which the survivalists are expecting to end this present age on December 21, 2012, according to that ancient Mesoamerican calendar. Except Obama's presidency will only just have got cooking by the time the next election date swings round - November 6, 2012 - only a month away from the fateful Winter's Solstice that the doomsayers have marked down on the calendar as the end of the age.

My guess is that, irrespective of whether Obama gets a second term (since I'm counting on him to make history today) or not, his election will have set in motion a change (Uranus) so profound, that it will not merely challenge the traditional hierarchies (Saturn) of our globalised world, but force international leaders to confront the limitations of power to such a degree that the current patterns of geopolitics will have to shift in response.

Of course, I would hate for the survivalists to be right anyway - just take a glance at some of my earlier posts - on the other hand, the cultural paradigm shift has already begun, given the unique nature of how this election was waged. Check out the following from today's New York Times online:

After Epic Campaign, Voters Go to Polls
by Adam Nagourney

The 2008 race for the White House that comes to an end on Tuesday fundamentally upended the way presidential campaigns are fought in this country, a legacy that has almost been lost with all the attention being paid to the battle between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama.

It has rewritten the rules on how to reach voters, raise money, organize supporters, manage the news media, track and mold public opinion, and wage — and withstand — political attacks, including many carried by blogs that did not exist four years ago. It has challenged the consensus view of the American electoral battleground, suggesting that Democrats can at a minimum be competitive in states and regions that had long been Republican strongholds.

The size and makeup of the electorate could be changed because of efforts by Democrats to register and turn out new black, Hispanic and young voters. This shift may have long-lasting ramifications for what the parties do to build enduring coalitions, especially if intensive and technologically-driven voter turnout programs succeed in getting more people to the polls. Mr. McCain’s advisers expect a record-shattering turnout of 130 million people, many being brought into the political process for the first time.

And so on - you can read the rest here.

Meanwhile, Lynn Hayes, one of my favourite astrobloggers has a great, more technical analysis on the Saturn-Uranus face-off here, and includes some very positive transits for today, too. Not least, a Moon-Jupiter conjunction in Capricorn - which bodes well for the masses (Moon) electing a more inclusive, expansive (Jupiter) government - trined by a supportive, responsible Saturn in Virgo, and sextiled by a compassionate, humanitarian and progressive Uranus in Pisces.

Well, that's the positive spin, at least, and I'm going to erase thoughts of a potential GOP Old Washingtonian (Saturn) last minute victory over the forces of Change (Uranus). Then again, as any modern astrologer will tell you, no planet, symbolically, is all positive or negative. It all depends on how its energy is harnessed. So Uranus is less-than-warm-and-cuddly in its association with sudden 'liberation' from people/situations, whether you're ready for such freedom or not, and Saturn is not-as-limiting as the bad astro-press would have you believe, given his connection to the structures that ground and support us.

Basically, I'm not expecting a miraculous, overnight Shangri-La when Obama takes the White House, but hope, rather, for the best blend of the opposing planets' energies - namely a creative, positive dialogue between the forces of tradition, conservatism and strong government and the powers of innovation, radical change and individualism.

Meanwhile, I'll be glad when today is over and we get the final result.

Et Tu, Europe?

Usually, I try to avoid the smugness Europeans like to pretend they don't indulge in, and had been grateful for the moderately more effective response by the EU towards the credit crisis.

I had also been happier with the greater concern - comparatively - that Europe had shown towards global warming and its related bag of terrors, than some other developed countries.

But I was disheartened, to say the least, to see the following posted on the New York Times website today:

European Nations Seek to Revise Agreement on Emissions Cuts

"BRUSSELS — Fears of a sharp worldwide economic slowdown are threatening a hard-won European plan on climate change that European leaders hoped would set an example for the rest of the world.

At a rancorous summit meeting this week of the European Union’s heads of state, several Eastern European countries and Italy said they might no longer be able to afford to slash greenhouse gas emissions as envisioned under a broad plan agreed upon last year and would need some concessions from other countries in the bloc. That agreement called for the union to reduce such emissions, linked by climate scientists to global warming, by 20 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2020.

The plan — hailed by the former French president Jacques Chirac as “a great moment in European history” — goes beyond the Kyoto Protocol, which requires industrial nations bound by the treaty to reduce the emission of global-warming gases by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

After the outline was agreed to last year, the countries began working on detailed proposals for how they would reach the goal for emissions cuts, which essentially meant figuring out how much of an economic burden each nation would bear. France, which holds the rotating presidency of the union, had hoped to win approval for a more detailed agreement in December.

While some countries had already begun worrying about how much they were being asked to contribute to hit the emissions reduction goal, the economic downturn increased their concerns."

Read the rest here.

And if you're in mind to get an astrological perspective of the rather gobsmacking changes we're living through, check out the humour, insight and analysis at the wonderful Astrotabletalk blog, run by Dharmaruci.

Another Slap in the 2012 Survivalists' Faces

These days, I'm lucky if I get to this blog once a month. But once again, I couldn't resist posting on a rather wry, witty riposte (actually, more like an annihilation) of the 2012 survivalists' frenzy of preparation for doomsday.

Naturally, part of why I enjoyed Eliezer Sobel's post was the unflattering dosage of vigorous schadenfreude. But then again, we do do that anyway on this blog. Just check out the banner if you don't believe me!

Mostly, though, part of me is now so invested in making more out of my life than merely living till 2012. Some of the dreams are grand, some of them are humble.

I have films to make, financial independence to seek and a family to provide for. Not to mention, greater spiritual and physical mastery to strive for (is that a holographic Zen Buddhist monk I see before me, frowning? "Strive not! Neither resist striving!"). And humility and a greater ability to serve to cultivate...

But back to the Sobel's post on 2012. Here are the opening paras, as ever:

"Don't ask me to cite the source, but I recall Terence McKenna once suggesting that the Mayan calendar calculations might possibly have been off by two thousand years, in which case it is the year 4012 for which we need to be gearing up, not 2012. That gives us a little breathing room to finish wrapping up our affairs and stockpiling Basmati rice, peanut-butter cookies and Power Bars, and if you have a generator, the complete set of Seinfeld DVDs to help pass the time on those long, apocalyptic nights. And lately survivalists are also recommending stashing huge quantities of Benadryl in order to deal with all the new allergic reactions that the end of the world is likely to precipitate. Clearly the last thing you want to be dealing with when reality as we know it comes crashing down is a runny nose.

"Meanwhile, there are many people who remain unaware that we may be getting this 2000-year grace period and thus may have quite a shock in store on Dec 22, 2012, the day after it is all supposed to come tumbling down. There's nothing worse than business as usual when you're expecting the end of the world. Can you imagine the sinking feeling some people will experience on that morning when it slowly begins to dawn on them that rather than toppling headlong into a worldwide collective existential abyss, they instead have to show up for work? It will be reminiscent of those early childhood days of waking to a beautiful, silent, freshly fallen snow, the heart leaping in a Christmas-morning-like rush of freedom and possibility, only to learn that the three-inch sprinkling of powder was insufficient to shut down the local schools.

"And just when you thought you'd be off the hook from all your financial obligations for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2012, instead you end up incurring a bunch of late fees because you had been hoping to slip into the End Times with a few unpaid bills. Rather than hearing the voices of angels guiding our souls to the next station on our way to oblivion, instead the phone is ringing off the hook with creditors who won't take no-or Armageddon-for an answer."

And you can read the rest here. Enjoy!

Debunking Millenial Fears; the Green Perspective

Sorry for the absence (likely to continue due to needs of post-production on a short film) but I couldn't resist putting up the opening to an article which manages to combine two of this particular blog's likes in one: green topics + debunking the end of the world.

Entitled "The Apocalypse Makes Us Dumb" by WorldChanging's Alex Steffen, here are the first few 'graphs:

"In thinking seriously about the negative trends in our future, we're severely hampered by the Hollywood idea of the Apocalypse. That idea, in turn, has deep roots in the millenarianism of monotheistic religions (in which there is an End of Days and it's coming soon) and of 19th Century social movements (there is a Dictatorship of the Proletariat and it's coming soon). Millenarianism has its own problems, not least of which is that people do horrible things to others in the name of clearing the way for their chosen perfect future. But for our discussion here, let's just confine our understanding of the credo to what it has done to our conception of the future.

"Believing in a millennial future, or even frequently telling stories of such futures, blinds us both to what history teaches us about collapses and to what we know about our present moment. It makes us bad at thinking intelligently about the future.

"This is a topic that could use careful consideration from a number of angles, but I have about 30 minutes to write today, so instead let's just list some of the futurist fallacies we tend to embrace because (whether we're consciously aware of it or not), we're applying a millennial lens to the events unfolding around us.

"1) The Apocalypse is coming. There is a tendency to believe that big, catastrophic and singular events are going to come and destroy everything: that the Bird Flu or whatever is going to suddenly happen and immediately life will be hell. (The funniest example of this is climate change in The Day After Tomorrow, where sea level rise is so sudden that water rushes down the streets of New York in great rolling waves.)

"2) The Apocalypse is forever. In disaster movies and such, people seem to lack the ability to regroup and rebuild. Sometimes a hero will -- usually by killing a monster/ warlord/ robot/Tina Turner -- win the chance for one small group to start over, but the implication is usually that the rest of the planet's a write off for the imaginable future.

But naturally, you want to read the rest. Be my guest... click here.