Author: Britton William Frost

To put it very simply, the Hegelian Dialectic is G.W.F Hegel’s theory that the progress of cultural views toward truth is anything but linear. Instead, the conventional thesis causes rebellion and, therefore, the birth of an anti-thesis. Belief patterns oscillate between those two extremes, both of which have certain particulars correct but are out of touch with general truth. People are split into those two camps at once until the anti-thesis eventually becomes the new thesis. That causes a new anti-thesis to arise, and the cycle repeats with each new thesis’ being slightly closer to the overarching truth but which may still overcompensate regarding the specifics. Imagine a pendulum swinging where belief is split between one peak of the swing and the other, truth itself is the force of gravity, and as the pendulum slows down, ideally, people should come together in submission of the truth at the pendulum’s resting point in the middle. This process, according to Hegel, takes at least three moves.

There is a political application of this theory — a cultural misinterpretation, in my view — that suggests that this dialectic process begins with a pragmatic agenda (usually control, power, and money), and instead of each step’s getting closer to the truth, it rather gets closer to fulfilling that goal. The problem here is metaphysical: pragmatism alone cannot provide a ground to account for the contents of the theory, nor for the act of theorizing itself. What grounds the goal toward which the dialectic aims? Is it nature? Is it a common value among the participants? Is it their conscious agreement? Each of these is logically unsound, for truth is neither determined by mere survival (naturalistic fallacy) nor by consensus (argumentum ad populum). It still requires we fallen, mortal beings to have faith in something as a grounding for that goal, just as we must appeal to something higher than ourselves in discerning truth. We will leave that here for now, however.

We can certainly observe the Hegelian Dialectic in microcosmic form when we observe the evolution of an individual’s beliefs. It is not our first impulse, when we are confronted with new information that challenges how we think, to simply observe that information and our responses to it — to watch the pendulum swing as well as to be self-aware, that is. No, it is our first impulse to map that information onto our preconditioned pattern of thinking, whether that means to accept and adopt the conventional thesis or to rebel against it. The former is the result of one’s being temperamentally more agreeable, and the latter less agreeable, from a Big-5 trait perspective. So, regardless of our temperament, the same holds true: we tend to ride the pendulum to the other end and back again, repeatedly, as to learn most of life’s lesson’s by trial and error. I don’t intend to commit the composition fallacy here — i.e. that what is true of individual parts should be true of the whole — but rather to draw an analogy between individual psychology on the specific level and the Hegelian Dialectic on the general.

An example of this would be the case of someone’s growing up with an inadequate Christian education or family life, and they overcompensate for that in young adulthood by becoming an atheist, perhaps because they read “The God Delusion” by Dildo Dawkins or something. With growth and wisdom, and after many debates with friends and family members, they eventually evolve into adopting a more stoic mindset and grateful attitude, and they find their way back to a more focused, spiritual (even Christian) perspective on reality and life.

I want to place emphasis on the grateful attitude that is required to see the truth. It is one thing to be able to interpret facts, and even to see higher patterns of truth, correctly. But, in doing so, there is no guarantee that one will know what to do with that information. An authentic, stoic mindset involves gratitude. There is power in indifference, yes. It allows one to remove emotion from the initial analysis and see things clearly. Without gratitude, this will cause apathy, for one can see and understand truth on a mechanistic level yet still feel some desire to correct what is to what one thinks should be the case. This is an interference of the ego. To be grateful is to understand and to consciously, in every necessary moment, control that ego response rather than to act on it in an attempt to control the world. Gratitude, not indifference, allows for true acceptance of that which is out of the individual’s control. From there, one is not bogged down in the negative attitude that the ego would create in reaction to the truth, but rather, a world of higher learning opens up to one.

Community roles and individual relationships are crucial both for development and as a test for one’s true attitude. It is also a product of ego for one to consciously decide “I am grateful.” It is another thing to test that against social pressure. An example would be in letting go of a romantic relationship and being “grateful” that one’s former partner will move on to other things and people that are better suited to them than one is. One can experience a feeling of unhealthy possessiveness over other people as well over their environment. In fact, people are simply part of that environment that the untamed ego seeks to control. They are mere objects — means to one’s end. Regardless of that end, one should not treat others merely as a means, but rather as ends in themselves. True love is expressed, perhaps more often than not, after that relationship is over with. It comes with the acceptance that the former lover has freely moved on — and in being grateful for that. Romantic relationships are the ultimate test of gratitude because they are so muddied by emotion. It is the context in which the line between intuition and emotion is the least clear. Intuition knows that to be grateful is to be free, and that is to be loved. That is true compassion. Emotion, empathy included, is the chemical response that the ego impulsively triggers when it does not accept what is.

To dilate back out to the general, the Hegelian Dialectic is the cultural context for ego expression. It is the natural result of group-based thinking which is, in fact, submission to cultural fashion at the expense of based, critical thinking. It can be consciously and systematically directed by a government entity’s appealing to the pity and emotion of the public, and persuading them that those impulsive, involuntary responses are virtuous. Therefore, it takes one absolutely no work to join the team of “the good”. One must only remain a slave to one’s emotions and be able to call out anyone who does not share that sentiment, no matter how well-reasoned their opponent’s position may be. The reward for this, in today’s technocratic culture, is not personal or spiritual fulfillment, but rather material convenience which one would, in reality, be better off finding a way to provide oneself. Whether Hegel’s claim that there is unity in truth at the end of the road, however, regarding the core things that are near and dear to us as individual, spiritual beings — e.g. what should be normalized regarding family, love, sex, beauty, etc. — remains to be seen.

Welcome to OTUJA which stands for Observe, Think, Understand, Judge, Act. This is a draft of a five-step guide for acting well and intentionally, especially important when there is a high risk of emotional influence on decision-making.

Anger, frustration, excitement, fear, pity, empathy, joy, etc.

Emotions are a matter of the subjective being alone — mere reactions to external stimuli. They are neither indicative of nor serve as evidence for any general reality. In the case that an emotional impulse does seem to reflect general reality, that is merely coincidental and should be accepted humbly. Emotions are not reasonable bases for action in any case. To act on the basis of an emotion is to act in self-interest and to therefore disregard the well-being of others. One’s emotions are one’s own responsibility to control. The more one allows their emotions to flow freely and impact others, the worse that person is, insofar as I can tell.

It should be considered that fully-justified action may be an unattainable ideal. Of course, everyone must act with some degree of self-interest and emotional influence from time to time in order to survive in the world. That still does not justify it, for martyrs can be perfectly justified in their final act. The best one can do in desperate times (while maintaining that survival is necessary) is to act from an unreasonable basis with the intention to prevent that from becoming a general pattern of behavior in future cases. OTUJA is a guide for formulating a good pattern of decision-making and therefore to maximize overall well-being around them in general, despite what exceptions may have to be made for necessary, expedient ends. The more consciously and frequently this process is applied, the purer one’s intentions will be, and the better a person that one will be, quite simply.

If you will notice, as I have mentioned the word a few times already, intention matters. What I mean by this term could also be described as an aim or purpose. This is not to be confused with goal or consequence. In each step of this process, as I will repeat, the intention is to set a foundation for the following step.

1. Observe

Acknowledge that your first intention is to think clearly (the next step). In order to do this, you must observe. Clear your mind. Identify whether or not you have any emotional impulses. If you do, then take deep breath, take a walk around the block, bash your head on a concrete wall — whatever necessary — until those impulses have at least gone dormant (if not, then congratulations: you are not a decision-maker. Go find a wiser, cooler head to depend on). Observe all that you can impartially, without bias for or against the subject(s) involved and for any outcome which might affect you, emotionally or practically. Love blinds in this step. The more you care about the subject, the hotter the lens through which you will perceive it. Whether it is your child who was kidnapped or a random straight white guy being curb-stomped by ANTIFA in the street, don’t let your initial emotional reaction jump to a premature judgment. Simply collect factual data about what you can see — as much of it as possible. Without impartial observation, thinking is not possible.

2. Think

Now that you have a basis of observations, acknowledge that your next intention is to understand what is going on. This means that you must first think critically about your observations as well as continuing to think about your own mental states during that process. The most important thing here is not to compile and organize all of your data in the construction of a viewpoint, but rather to filter out all of the useless information which, by the way, will be the majority of it. To develop a good filter, it is necessary to have knowledge of, and preferably also a cultivated sixth sense for, logical fallacies. These are errors of relevance and inference that hinder good reasoning. Once you have sifted through all fallacious data, look for patterns in the observations that are left over (there may be nothing left over, which is often the case during political unrest for example, in which case you should remain neutral and walk away from the situation entirely). Consider as many different interpretations of that remaining data, real or hypothetical, as you can. Without critical, analytical thinking, understanding is not possible.

3. Understand

Take your reasoned analysis and acknowledge that your next intention is to formulate a judgment on which to base your action. What is the most reasonable and least self-interested interpretation you can possibly make as a result of the thinking you have just done? Do you actually understand what is going on here on all levels? Do you sympathize with the local case and have a bird’s eye understanding of the greater conceptual patterns if any? Has this happened before, and are there any lessons from history to be learned here that you can draw understanding from? Without understanding to the highest, broadest, and most detailed degree conceivable, valid judgment is not possible.

4. Judge

Judgment is not bad. Judgment is necessary for action. Judgment without observation, thought, and understanding is bad and often leads to poor and destructive action. Acknowledge now that your intention is to act. In order for your action to be well-intended, the conclusion you have drawn from the first three steps must be valid. For a judgment to be valid, by logical definition, the truth of its conclusion must follow from the truth of its evidence. No matter how carefully you have completed the first three steps, you may not be comfortable with making a judgment at all. That is OK. Feel free to go back to any of the steps to analyze whether you missed a crucial bit of information or overlooked an interpretation that could have led to a more confident and reasonable judgment. Know that you are under no obligation whatsoever to have an opinion on anything or to act if you do not think that your judgment is true. Let your intuition be the final judge. An opinion can be based on as much as nothing, so it is better to have reasonable disbelief than to have unreasonable belief. At least reasonable disbelief will yield well-intended actions.

5. Act

In the case that you have formulated a well-reasoned judgment, acknowledge now that your intention is to accept the consequences of the action that you are about to produce. Act confidently and without apology. Apologies are not about actions themselves but rather about having done JA without OTU, and sometimes about having done A without OTUJ!

X. Intuit

The final bullet point and x-factor I would like to mention is intuition. Intuition, I must make clear, has no basis whatsoever in one’s personal emotions, beliefs, or conditioning, although those things can be partially based on it and will often overlap with it to some degree, blurring the line between intuition and personal baggage. It is our connection to the universal unconscious, to speak in Jungian terms, and is intrinsic to our nature. It is our spiritual and truth-guiding force, and it by its very nature cannot be wrong. In the case that an intuitive decision is wrong, it is because of interference of the ego, emotions, or a value structure that needs reform. This is to “trust your gut instinct” with regards to what is true. The more naturally emotional one is, the more difficult it will be, I suspect, for them to rely on their intuitive instinct, for the greater the risk that their intuition will be hindered by emotion. Cultivating intuition takes a lot of fine-tuning. As everyone’s is buried underneath layers upon layers of emotional and conditioned influence, I cannot give any general advice on how to do that. That is your personal duty and obligation to yourself and to the world.

The OTUJA process should be repeated as needed. You will make mistakes. That’s OK as long as it is your ongoing intention to act in accordance with truth — i.e. to do good for the sake of itself and to accept the consequences of that humbly — rather than to act in order to produce a consequence to begin with. This is what it means to be an authentic, moral being.

I must emphasize once more that OTUJA is intended toward an ideal, for one cannot and should not attempt to control external variables. That is not the point. The point is to focus on oneself, one’s own thinking. Every step of this process is extremely difficult. Even the first, to simply observe without emotional or self-interested bias, often requires monk-like meditation in the face of emotion-stirring crises. Sometimes it will seem impossible. When it does, inaction alone will show good character.

Under the condition that you apply OTUJA as consciously and frequently as possible, and that you get a wee bit better every time you do, you will probably start to think critically about some popular false beliefs. The following truths (any of which I would be happy to defend at length) are just a few that may arise:

1. Very few people (including most who claim to love you) care about you, and they like you even less when you speak the truth.
2. Almost all information is meaningless and must be sifted through for truth nuggets to be found.
3. To have knowledge of the logical fallacies is to have taken the intellectual red pill. This is one of the greatest transcendental values as well as the greatest personal dangers of formally studying philosophy. Your bullshit filter will be flawless, and you will never see the world the same again. This will either thicken your skin beyond what you thought was possible or send you spiraling down a well of crippling depression. Either way, you will be forced to find solace in isolation (see 1).
4. Non-defense-based violence is never justified, no matter how useful.
5. “Eye-for-an-eye” is a counterproductive approach to justice, personally and generally.
6. “Moral relativism” — the philosophy in which you believe that shit doesn’t stink just because your shit doesn’t stink to you — is false.
7. People are mostly good, albeit reckless, self-centered, and ignorant.
8. There is no connection whatsoever between being smart and being wise. An equal degree of good and evil is intrinsic to us all, and one uses one’s available tools to intend good rather than evil precisely to the degree that one is self-aware.
9. Self-awareness is the foundation of being a genuinely good and authentic person. It is a endless struggle. It never ends.
10. Activism — the belief that action trumps the other prerequisite steps in the OTUJA process so that it is perfectly acceptable, regardless the ideology on which it is founded, to act without proper justification or civility — is irrational animal behavior against which forceful defense is always permitted.

Good luck.

Almost three years ago, I started wearing a ring on my left middle finger because I found it in a box while I was moving, and I thought it looked cool. After a bit of research on ring symbolism, however, I found that the left middle finger represents order, structure, and personal responsibility. In astrology, it represents Saturn which coincidentally is the dominant planet in my natal chart. Saturn governs restraint, the ability to set boundaries based on logical principles, and it often results in rather conservative social viewpoints. I was like “sweet, that sounds like me”, so I kept wearing it and still do.

One of those viewpoints is that you should not get involved in someone else’s life until you have yourself somewhat figured out. I didn’t date in high school, nor did I have much of an active interest in women until I was in my mid-twenties. As a young observer not totally blinded by my testosterone drive, it seemed to me that people couldn’t set proper boundaries for themselves when it came to relationships. They couldn’t help deferring to others in the face of their own problems, sometimes at huge costs. As a Saturnian, I just didn’t understand that lack of self-restraint.

Most relationships seem unhealthy to me; most people, in my rather psychoanalytical view, seem to enter them on the basis of a deep personal and potentially clinical issues that absolutely must be dealt with. The individuals are pawns during each other’s healing, making a dramatic demise inevitable. There is plenty of folk psychology meowadays, unknowingly based on immature social-constructivist philosophy, that says that this is “totally OK” (emphasize with an annoyingly feminine tone of nurturing approval) – that we should learn to heal in the context of a relationship because that’s just how people naturally evolve as social creatures. We cannot have the foresight to avoid having to learn from our mistakes, so we attract those who are roughly as emotionally fucked up as we are, and the goal of a relationship is to grow out of that fucked-up-ness together.

While I see value in that, for we do attract and deserve no better those who are as emotionally as fucked up as we are, it is far from ideal and totally preventable to enter a relationship on this basis. We can cultivate our intuition and develop foresight to not always learn the hard way.

Perhaps I am not much of a social creature, and maybe my sex drive is lower than that of the average near-prime male, but a good person to me is self-aware, identifies and deals with their problems alone, and goes to great lengths to avoid involving others in that process. If you cannot stand to be alone, then you should practice by getting your own place, and get comfortable with the fact that when you’re left alone staring at a wall on a Saturday night with no one to entertain you, your subconscious mind will bring some very dark and disturbing things to you consciousness. You should learn and accept that these are very real parts of yourself which, if not meditated on, will eventually control your behavior without your conscious consent, at which point you will be so ego-controlled that you still may not learn from those mistakes. So, do that before you involve yourself with others, or else those others will be collateral, helpless while you sloppily come to terms with yourself because you couldn’t just sit down and meditate without having a screen of useless, dopamine-triggering bullshit in front of your face for five minutes.

At least for me, being with someone else is for mutual enjoyment and for nothing else. The last thing I would want is for them to make their problems mine (at least without the intention to improve – I’m more than happy to help someone who needs and wants that) and for me to burden them with my problems. I have my faults, but I am very well-adjusted in at least this way. I have a perfect track record of having had no relationship drama as a result of this principle. I can honestly say that I have seriously burdened not a single soul with my troubles. How generous of me.

In my years of maturation, have grown obsessed with being alone. It all started… well, from birth of course. This is in large part a natural proclivity. My parents sometimes recall my waking up in my crib and happily entertaining myself with my toy cars for any length of time until my parents decided it was time to take me out. Later on, I remember going to sleepovers and on camping trips with other kids (on the rare occasions that my parents were able to convince me to), playing variations of hide-and-seek, and feeling most at peace while I was by myself, hiding, especially in stark contrast to the social context of being with other kids minutes before which epitomized ‘unpeaceful’. My thoughts were finally able to flow without distraction. My mind and body were finally able to rest. It reminds me of how a married man with kids says he only has time alone while he is in the bathroom taking a shit, and he cherishes that time sweetly. Being the “old soul” that I am, I was so relaxed in those moments of hiding that I felt my bowels move too, and I do recall once or twice actually shitting my pants. So, even as a very young child I felt alone, but I was was at home in that state. At home, alone, with a shitpie in my pants.

I have had roommates over the years who certainly did not understand the concept of healthy solitude, so they couldn’t respect that in me or in anyone else. I would spend an unhealthy majority of my day mulling over how imprisoned I felt from having to live with them. They simply didn’t understand what I thought were common social rules: having the basic decency to avoid bothering the people they lived with unless they really needed something, keeping their shit out of the common areas and cleaning the kitchen after use, turning the handle before opening and closing a door in the morning and at night when they weren’t sure if their roommates were sleeping, etc. These are basic things, no? Unfortunately, one or two of them were good friends of mine, but it was still not worth keeping them in the house even if that meant ending those friendships. My mental health was at serious risk. I had to kick multiple out for “disturbing the peace”.

“Home” is a sanctuary – a place for peace – regardless of how poor or well-off you are. Those who don’t define ‘home’ in this way are not peaceful, and they seem to lack awareness of others and of themselves. I’ll pay the extra money to live alone no matter how bad things get, always. The point is, though, that these people also had serious problems in their relationships if they were able to have one at all. Their inability to be alone made it difficult for them to pair-bond intimately. I didn’t really have a problem with finding a relationship. Looking back, I just didn’t want it. I just saw it as the only way to explore sexuality in a safe and consistent way — a trap many fall into (I’ll eventually write another piece on why that norm should be destroyed for the sexual well-being of all).

I remember telling my girlfriend at the time, who conveniently lived over an hour away, that I could not wait to have my own place and that I foresaw my wanting to live alone for the majority of my life. It was then that certain adult values started to surface for me, and coming home to peaceful solitude everyday was one of the main ones. She of course was bothered by this as it didn’t line up with her scheme.

At 20ish years old, I suppose she didn’t have the foresight to know that it wouldn’t work out in the long-run. Maybe I should have been more clear that it was never my intention for it to, but that is difficult to realize and articulate when taking it day-to-day is the natural approach. Genuinely taking it day-to-day, in practice, does not entail that kind of discussion to begin with. Does that make sense? Like, you can’t tell a quality woman (and I do consider all women of my past to be quality women. I picked them, after all) “Look, this is day-to-day. I live for myself. I’m here for our mutual enjoyment and for no other reason. No marriage, no kids. When one of us loses interest, we’re done. That could be tomorrow or ten years from now. Got it?” She’ll simply leave for a situation that that has more promise for the future no matter how deluded that promise is. I suppose I showed that enough. She would often say “I know that if you didn’t want to be with me, then you wouldn’t be.” That was correct, and it extended my interest in her. The breakup was eventually mutual and peaceful.

When I finally did get my own place immediately after college, it proved to be a necessary move. It was quite a lazy time though. I didn’t feel that I had the energy to be as creative and productive as I was hoping, but at least I spent much needed time resting, catching up from literally years of sleep lost and mental restraint due to living with others prior to that.

Relationships that followed further solidified my desire to remain single and alone. I successfully stuck to my strict no-cohabitation rule. This worked out so well for me that it made me question further why people pair-bond at all – i.e. why they don’t value themselves above shared goals such as family, and seeing other people, that require so much self-sacrifice. I don’t get it. What is in that deal for me? How would that do anything but hold me back, not to mention exhaust the hell out of me? I suppose that not everyone is a radical individualist like I am. Some people actually put social interaction, sex, nurturing, etc. above themselves in their value structures. Confusing still.

My confusion about this goes deeper, though. It spills into my confusion about love itself. People who pair-bond, move in together prematurely and sacrifice large parts of themselves for shared goals that don’t seem worth it, also claim to love each other. I cannot accept love as a virtue or a goal in itself at all if this is what love is.

Love to me should be freeing, liberating. It should be a deep understanding, acceptance, and enjoyment of the fact that I am one individual, she is another, and that there is nothing we can or should do to interfere with that. Maybe it will last one night, or maybe it will last a lifetime. Either way, it should be nourishing. It must not be a prison. It must not be a context for judgment or accountability, for that is one’s own responsibility. It must not involve overwhelming feelings of jealousy or possessiveness. It must be devoid of ego, fear, and expectation that the other will change to serve you. It must be peaceful. It must be vulnerable and open. It must allow for as much solitude as is needed. It must be intentional, however, and unconditional if true. It should be virtually effortless. If all of these things are in place, only then, maybe, shared goals could be seen as worth it and at all possible. Maybe then could self-bonding and pair-bonding coexist. If that is not to be, then love is not for me. That is fine. The right people will come and go.

To conclude, and maybe this is a bit Saturnian of me to say, but self-bonding should be a prerequisite for pair-bonding in every case so that the relationship will entail principles that will originate from and nourish the individual. Done right, one might find that he or she is not monogamous at all and that a pair isn’t necessarily the best structure for their romantic and sexual fulfillment. Regardless, I think that only a person who can truly be alone can also truly love another, given the deeper albeit more idealistic definition of ‘love’ that I have proposed. Only the loner can truly accept and enjoy another with intention and without expectation. Otherwise, there is a great probability that the love is simply ego-serving, validation-seeking, or the like. So, if you have never lived alone, I highly suggest that you do for a while before you go out and completely ruin someone’s life, because that clock is probably ticking. Seriously. Stare at your wall, and let your repressed dark thoughts pass. If you don’t, you may not get what you want from love, and you definitely won’t get what you need for yourself, for your conception of love will be conditional on some greater force unconsciously ruling you.

I just received a notification on my phone saying that Dana has finished assembling my shopping list and is preparing it for delivery. This is the first time I’ve ever tucked it back, straightened my tiara, and phone-ordered a pampering service for myself. I personally have no problem with this particular one, though, as I have not once in my life looked forward to going to the grocery store.

This works out great for me for a few other reasons as well. I don’t make shopping lists and don’t need to because I typically get the same boring items anyway.  In the rare occasion that I have the idea to add something new to my cart, I think of that item while I am in the middle of some other task, and by the time I get to the store I always forget and end up making do with what I’m used to. Cereal, mostly. Single dude life FTW. In this case I can add the item to my cart in the moment and order once I’m ready. Brilliant.

There is also the feeling that while I am in the grocery store, it is more important for me to get the hell out of there than it is for me to stand in the middle of an isle spending even a second thinking about what else I might want in addition to those few items that I absolutely need. It is like when I was in college, it was more important that I got my degree and left that four-year extension of high school than to hang around scoping campus for extracurricular fun. It’s a waste of time.

Food is a waste of time. The ritual of cooking and having a meal means nothing to me. If I placed any value on that at all, then I wouldn’t live alone, a thousand miles from my mother’s kitchen. Or, I’d be looking for a wife. OR, I’d become a culinary artist of some sort myself. But I’m not. Just give me the nutrition and substance I need in a bottle and my semi-weekly pan-seared filet-mignon, so I can quickly ingest it and get on with more important things such as writing this article about how I don’t consider shopping for food to be one of those important things. How meta.

So, I don’t mind this grocery delivery service. However, another reason I am using this service, as well as why I am getting two cases of Soylent delivered to my door semi-monthly, is because in the midst of this “plandemic” as it should be called, I cannot enter the store without wearing a mask covering my nose and mouth. I won’t give my full array of reasons for refusing to wear a mask here, but just know that it is almost as absurd as why people bring their own bags to the grocery store. It’s something like “if everyone did it, then we could make a difference.” I’m not opposed to that way of thinking, by the way.

But, whereas it would take literally everyone’s using their own grocery bags to actually halt production of disposable bags (which is the point, right?), the non-compliance of the mask-wearing law in the elitist butt-sucking state of Pennsylvania could make a genuine difference on the local level, inspire other localities to do the same, and catch on like a virus to reverse the very fear-virus that serves as the basis for this pre-communist malarkey that is keeping you from blacking out with your buddies this weekend.

To be clear, this isn’t activism. I loathe activism. Simply refusing to follow stupid rules — such as wearing a mask to prevent the spreading of a virus for which there is no evidence whatsoever of its being even as deadly as a typical seasonal flu strain — isn’t activism. Perhaps we could call it “inactivism”. Whereas activism, virtually by definition, involves adopting a shallow political belief on the basis of emotions and “raising awareness” of that unquestioned belief by whatever means necessary (often childish tantrums and belligerent violence), inactivism simply says “I don’t see any reason for this, so I am not going to change my behavior because of it.” No harm done, just peaceful civil disobedience for the greater good of individual liberty.

What’s more, inactivism has sophisticated philosophical origins unlike its tyrannical opposition. It’s real. It’s chill. It’s principle-based. It’s Kantian, even. It has pure intention behind it. It says “Don’t fix something that isn’t broken.” That unbroken thing being individual expression in society as it is, e.g. sharing a smile with the cute barista across the counter, even if there is a useless piece of plexiglass hanging from the ceiling between the two of you that someone can easily rub their “contaminated” mask on if they wish to show that none of this is in the name of safety.

I mentioned that inactivism is Kantian. In the unlikely case that your ears perked up, I’ll explain.

In Kant’s Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals his “universal law”, if I remember it correctly, states “Act only in accordance to that maxim which you can will as a universal law.” What this means in short (and in a very watered-down way) is to act not to produce a consequence, but only on the principle of good-for-good’s-sake and to accept the consequences that follow. Like a man. This forms the basis of inactivism because an inactivist uses his moral, unconditional intuition and doesn’t blindly follow behavior-altering rules set by anonymous “experts” who would lose their jobs if they didn’t manipulate data in order to conform it to a greater political agenda under which their entire institution is funded and operates. Activism, on the other hand, does exactly that, and more, by use of the appeal to pity fallacy, preying on the emotionally and intellectually meek to create a herd of castrated sheep that will blindly follow their agenda. This is a consequentialist endeavor — it is action to produce a particular, unquestioned consequence. In other words, the end justifies the means regardless of how malicious the means are and how meaningless the end is, such as in children getting banged just so a shitty Hollywood film, about how one chick’s beating up ten guys is sexy, can be produced.

Funnily enough, activism, consequentialism, communism, atheism, scientism, libtardism, Hollywoodism, feminism, etc. all go hand-in-hand without knowing it. They don’t know it because if logical consistency of views mattered to them at all, then they wouldn’t believe what they believe to begin with. They are all essentially relativist, anthropocentric sub-systems which ironically hold the human intellect as their God — and that explains in part why they reject God. The problem with this is that we humans by definition are NOT actually God. Did you know that?

No, we’re just dumb, actually.

If you’d like to be slightly less dumb than the average human, however, then be an individualist-inactivist. It is the only kind of “-ist” worth being because it is the only kind that means by definition “against ideology” while all other “-isms” are ideologies that overtly suppress the value of individual critical thought. Let me tell you, those ideologies, man… they’re like super ghey. Critical thinking is totally counter-culture and badass!

Anyway, my groceries just arrived on the front porch where I am writing this. The delivery operation takes two people, and apparently that is one too many just as the tale about two celibate and sexually frustrated monks fetching a pale of water goes — that it takes them twice as long because they always stop and take a jerk break on the journey or whatever.

But yeah, my entire order was wrong. That’s my luck being my first time using this service. I had ordered the usual: sandwich stuff, pasta stuff, apples, bananas, eggs, cereal, STEAK, and a few little things like butter and soy sauce which I had just run out of.  Instead, they showed up with four bags full of vegetables.

Vegetables! Useless!

Really, vegetables? What the fuck?

Luckily they hadn’t picked my order wrong. My stuff was still in the car, so it was a quick and easy fix as it would have been for the monks who have only water to fetch at the well. For my troubles I was awarded $35 off my next order. It’s one of those things that’s better off happening to me than to someone else, I suppose, since I don’t get angry. I don’t get angry because I get it. It’s a plandemic. People are confused. They’re just adapting to their new system just as I am to mine of not having to go to the grocery store. Life is hard.

In my previous post, I gave a rather technical description of some of the basic parts of astrology, but it isn’t quite what I wanted to write. I often feel that I cannot write what I want to, not because I am unable to write it, but because in order for anyone to understand it, they must have the background knowledge that I do about the topic.

What I really wanted to write about was the quincunx aspect in astrology, but I assume that most who will read it are not already interested in astrology, much less do they know what the hell a quincunx is. This is one of the most fundamental problems of writing non-fiction, at least for me: For whom am I writing?

Does this question even matter? I will only partially explore whether it matters here. For now, I will follow a line of reasoning that assumes that it does under the premise that the purpose of writing is to provide a valuable idea-based service to people.

I am constantly feeling the need to explain as much background as possible before writing what I want to write, and this requires dry, boring, technical bullshit that no one gives a fuck about. The only people who would be interested in my thoughts on the quincunx are those who either are specialists and already have the background knowledge (and although they could offer valuable insight, I have no inclination to reach out to them because that would mean joining a ghey-ass “community”; I prefer to be alone in my endeavors), or those who have potential to find interest in astrology but have not found it yet and therefore need that background. But, the problem with the latter case is that astrology is a personal journey. It just comes to you, and I cannot force someone to take interest in my technical descriptions if they have not discovered an interest in astrology more broadly on their own, so this further deems my dilemma seemingly useless.

Any time I find a new interest, I dive in deep very quickly. I surpass the basic level knowledge and immediately find myself in the no-man’s land between “somewhat knowledgeable hobbyist” and “nerdy technical professional”. One problem is that I prefer to stay at that level with pretty much everything I am interested in. I want to understand things in a holistic way and connect dots between new interests and the rest of what I know and deem important (often at the expense of the technical details), but I feel an incredible sense of guilt about the idea of marketing myself to make money from my skills and knowledge (not to mention I lack sales skills to begin with; I see that as someone else’s job). I cannot bring myself to care about or overtly pursue money. It seems deeply inauthentic. I end up doing jobs that offer me just enough money to survive and require no creative or intellectual engagement at all because their monotony affords my mind freedom to wander and “plan my escape.” At every job I have ever had, I have had wisdom and foresight that could have brought those businesses to incredible heights, but I have steered clear of correcting what was wrong with them because it “wasn’t my responsibility” to do so, it would involve career advancement that I simply do not desire, and it would involve endless meetings that would go nowhere because of the deaf ears who were in power to implement those changes. I need absolute freedom of thought, creativity, and responsibility, and I am very careful about where I apply my energy. This crippling guilt is about more than personality quirks, however. There is a general moral aspect about it.

I don’t ultimately care about the industries I have worked in (motorsports, film, coffee, etc). I chose them because they would be expendable in favor of more meaningful work down the road. More deeply, I don’t think that they provided value to human well-being, and therefore I felt guilt also about the idea of making those businesses better. Why make a business better if that industry in general does not make the world better? Working in any industry for long enough, I inevitably come to see it as a superficial luxury of life and not worthy of my time or effort at all because I have no place in my value structure for that product. Or, in the case that something I am working on does matter as with a particular film, then the end does not justify the means given the unforgivable social and political corruption that haunts the film production process.

Anyway, I start out doing this simple work for personal reasons, as something to occupy my time while I build toward other things on the side, but I eventually cannot help but to notice the whole that I am contributing to and that it is not for the good, the guilt sets in, and then I have to leave for the next bullshit job.

Writing faces me with the challenge of taking something that I deem to be deeply interesting and important and trying to navigate through communicating it in a way that is not only accessible to the general public but also service-providing. I do believe that good writing is a service because good writing is about ideas, and the idea is the level to which everything ultimately reduces.

Despite all of the good that comes from learning good academic writing — structure, clarity, technical precision, etc. — it has a tendency to reinforce my natural proclivity to “cover everything” that needs to be covered in order for “the point” to be absolutely clear. In academia, I wrote for specialists, but there is a reason that academic writing has no readership. Writing that is truly valuable is more general as well as personal, two things which are typically forbidden in academia, and for good reason. Too much generality and it will seem to lack substance. Too much personality and it will seem to lack applicability to others. And for this reason I will never write fiction… ever — well, not that I have the talent for it anyway.

As things stand, my ideal career scenario would be that someone would simply pay me a steady source of income to write and make silly videos about my thoughts. They’d say “Here’s enough money for you to live. Now go be you and put your ideas out there. I’ll take care of sales and distribution.” I could live wherever and however I want, wake up whenever I want, produce whenever I am inspired, and no one would tell me what to do. And unlike most people who would wither away in this type of open scenario, I am absolutely certain that for me it would be the best context for maximum productivity. That is the dream.

Monetary problems aside, how do I write in order to provide a service? It may be my meal-ticket, but I cannot be sure. Roger Scruton, perhaps not so oddly, was the only professor I have had who recognized and emphasized my personal need to “write now and organize later”. For the greatest philosopher of the last generation to tell me things like “you’ve got quite a good brain”, he was extremely encouraging of my talent. I suppose that with his advice always in the back of my mind I am learning to let it flow a bit better now. It is still quite a painful process. It is a vulnerable process. People seem to like it, but my worry is that because it is less straightforwardly objective, that it will be less true and less marketable. What do people actually value and why?

Personal shit, I suppose. If I am not to write fiction, then perhaps a memoir style will suffice. In paying close attention to the progression of my life’s journey, the interests I take on bring me babysteps closer to Truth; I always consider the relevant connections between all branches of my personal knowledge, old and new. Of course there is the personality and philosophy stuff that I have and continue to burn through, but most recently, for example, in my dabbling in kink life, exploring more sexually, and coming to terms with the fact that I am not monogamous (which is something quite unconventional yet relatable to many in itself), I have come to see how intimately tied to every aspect of one’s being one’s sexuality is. I think that what I am most interested in and purposefully intended toward can be summarized as “Truth”, so this new discovery and topic of research has become a necessary part of my journey of fulfilling that purpose to the world. I am tying sexuality in with what I already know about philosophy, personality, and all else in coherent and meaningful ways.

Of course everything profoundly meaningful connects dots, shatters boundaries between disciplines. This is why academic work is not for me. The philosophers and psychologists for example generally do not collaborate, as if they are not relevant to one another, and that obviously severely limits the truth-seeking process (not to mention applicability for the common person) in both fields. It’s so insanely shortsighted, but alas there is no correlation between intelligence and wisdom. You have to be intelligent to be a professor, but you must be wise to see Truth.

I have never had a problem connecting dots, seeing Truth, communicating with people one-on-one. The problem is in how to apply that knowledge to the world so that it provides me livelihood, because the more meaningless work I do, the more I wither. Money and personal biases aside, the ONLY things that I can see have intrinsic value are art and ideas. They are the only things I care about because they are the only things in which Truth need not be censored. How to make those things work so that I do not end up a complete vagrant still remains a mystery to me, but for now I suppose I will just keep writing as Roger suggested, without the worry of “for whom” which seems to be the main thing overemphasizing structure and thereby limiting substance.

Each person is uniquely represented by his or her natal chart; no two are the same. Even identical twins who are born within a few minutes of each other may have different ascendant (or “rising”) signs, which changes the orientation of the chart by a few degrees, just enough to give each placement (a planet-sign combination) an entirely different context for expression (the houses). This can cause profound differences in behavior and life paths even though the identical twins will have all of the same placements. Even if they do have the same ascendant, the few minutes that separate them will turn the natal chart ever so slightly, causing the “aspects” to have slightly different “orb values”, which will cause a difference in the strength of each trait that those aspects represent. As I am sure you are already lost by these terms, this brings me to the first set of technical things that I have learned about astrology.

First, you are more than your “sun” sign, which is typically the only sign that people are aware of. It is also referred to as the “star sign” or “zodiac sign”, but these are newbie terms. The sun is one of many planets in the birth chart, and it is associated with only one part of a person’s personality, albeit an important one: the ego – the default personality mode in which one operates around people with whom he or she is fairly well acquainted. It is usually the style of personality by which you want to be seen. Your sun is released and shows up with someone once you’ve “broken the ice” with them. Most people who know a little bit about astrology are still only aware of their “big three” signs which includes the sun as well as the moon which is the emotional, internal center and that part of one that one likely identifies with when one is alone, and the ascendant (or “rising” as it is more commonly referred to) which is the unconscious mode in which one operates in new and unfamiliar situations.

To get a bit more technical, there are three parts to astrology that are vital for understanding anything in greater depth: signs, planets, and houses. Signs are constellations such as Aries or Libra, and they represent styles of expression. Aries is an aggressive and impulsive, yet socially-attractive style, while Libra is a style concerned with balance and fairness, also typically attractive to others in a slightly softer and more charming way than Aries. A planet, the sun and the moon included, is the particular part of your personality. When a constellation is inline with a planet, a particular expression style is being applied to the part of your personality represented by that planet. The houses are the pizza slices of a chart; they are the contexts of life in which those personality styles occur.

To tie all of this together in an example, Venus, which is the feminine, sensual, social, and romantic side of someone, can be in Gemini, which would value intellect, variety, and fun in romantic relationships. Let’s say that placement were in the 2^nd house in the birth chart, which is the context of money and material possessions. When Venus in Gemini is expressed in the 2^nd house, that could, depending on what else is going on in the birth chart, be an indication that one would have a tendency to be a sex worker (and really enjoy it). My Venus is in Gemini, but it is in the 5^th house which is the context of creative self-expression, entertainment, and romance, so although this placement makes me a bit of a hoe, it works quite well here as my sexual and romantic relations are reserved for creative and recreational fun and — when paired with masculine Mars in Aries in the second house (the context of communication) — writing erotic poetry. An empty house indicates a lack of value placed on the context that house represents. For example, my 2^nd house has no planets in it, so I don’t care much about money or material possessions. This is why I am not a sex worker. See? Shit’s complex.

The specificity of a part of a chart often indicates its complexity and importance. The sun sign isn’t very specific. It is sort of a general box, a “type” as in MBTI, that you’re shoved into when one isn’t aware of the other parts of a chart. One might say to another “We’re both Cancers, so we’re totally like the same person omg.” Their egos may be similar, but there are plenty more layers to the personality, such as the other placements and the house in which the sun is situated, that will add virtually infinite complexity to the role that the person’s ego plays in their life and therefore to the degree of differences between Cancer sun people. The sun sign changes about every thirty days. Is everyone who was born from late June to late July, with their sun in Cancer, the same? Of course not. In my research so far, and in simply introspecting on the fact that my sun, for example, is in cancer yet my personality doesn’t seem to identify with that style, I think that the degree to which your sun sign matters is roughly equal to the degree to which one has awareness and control over his or her own ego. Fire suns (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius), for example, are hard to control. They tend to be quite self-centered and easier to spot. Fire reacts when you pour gas onto it, after all.

Sun sign discrepancy could also be due to the degree to which the ego is suppressed by a more dominant force ruling the birth chart on the whole. Look at the birth chart on the whole. Is there a sign that dominates your chart that is not the sun sign? If so, especially if that sign has key placements in the moon or ascendant, this might be the reason that you don’t identify with your sun sign. For example, my Cancer sun is squashed by my stronger and more abundant Capricorn planets, so I come off more as a Capricorn than a Cancer. Even professional astrologers I have met were shocked to find that I was a Cancer sun person.

There is also a way to calculate why you may not identify with your sun sign. This takes us into a secondary set of terms needed to understand astrology in a technical way. Each sign has a unique “element” and “modality” combination. Elements (fire, earth, air, water) are attitudes that signs have, whereas modalities (cardinal, fixed, mutable) are roles that the signs play. Your dominant sign may not be a sign that shows up in any placements in your chart at all, but it may be the dominant element/modality combination of the chart on the whole. For example, Taurus may not show up in your chart, but because your chart is comprised of more earth and fixed signs than anything else, the person could carry a Taurean energy on the whole, seeming “unchanging in your ways” due to the fixed dominance of your chart and “grounded” in attitude due to the earth dominance.

If there is one specific area of astrology that seems to provide the deepest insight into the whole of human psychology, it is the aspects. An aspect in astrology is a relationship between two planets that forms a more complex and unique energy. Aspects show up within someone’s birth chart and between the charts of two people. Contrary to what pop astrology may have you believe, it is aspects, not signs, that are the most important parts of a chart. Whereas a sign represents a style of expression of a particular part of someone’s personality, an aspect combines the styles between two parts of oneself, providing more substance about what someone is like. The type of aspect is determined by the angular relationship between those planets.

A CONJUNCTION between two planets means that they fall at or near 0 degrees of each other and therefore likely share the same sign and house, but they may not if they are on a cusp. Either way, these two parts of one’s personality will be in harmony with one another. It is as if one part of yourself has seamless communication and understanding with that other part. The most common example is Sun-conjunct-Mercury which means that there is a fluid connection between one’s ego identity and their style of communication. A conjunction is thought to be a positive aspect, and it usually is. I think, however, this can blur lines too much at times just as two people who are very similar can lose their senses of individuality when together. There are clearly times in which one should be able to separate conjuncted parts of his or her personality (e.g. romance and work) and reflect on which part needs tweaking in order to make better decisions in the long run. For example, if one’s sun and moon are in a strong conjunction, it means that one has trouble understanding whether he or she is acting from ego or from emotional reflection. Neither way is entirely good in my estimation. This person may need to work extra hard to understand where the origins of their behaviors lie. I have a friend, for example, whose sun and moon are both in Virgo. She makes quick and confident decisions, but she often winds up in a hot mess because she doesn’t take time to think about why she is so confident in that decision. I have another friend who is a double Taurus. Equally confident and simple-minded in her decisions, she moves more slowly and carefully, so she doesn’t find quite as much trouble. She still, however, lives with some regret about her decisions later on. The style that a conjunction takes on depends on the sign, but in any case, this harmonious aspect comes with challenges. A good rule to keep in mind while dealing with matters related to a conjunction in you chart is: “separation, then integration”. We have to understand our individual bits in isolation before we can make them work together in a way that aims us toward the true potential that a conjunction can afford.

An OPPOSITION aspect is when two placements fall within or near 180 degrees of each other, meaning that they are directly across from each other in the chart wheel. They fall in signs and houses that seem on the surface to be opposites. One should not think of them as opposites, however, but as being in opposition with one another. They are shadows of one another, to speak in Jungian terms – two sides of the same coin, each wishing at times that the other did not exist. They have the same modality but different elements, so they play tug-of-war with each other, struggling for power. This inner tension may be felt very deeply by the individual and stunt decision-making ability. The opposition is often regarded as an adverse aspect, and it often is. However, I think it is the best aspect when it involves key planets. As someone who has a chart dominated by opposition aspects, I can firmly say that this presents the greatest and most necessary opportunity for growth of any aspect. I see it not as a struggle for power, but as a struggle for balance, for both sides of the personality must learn to coexist. At 180 degrees they are at opposite ends of the universe, so to speak, but they forced to face each other from afar. When balance between them is found, another level of self-awareness and confidence is reached, and people notice it. I have personally been told that I possess a very balanced personality. The reason is because of all of my opposition aspects between my Cancer and Capricorn planets and the degree to which I consciously seek balance between them.

Whereas the adverse nature of the opposition presents an opportunity to grow, planets in a SQUARE aspect are usually better off avoided. This is a 90 degree relationship between planets that creates perpendicular lines through the center of the chart; it the most harsh relationship between any two parts of one’s personality. These planets will be expressed through signs that are three removed from each other, so they will be similar in modality but not in element. This means that they want to play the same role but have incompatible styles in which they do so. It is never a case of opposites attract as it is in an opposition, but rather, these two parts of oneself will constantly be in competition with one another, struggling for power. They will create difficulty because there is a lack of understanding between them and often a stubborn unwillingness to come to an understanding. My Capricorn ascendant and Aries Mars (the masculine, action-taking, and sexual part of one’s personality) have a strong square aspect. This can lead me to come off as very argumentative and abrasive with certain new acquaintances, especially if I perceive them as ignorant and weak. Both Capricorn and Aries have leadership tendencies, but in styles that don’t see eye to eye. Whereas opposition placements such as Capricorn and Cancer are at 180 degrees and play father/mother roles, Aries will be pointed north when Capricorn is pointed east. They see past one another as they are literally aiming in different directions. When they are forced to work together, it is typically best for them to find structured roles in which they are both naturally suited and to stay out of each other’s way.

Learn your square aspects if you have any, and keep those parts of yourself compartmentalized whenever possible. On the relationship side of things, there are no two sun sign people who cannot make it work if both are willing. As a Cancer sun and a Capricorn-dominant chart, I have issues making it work with Aries women as most of my planets will be squared to her sun. This difficulty comes solely down to an ego battle, so if two people can leave their egos at the door, then there is no firm reason why a relationship between two square sun signs cannot work. In fact, a romantic relationship between to squared suns can be ego-shattering and therefore extremely fruitful for the personal growth of each individual. My brother is an Aries sun, and his girlfriend is a Cancer sun. There is nothing else in their composite chart to indicate that they would be incompatible for any other major reason, and as it turns out, they have an extremely harmonious and relatively ego-free connection. Of course, it helps that my brother’s ascendant and moon are both in Cancer.

The SEXTILE is a type of aspect that places the two planets at or near 60 degrees apart. There is usually, but not always, one sign between the signs of those two planets, so sextile sign pairings (e.g. Aries + Gemini with Taurus between them) share neither an element nor a modality. What they do share, however, is yin (earth + water) or yang (fire + air) energy., so they complement each other in the key ways. They have different reasons for valuing similar things and different ways of achieving many of the same goals. There is a lot of agreement between them about what needs to be done and respect for each other about their differing styles on how to do it.

TRINE planets are about 120 degrees apart and usually fall within four planets and four houses of one another, so they share an element but not a modality. One comfortably cedes control to the other, but they are similar in their grounding. Cardinal Capricorn and mutable Virgo are compatible signs, for example. Capricorn takes on a leadership role and Virgo a more following role, and they feel comfortable in this dynamic since they are both “grounded” and “in their element” as earth signs. My chart, for example, is Capricorn dominant, and I find myself highly attracted to Virgo women. There tends to be an understanding and acceptance about our lifestyle choices and personality quirks, and I am able to express my natural cardinal decisiveness with the comfort of knowing that she will not only go with it but will also generally agree that the right decision is being made for us both.

There is one aspect that is often overlooked, and when it occurs in one’s natal chart, one should be made aware of it. It is not always considered a major aspect, but I think it should be. That is the INCONJUNCTION (or QUINCUNX). Whereas the trine at 120 degrees is seen as a nice, complementary aspect and the opposition at 180 degrees is seen as a challenging one, the quincunx is at 150 degrees. These two placements are completely neutral toward one another, for they share neither element nor quality and are distant from one another. They therefore lack an understanding and any ability to communicate. They speak different languages, have different goals, and deeply value different things. These two parts of one’s personality will be naturally compartmentalized and kept separate unless they encounter a tremendous stroke of harmonious luck. My Venus, for example, is in Gemini, which is already a taboo placement as it means I’m kind of a whore. To make matters worse, it is inconjuncted with my Midheaven in Scorpio which deals with career ideals. Details aside, what this means is that my romantic pursuits, and even platonic friendships, seem to be things that I cannot reconcile with the vision I have for my career potential. I often feel I am at a crossroads between having to choose love/friend interaction and work toward my bigger goals. Gemini and Scorpio are two signs that are infamous for not being on the same page when it comes to organizing time and priorities. An inconjunct between two of your placements will make you feel that confusion very deeply. As a side thought, I would suspect that many wrong decisions in life made by people, who are otherwise perfectly self-aware, are the result of a inconjunct/quincunx between two key planets in a birth chart.

I hope that the technicalities that I have just described are somewhat clear. I suspect that most writing about astrology that is to come will be about the aspects, so I wanted to lay out these descriptions as a foundation for future posts. As always , you can visit my YouTube channel for more regular content about astrology and my other areas of research.

The thesis of this post is to give brief descriptions of what led me to astrology and of its main advantage over other personality systems on account of its being an “open system”. I will also mention in the conclusion what I believe to be its purpose. This is not a technical description of any aspect of astrology, nor is it an account defending its validity. There will be more on those topics later!

For the last 10 years, I have been independently researching the human personality in its many conceptions, including but not limited to Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Enneagram, Big 5, and Hermann Brain Dominance Indicator. One of the reasons for my interest in this is to give myself an intellectual framework within which to understand other people. The reason I need an intellectual framework within which to understand people is because I almost completely devoid of empathy.

OMG!

It’s true. I don’t care about you.

This doesn’t mean I don’t value your existence, however, nor does it mean that I’m not intuitive of morals and intentions – that I don’t know things that transcend the facto-linguistic realm. Not at all. In fact, I’m probably more intuitive than most because I lack empathy. At the end of the day, the truth doesn’t care about how you feel, and since I can’t feel what you feel, then I can’t be distracted by it, and so I can intuit the truth unhindered. I can tell quite clearly when someone is behaving in a way that is directed by their emotions and impulses, completely devoid of thought. Although I cannot share the experience of those feelings, I can still observe them and “play the role” of some beneficial course of action. Intuition and feelings are not the same. Personality systems have given me secret knowledge that helps me to do that.

One thing that I intuitied growing up as a virtual-sociopath is that people’s words and actions almost never lined up. I couldn’t simply ask them why they act the way that they do. They’d just lie, usually for ego-preservation.

‘Maybe they just don’t think before they speak or act.’

‘Maybe they’re just animals, and I’m the only rational being on the planet.’

‘Maybe they’re just less intelligent. I mean, I’m the only one around here in a “gifted” program, right?’

‘Maybe this is just how humans are, and I’m actually an alien.’

These are all thoughts that I had as a child. I didn’t get it. I could put patterns of behavior together, but I didn’t get why those patterns were so. Adults were kids to me, and kids were infants. I was an old soul, an impartial observer looking down on everyone. I couldn’t share what I cared about with people in the way I wanted to: e.g. my thoughts, my jokes, my music, my writing, etc. Interest would spark for a moment, but they would quickly lose attention like a dog getting distracted by things of impulse, completely devoid of thought and substance. Their lack of understanding forced me into isolation. I was used to and naturally inclined toward being alone, and I found solitude at a very early age, but did I need to be alone always? That didn’t seem right.

It wasn’t all premature narcissism, by the way. In fact, to be clear, I’ve never had a superiority complex that outweighed an inferiority complex somewhere else in my being. So, as I was looking to understand others more, I knew I had to try at least as hard to understand myself, where my inner balance was to be found. There were certain norms that I just didn’t understand or abide by: I think before I speak and act, so why would I apologize if I meant it? Giving should be a reflection of your understanding of and love for a person, so why would I exchange presents with someone just because it is Christmas and when I don’t know or like them? Why would I date or be intimate with someone before understanding myself? Wouldn’t I just fuck up their life? This all seemed like reckless behavior to me, and it still does to a large degree.

Fast-forwarding to young adulthood, I had found a personality system or two (starting with MBTI) that made it all begin to make sense – why I was the way I was and how those ways were different from others. I began to practice those foreign social norms a bit more frequently as I tweaked my social value structure ever so slightly to accommodate this new knowledge. I became a more likable and outgoing person overall. I became much more balanced. I became much more aware of other value structures that people lived by and more forgiving of them for being wrong (and for not caring that they were).

However, I came to exhaust the systems I had been studying. I knew everything about them, but I still didn’t know everything about people. They were closed systems. I needed more if I were to know the full truth.

The problem with a closed system is that what you can learn about its subject is limited to that system’s structure while the subject, especially in the case of human personality, is virtually unlimited. What happens in research within a closed system is that when you gain precision, you lose the probability of accuracy. The more detailed a rabbit hole you go into, the less generally-true it becomes because the more conditional that truth becomes on the unquestioned, and false, general theory. Whatever actual truth is found is by a stroke of luck and often not recognized. That “knowledge” will therefore be severely limited in usefulness for individual cases. The point of knowledge is to be used, right?

Carl Jung is known as the founding father of MBTI because of his work in “Personality Types”, but in the preface to that book, he warns of the limitations of taking the “cognitive functions” at face-value, formulating rigid types on their basis, and then stuffing every individual into one of 16 boxes. The more boxes, the more accurate each will be for some individual, but these typing systems should be taken with a pinch of salt when in fact, if the point of personality psychology (as with any science) is to be generally accurate as well as precise, then there are as many personality types as there are people on earth. Closed systems lack depth and substance despite their frequent utility. Jung acknowledged that his system was a closed one and would probably bawk at where MBTI has taken his ideas, though he wouldn’t be surprised.

I share Jung’s sentiments, and I could say that astrology found me more than I found it. It found me, perhaps cosmically, because I actually care about what is true (and maybe that’s all I care about), and that truth is best for everyone whether or not one wants it. Astrology immediately began to account for all of the mistakes of the other systems I had studied, and it seemed to have infinite substance beyond that. It seemed to be metaphysical as well as quantifiable on the local level. How could it “do it all” philosophically and scientifically?

For one, astrology is not a closed system and is therefore virtually un-masterable. My mastery of the other personality systems forced me to grow out of them. I don’t claim to know everything there is to know about people simply because I know everything there is to know about those systems. That would be foolish. Those systems are rational conceptualizations with limits and flaws as obvious as the people who created them. In realizing those flaws, I had to move on to discover astrology. It was just the natural progression that my interest took me in. It contains all of the knowledge of the other systems combined more holistically, and it has an abundance of additional knowledge that is intended to be useful as long as one is truly open to learning without ego. Each astrological natal chart is unique to that person. It cannot on the whole apply to any other person on earth when it is properly understood. As I began to study mine, I began to see the openness of the system. It seemed like a “system of systems” in fact, as its micro-theories remain fluid. It can afford this fluidity and still remain consistently oriented toward general truth because it has no general theory governing it. The general theory, if any, is simply “that Truth-itself and about oneself matters”.

Astrology does not contain a general theory, nor is it a religion, nor is it a belief system of any sort. As astrologer Edwin Learnard says, “the stars may impel but do not compel.” It simply regards humans as ancient, spiritual beings possessing a unique and unlimited degree of complexity, which we obviously are, and goes from there. We can still willfully direct our lives despite where our nature may incline us. Our complexity must be fleshed out in both specific and general ways. Most scientific approaches to understanding human personality are only specific or general, but not both. Again, when you gain precision, you lose the probability of accuracy. Astrology becomes more accurate in detail, however. It challenges one to constantly go between dilating and constricting focus every time a new bit of information is presented. The more you do this, the more you can see in detail, and then the bigger the picture you can gain of the individual as a being who transcends the sum of those individual parts. Because of this, Carl Jung himself regarded astrology as representing “the sum of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity” although he never wrote a formal work on the subject.

The last point that I will emphasize – and there will be more technical posts to follow – is that the will to learn is vital when it comes to astrology. There is no rational argument that will convince the most intelligent person in the world to take astrology seriously if they are unwise and unwilling to look inward. Yes, there are many people who learn about it in its shallow, pop-horoscope manifestations for self-validation purposes, but that is neither its purpose nor will that be its effect if you take learning about it seriously. That is not what looking inward affords you. Astrology presents what is, allowing you to make the choice to look inward, and that will destroy you before it validates you, hence the fear surrounding it.

Of course, by looking inward, one also is forced to look outward. One should always be doing both – dilating and constricting focus from general to specific and back. There are qualities within us that are both general and specific, as well as we individuals are specific parts of our general reality. Without understanding yourself, you cannot know how to fit into reality as it is. If personality research is your preferred means of gaining self-awareness, that most local part of “that which is”, astrology is the best of those means. I know because I have studied them all, and after just one year of researching astrology, I find that I know more about myself and about people in general, yet I simultaneously discover every day how little I know about astrology, about people, about the universe, and about what is most true. If you’re learning in the right way, then the more you learn, the more you find that you don’t actually know.

The truth is a skittish, feral cat. You cannot act too quickly. You must sit without attitude and expectation, and let it come to you if and when it is meant to. Astrology, as it seems to me, is the only avenue toward understanding human nature and the self that is systematically without hubris. It simply presents all that is, leaving you to discover why.