Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Circles and Extremes

There are no straight lines in astrology, only circles and cycles. Some are so huge that we never again get to see the point from which we started out. Others, such as the cycles of the Moon, come around many times, even in a comparatively short lifetime.

In the circle of the zodiac, around which our planets and lights travel, the first and last signs are opposites, they are also neighbours. Aries, the initiator, full of energy, impatient to get things started; nextdoor is Pisces the loose, visionary dreamer in no hurry to, as they say in the USA, "haul ass".

Circles don't have extremities, only departure and return points, which means that opposites - extremes, are liable to bump into one another, even co-mingle, not in individual viewpoints but in effect.

In the case of political opinions, the further left or right one moves in entrenched viewpoints, the more liable one is, without even realising it, to be assisting the very causes one started out to oppose, thereby damaging one's own best interests.

Take the so-called "progressive" liberals in the USA. Please! I'd wager there are few more lefty than yours truly in this fair land, yet those "progressives" get up my nose.

Some of them are undermining the current Democratic administration. They whine incessantly that the politicians in power are not doing enough and not doing it fast enough.
They criticise every word and every move made by prominent congress people and the President. I do seriously wonder whether these people are really conservatives in disguise.....Trojan horses. It's a tempting idea! Or is it just that they don't realise that they have slipped through the almost non-existent divide into a murky, putrid extremist soup, good for practically nothing. The extreme right and extreme left are neighbours in the circle of opinion, just as Aries and Pisces are neighbours in the astrological zodiac. I'd better make it clear that I am not comparing the signs to political viewpoints, only in the way that extremes are liable to co-mingle and produce an effect compatible with their opposite.

Just as extreme left-wingers can do more harm than good to their more moderate colleagues, and inadvertently assist the aims of the right, extreme right-wingers can end up helping their perceived enemies on the left by being so extreme that their words and actions leave nothing but ridicule in their wake and, in the end, serve only to assist the left.


“Extremes, though contrary, have the like effects. Extreme heat kills, and so extreme cold: extreme love breeds satiety, and so extreme hatred; and too violent rigor tempts chastity, as does too much license.”
George Chapman, English poet and dramatist c.1559-1634.

2 comments:

anthonynorth said...

One of my political 'laws' is that extremism always results in the opposite outcome. I think you've got this about right. And it's the same with a straight line. No such thing. Draw a line anywhere on this planet and if you keep going long enough, you'll end up back where you started.

Twilight said...

AN ~~~ Oh good! I'm glad you agree because after I'd drafted this post I did wonder if others would see it as I do. Then I thought - oh, what the heck, if I see it that way, that's good enough - my blog my thoughts. ;-)