Saturday & Sundry - Plus ça change-ily

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (“the more it changes, the more it's the same thing”).

Copy-typed from my copy (second printing, 1936) of
The People, Yes by Carl Sandburg

The people laugh, yes, the people laugh.
They have to in order to live and survive
under lying politicians, lying labor skates,
lying racketeers of business, lying newspapers, lying ads.
The people laugh even at lies that cost them toil
and bloody exactions.
For a long time the people may laugh,
until a day when the laughter changes key and tone
and has something it didn't have.
Then there is a scurrying and a noise of discussion
and an asking of the question
what is it the people want.
Then there is the pretense of
giving the people what they want,
with jokers, trick clauses, delays
and continuances, with lawyers and fixers,
playboys and ventriloquists, bigtime promises.
Time goes by and the gains are small for the years go slow,
the people go slow, yet the gains can be counted
and the laughter of the people foretokening revolt
carries fear to those who wonder how far it will go
and where to block it.

 From cover of Planets in Aspect - Robt. Pelletier

For fans of serious astrology the fact that history repeats, "rhymes" or unfolds in patterns is a given. Astrology tracks the movement of planets - cyclical movement. Differing orbits and time-spans eventually cause each planet to return around the same individual pathway, albeit making different interaction with other planets through each go-around. It makes sense then, to astrologers, that life and world patterns will repeat or rhyme, i.e. have similar flavours cyclically; this relates to patterns and flavours, not to exact events.

There are many different, concurrent, astrological cycles developing, which makes it difficult to accurately identify those most relevant to any individual, or to any national or other specific entity, at any given time. Hindsight can bring clarity, though even with hindsight the tightly interwoven medley of cycles still leaves accuracy in doubt. The exact medley detected at any single time is hardly likely to exactly repeat for aeons - that's where rhyming rather than repeating comes in.

There are several posts in the archives on this topic - most recent is from last year:HERE, others can be accessed by clicking on "cycles" in the Label Cloud in the sidebar.

Regarding the historic rhyming patterns suggested by the quote from Carl Sandburg (above): this highlights human nature's essential pattern, governed as it is by our Earth's ever cycling planets around our star, the Sun.

Have we learned where it is that we're continually going wrong, and tried to rectify? Painfully, far too slowly and with many retrograde steps, we as a species have tried. A faster rate of learning becomes ever more essential as we spin on. Our human ingenuity appears to have out-run our common sense, putting our own, and all other of Earth's species, in almost certain risk of danger during decades to come.