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.

Random

When feeling need for...something...I seem to recall that some people reach for The Bible, open it at random and find something on that random page appropriate to their need for....comfort, understanding....something. I don't use The Bible for such endeavours, but I have a tattered copy of Carl Sandburg's "The People, Yes" on the shelf under my computer, and I use that. It's a second printing, dated 1936. The book has has seldom failed me. I opened it yesterday afternoon, feeling somewhat numb, and mildly depressed after the previous night's primary results and announcements. I opened the book at random - once only - it opened to page 158, and this passage hit me in the eye straight away.

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, big-time 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.

Inequality's Repeating Pattern

From The Guardian yesterday:
Oxfam: 85 richest people as wealthy as poorest half of the world.
The extent to which so much global wealth has become corralled by a virtual handful of the so-called 'global elite' is exposed in a new report from Oxfam.

The world's wealthiest people aren't known for travelling by bus, but if they fancied a change of scene then the richest 85 people on the globe – who between them control as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population put together – could squeeze onto a single double-decker(bus).

3 comments from the many beneath the article - these I particularly noted:

This is the world devised by neoliberalism. Everything in this Oxfam report is evidence of the devastation that global neoliberalism has been causing for the last 34 years. And unless something is done about it, it will continue towards its final goal, which is to extend markets into every sphere of life, from state institutions to the biological makeup of human beings. Its ultimate aim is the privatization of everything including life itself.
According to neoliberalism, the planet and all life must be owned by private interests and used solely for profit. It recognizes no morality outside of the market: the questions of right and wrong are eliminated in favour of cost-benefit calculations.
Neoliberalism is the antithesis of democracy: it's against political rights, civil rights, social rights, individual rights, human rights (i.e. right to education, right to water, etc.)- according to neoliberalism, they all have to become goods on the market for people who can buy them. (Josh Bern)
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Their crimes are overshadowed by our acquiescence of those crimes.
(Ted Reading Reading)
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In order for any democracy to be faithful to its concepts it requires an engaged and well educated population that participates in the political process and is part of governmental decision making. It requires an independent media that is apolitical, a fearless seeker of truth that is dedicated to holding all governing powers to account and informing the public so they can in turn make wise decisions. Democracy requires a fully independent judiciary dedicated to the principles of human justice.

The elites hijacked our democracies a long time ago, for nearly a half century now. They buy politicians with trinkets and beads, a seat on the board of some corporation, a book deal or an advisory position in a large company on retirement. Book deals are sometimes give when they are still in power, a nice little earner.

An oligarchy carefully controls our medias peddling all sorts of BS as 'truth'.

Even the subversion of the aforementioned is not enough for these monsters, as this article states, they subvert the law for their own benefit whilst throwing the rest of humanity on a scrap heap. There is no equality under the law.

If it is not a democracy than it is a dictatorship. A media that only serves its masters is a propaganda outlet. Laws that extinguish the liberties of the many to serve the few can not be just.

When liberty, fraternity and equality are put asunder and the law no longer serves justice and morality then the people are no longer under any obligation to obey the government or the law. (LegranderoidelasPrusse)

The pattern is an old, old pattern. It repeats and repeats, cast members change, scenery changes, props change, effects are the same.

From one of the last Sections, Section 104, of the book-length poem by Carl Sandburg, published in 1936: The People, Yes.

When was it long ago the murmurings began
and the joined murmurings
became a moving wall
moving with the authority of a great sea,
whose Yes and No
stood in an awful script
in a new unheard-of handwriting?
"No longer", began the murmurings............................

"What about the munitions and money kings,
the war lords and international bankers?
the transportation and credit kings?
the coal, the oil and the mining kings?
the price-fixing monopoly and control kings?
Why are they so far from us?
why do they hold their counsels
without men from the people given a word?
Shall we keep these kings and let their sons
in time become the same manner of kings?
Are their results equal to their authority?
Why are these interests too sacred for discussion?
What documents now call for holy daylight?
what costs, prices, values, are we forbidden to ask?
Are we slowly coming to understand
the distinction between a demagogue squawking
and the presentation of tragic plainspoken fact?
Shall a robber be named a robber when he is one
even though bespoken and anointed he is?
Shall a shame and a crime be mentioned
when it is so plainly there,
when day by day it draws toil, blood, and hunger,
enough of slow death and personal tragedy to certify
the kings who sit today as entrenched kings
are far too far from their people?"

What does justice say?
or if justice is become an abstraction or a harlot
what does her harder sister, necessity, say?
Their ears are so far from us,
so far from our wants and small belongings
we must trim these kings of our time
into something less than kings.
Of these too it will be written:
these kings shrank.

What is it now
the people are beginning
to say - is it this?
and if so
whither away and
where do we go from here?

If it's a repeating pattern, there has to be some subsiding of the worst, most intense parts of the pattern, in order for them to repeat - otherwise it'd be a constant. It's hard to say exactly where we're at currently in the pattern's formation. At a guess I'd say we, or at least we in the USA and Europe, are approaching, but not yet quite at the crescendo, when things will be at their worst, from the point of view of ordinary people. Other parts of the world have endured a constant "worst point" for decades or even centuries; the pattern must repeat at different rates.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose—"the more it changes, the more it's the same thing"

I regularly skim through a few of the current day's words from the wise, but find that the wise are writing much the same things they were writing this time last year, this time last month, this time four or five or fifteen years ago. Maybe even a hundred and fifteen years ago.

Similar issues, problems, complaints, horrors are presented, using different words, quoting different song lyrics, different quotes from long ago writers, but stating much the same things. Readers, for the most part, already uncomfortably aware of the issues described, read on, in the way listeners like to hear an old song, or a well-known melody over and over again. These erudite pieces have become a kind of background verbal music of life, as it is lived.

I don't know why I carry on skimming those pages myself - apart from the forlorn hope that one day there might be a suggestion, a whispering hint of some possible solution.

The epigram translated from the French as: "the more things change, the more they remain the same" was written in 1849 by Alphonse Karr in his monthly satirical journal Les Guêpes (The Wasps). It has stood the test of time!

The seemingly unchanging pattern of life in the USA was brought home to me again the other evening while watching an old (1994) video tape of Comic Relief VI. A gaggle of comedians took part, some still going strong in the US (for example Bill Maher, Dennis Miller, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, all looking alarmingly fresh and youthful), some others have been lost in the mists of later years. There were far too many repetitive jokes concerning that peculiar episode about an American couple, the Bobbitts, whose difficult relationship resulted in an incident in 1993 when Lorena severed John's penis with a knife. The penis was subsequently surgically re-attached. Many of the political jokes, though, could easily seem fresh if told today, with names changed. Bill Clinton had been President for a year or so, memories of Reagan's terms were still fresh and providing fodder for material, references to the urgent need for jobs, and to bring down the deficit etc. were there. Plus ça change! I was, actually, quite surprised and, to be honest I found it a little spooky. I wasn't here in the US during those times, nor even vaguely interested in political goings on in the states, in 1993/4, back in England.

After a recent news skimming session I reached to the shelf under my desk, pulled out Carl Sandburg's The People, Yes, a hard-backed copy, second printing dated 1936 - before I'd seen the light of day. I suspect Mr Sandburg was well- acquainted with the unchanging nature of life for we, The People. The book has become a favourite of mine. I often open it at random, always find something helpful and appropriate. This time it opened at section 102, from which (my own highlighting):

Is there a time to counsel,

"Be sober and patient while yet saying Yes
to freedom for cockeyed liars and bigots"?

Is there a time to say,

"The facts and guide measurements are yet
to be found and put to work: there are
dawns and false dawns read in a ball of
revolving crystals"?

Is there a time to repeat,

"The living passion of millions can rise
into a whirlwind: the storm once loose
who can ride it? you? or you? or you?
Only history, only tomorrow, knows
for every revolution breaks
as a child of its own convulsive hour
shooting patterns never told of beforehand"?

Thought: when "the storm" breaks loose will the familiar pattern change, or will we simply return to a different segment of the overall pattern, only to go around again - as do the planets?

Sunday Supplement ~ Sandburg on People

Carl Sandburg's natal chart can be viewed HERE. He's a blend of Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces: common-sense intellectual with a love of humanity and boundless creativity. His astrology comes through well in these two pieces. The first, an excerpt from a 300-page long poem which also contains the well-remebered line: "Someday they'll give a war and nobody will come."

Excerpt from a long poem,
THE PEOPLE, YES by Carl Sandburg.

The people know the salt of the sea
and the strength of the winds
lashing the corners of the earth.
The people take the earth
as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
Who else speaks for the Family of Man?
They are in tune and step
with constellations of universal law.
The people is a polychrome,
a spectrum and a prism
held in a moving monolith,
a console organ of changing themes,
a clavilux of color poems
wherein the sea offers fog
and the fog moves off in rain
and the labrador sunset shortens
to a nocturne of clear stars
serene over the shot spray
of northern lights.

The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:

This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can't be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can't hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people march:
"Where to? What next?"

MASSES by Carl Sandburg

Among the mountains I wandered and saw blue haze and red crag and was amazed;

On the beach where the long push under the endless tide maneuvers, I stood silent;

Under the stars on the prairie watching the Dipper slant over the horizon’s grass, I was full of thoughts.

Great men, pageants of war and labor, soldiers and workers, mothers lifting their children—these all I touched, and felt the solemn thrill of them.

And then one day I got a true look at the Poor, millions of the Poor, patient and toiling; more patient than crags, tides, and stars; innumerable, patient as the darkness of night—and all broken, humble ruins of nations.

Two Authors - What In Common?

CARL SANDBURG & HOWARD SPRING :

From this side of the Atlantic: Carl Sandburg, Pulitzer prize winner for his poetry and for a biography of Abraham Lincoln.

At the age of thirteen he left school. He drove a milk wagon, became a bricklayer, a farm laborer in Kansas, then, after time at Lombard College in Galesburg he became a hotel servant in Denver, a coal-heaver in Omaha. He began his writing career as a journalist for the Chicago Daily News. Later he wrote poetry, history, biographies, novels, children's literature, and film reviews. He was a member of the Social Democratic Party, supporter of the civil rights movement and served as secretary to Mayor Emil Seidel, mayor of Milwaukee from 1910 to 1912 - the first person to be elected mayor of a U.S. city on a socialist platform. (Oh my! Where are they now?)

Born 6 January 1878 in Galesburg Illinois at 12:05am (Astrodatabank).



Sun conjunct Jupiter in Capricorn, with Mercury in the same sign, a solid, character, with stability and reliability his trademark, I'd say. Moon in Aquarius though - here's his draw to socialist thinking, and Venus in Pisces, his compassion, softening any hard edges from Capricorn and Aquarius. I notice a "chain" of 15 degree placements here: Sun/Jupiter, Moon, Saturn and Mars all at 15 degrees, linking in either semi-sextile, sextile or square aspect - I interpret this as the mark of a particularly well-integrated personality. Mars in Aries provides a spark of energy and controversy. Venus, planet of the arts in Pisces links by sextile to Neptune, planet of creativity in Taurus - providing what astrologers call mutual reception, each planet lying in the other's domicile and putting extra emphasis on the gifts offered by both.


And from the other side of the Atlantic:

Howard Spring. Born 10 February 1889 in Cardiff, Wales, UK.

Back in the 1960s I eagerly sought out his novels after reading one of his early works Shabby Tiger, first published in 1934, and its sequel Rachel Rosing. Those were later adapted for TV, as was his Fame is the Spur (also a movie) and My Son, My Son. I'm seeking out used copies of his books to read again, and am currently well into My Son, My Son.

Howard Spring wrote in a style I find very easy to read. I'm not easy to please when it comes to books.I don't like wordy writers who seem entranced by their art and their own intellect, but neither can I stand authors who pander to the popular market by writing badly composed rubbishy fiction. I found that Howard Spring's style was just right for me, unaffected but insightful and, above all he was interesting and a brilliant story teller. His loyalty to the working classes and rising labour movement in Britain shows clearly in his books, and further endeared him to me.

He came from a poor family of nine, his Irish father died when Howard was very young and had to cut short his schooling to earn money for the family. He later resumed his education, taking evening classes, and eventually became a reporter on local newspapers in Wales, and later in the north of England. He began to write fiction in the early 1930s.

No time of birth available, so a 12 noon chart is shown.



He was one of the Pluto in Gemini generation - a generation which spawned so many of my favourite writers. There's a lovely Grand Trine in Air in his chart. It links Sun (self), Moon (emotional self) and Uranus (his Aquarius Sun's ruler and planet of invention and rebellion). Uranus being included in this Grand Trine doesn't surprise me. Howard Spring had obvious sympathy with the socialist activists of the time who were fighting the ruling classes under whose heel they had lived for centuries past. Although without his time of birth, I can't be sure of the exact degree of his natal Moon, it would have been somewhere between 14 and 26 degrees Gemini, so in all probablility at a suitable degree to complete this Grand Trine, which signified a free-flowing of Airy attributes - clear thinking, logic, analysis, quick wit with tactful charm. The writer's planet Mercury lay in intuitive Pisces in helpful sextile to Jupiter (Pisces' ruler and planet of publication) in Capricorn : an excellent link-up for a writer, and in Howard Spring's case it's easy to see how well it manifested. At least four of his books, as well as being best-sellers in their day, have been adapted as movies or TV dramas or both, thus extending the reach of his stories beyond just readers.


What had they in common? Their loyalty and support for "the common man" - ordinary people, their socialistic leanings. Their mix of Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces and just a dash of Aries. Carl Sandburg's poem sums it up for me:

I AM THE PEOPLE, THE MOB

I AM the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world's food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons
come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And
then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted.
I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and
makes me work and give up what I have. And I
forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red
drops for history to remember. Then--I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world
say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a
sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.