Conceits - Concepts of the Mind

Opening C.E.O. Carter's Encyclopaedia of Psychological Astrology at random, I landed on the page containing his thoughts on "Conceit". I'll begin with those, but conceit is a tricky word, there's more to be investigated.

Conceit
Intellectual conceit is most often found under a Virgo ascendant. Although generally retiring, in a physical sense, the natives of this sign are generally blessed with "a good conceit of themselves" - to do them justice, not often without grounds, so far as mentality goes. This conceit is probably at bottom compensatory in nature, i.e. the native is conscious of his shyness (which is an instinctive fear of others) and compensates himself with an inner conviction of superiority. Further, Virgo, as a general rule, does not reap in material things the success to which its intellect would appear to entitle it, and again conceit arises as an inner compensation for outward failure.

Jupiter square Sun in mutable signs often bestows mental conceit. The same aspect in fixed signs gives rise to a feeling of general self-laudation, and this finds clearest expression if Leo rises. Falling in cardinal signs there is generally too great self-confidence and a conceited belief in one's own powers of doing things, and this is most clearly seen if Aries rises.

Sun weak in Pisces often gives vanity and too great self-satisfaction, and Moon weak in Leo often has the same effect.

It is probable that in those respects Neptune acts much as Jupiter does, but more subtly, often through forms of imaginative self-flattery and self-glorifying daydreams.

I'll make no comment on the above, other than that I suspect the position of Mercury and aspects to it must have a big part to play, conceit being a concept of the mind about oneself. I can't think, immediately, of anyone with whom I've been closely associated who I considered to be conceited, so I'm unable to decide how accurate Mr Carter's assessments were. A passing reader with relevant experience might have other ideas.

The word conceit, wearing another hat, has meanings not always as immediately clear-cut as when wearing its better-known hat of "excessive pride in oneself".

Oxford dictionary:
conceit :: noun
1. excessive pride in oneself : he was puffed up with conceit. See notes at egotism, pride.
2. a fanciful expression in writing or speech; an elaborate metaphor : the idea of the wind’s singing is a prime romantic conceit.
• an artistic effect or device : the director’s brilliant conceit was to film this tale in black and white.
• a fanciful notion : he is alarmed by the widespread conceit that he spent most of the 1980s drunk.

I always look for a word's origin to assist in its understanding. Conceit, the noun, comes from a Latin verb meaning "to conceive", it works on a pattern similar to the words deceive/deceit, receive/receipt. So, when wearing its other hat (or both hats really, I guess) conceit relates broadly to something conceived by the mind - a conceit: a conception, an idea, an opinion, an imagination, a device, a fanciful invention. Stretched somewhat in this way, its meaning hasn't always been crystal clear to me.

Skimming through Google links I picked up a few uses of the word wearing its secondary hat:

the conceit of self-loathing (HERE)

Could be taken two ways - is it conceit as in a kind of inverted pride, or conceit as an idea?


That show, titled, suitably enough, ‘The Apparent Author’, adhered strenuously to a single conceit, albeit with subtle variations. Every sentence had been plucked from the Oxford English Dictionary, composed for the very purpose of illustrating – exemplifying – the given meaning of a listed word. Ringborg had then taken each sentence and dislocated it from its original intent, wedging it into a new context where it was made to perform differently, and made to mean something else. (HERE)

It is no mere conceit that poets have long attributed their craft to something akin to a mystic trance brought about by their Muse.......... So it takes more than a facility with language, a good memory, and the gentle conceit that we would like to share our cleverness with an admiring public. (HERE)

Both hats in use there!


Part of the unspoken contract we make as members of an audience is putting aside our knowledge that these are actors playing roles, and accept the conceit that we are seeing the characters. It's called suspension of disbelief, and it is something we choose to do. (HERE)


Hawking's Fatal Conceit: Is science even capable of showing that God is out of a job? (HERE)


It's one of the great gifts of having so little money that you are able to make these kinds of radical conceits that you could never afford to do had you had a reasonable budget. (Quote by - Todd Solondz. HERE)

All in the Mind

Steven Pinker, research psychologist and professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT and author of "Words and Rules", HERE asks :

"What is the missing ingredient — not genes, not upbringing — that shapes the mind?"
Anyone with some knowledge of astrology has an answer, though not one as to how the process works. Why not test a theory that broad astrological principles could be involved in the answer to that question? Astrologers, in cahoots with psychologists such as Professor Pinker, might discover something of value to both science and astrology.

Snip:

"If genes have any effect at all, it must be total. But the data show that genes account for about only about half of the variance in personality and intelligence (25% to 75%, depending on how things are measured). That leaves around half the variance to be explained by something that is not genetic........growing up in the same home — with the same parents, books, TVs, guns, and so on — does not make children similar.

So the variation in personality and intelligence breaks down roughly as follows: genes 50%, families 0%, something else 50%. As with Bob Dylan's Mister Jones, something is happening here but we don't know what it is.

Perhaps it is chance. While in the womb, the growth cone of an axon zigged rather than zagged, and the brain gels into a slightly different configuration. If so, it would have many implications that have not figured into our scientific or everyday way of thinking.... "

Extending those thoughts to the area of political mindset ~ a number of studies have found that biology may be linked with political orientation. Wikipedia has a page on the topic. David Sloan Wilson's article, posted in 2011, is an interesting read.

"Are Liberals and Conservatives Different Species? The Answer is Yes". The article left me feeling sad that astrology cannot command the $$$$$ required for an experiment such as the one he describes. If only more scientists would open their minds, experiments like this one could be modified to take in birth data so that it could be analysed by astrologers. Dream on!

A few extracts:

If men are from Mars and women from Venus, where do liberals and conservatives come from? They are so befuddled by each other that it is tempting to say different galaxies--or, to employ a biological metaphor, that they are different species. It turns out that the biological metaphor might be surprisingly close to the truth.

For years I wanted to study people in the same way that I am accustomed to studying beetles and fish--not just in the laboratory, but also "in the field" as they go about their everyday lives. I finally found my chance when I met Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the famous psychologist who is best known for his work on peak psychological experience (Flow) and who pioneered something called the experience sampling method (ESM).

The ESM is simplicity itself. People are outfitted with devices that beep at random times during the day, prompting them to fill out a short questionnaire recording where they are, what they are doing, who they are with, and a checklist of psychological states on a numerical scale....... We began with a multi-million dollar project that Mihaly had conducted with sociologist Barbara Schneider to examine how young people prepare to enter the work force. Thousands of American high school students had participated nationwide by providing extensive background information and being beeped for a week, for roughly 50 snapshots of their individual experience................

...Everyone in our sample was an American, a teenager, and belonged to the same major religious tradition of Protestantism. In these respects they were culturally uniform. But some belonged to conservative denominations such as Pentecostal and others to liberal denominations such as Episcopalian. As Ingrid combed through the data, which involved tedious hours in front of the computer, the differences that began to emerge were astounding. It was as if these conservative and liberal religious youth were--different species.

Imagine the priceless information astrologers could glean from being included in an experimental survey like that one !

Recent articles have taken the same kind of research further: two are by Chris Mooney for Mother Jones website -

From 2013 -
The Surprising Brain Differences Between Democrats and Republicans
Two new studies further support the theory that our political decision making could have a neurological basis

Snip -

Republicans were using the right amygdala, the center of the brain's threat response system. Democrats, in contrast, were using the insula, involved in internal monitoring of one's feelings. Amazingly, Schreiber and his colleagues write that this test predicted 82.9 percent of the study subjects' political party choices—considerably better, they note, than a simple model that predicts your political party affiliation based on the affiliation of your parents.

From 2014
Scientists Are Beginning to Figure Out Why Conservatives Are…Conservative
Ten years ago, it was wildly controversial to talk about psychological differences between liberals and conservatives. Today, it's becoming hard not to.

Snip

That's pretty extraordinary, when you think about it. After all, one of the teams of commenters includes New York University social psychologist John Jost, who drew considerable political ire in 2003 when he and his colleagues published a synthesis of existing psychological studies on ideology, suggesting that conservatives are characterized by traits such as a need for certainty and an intolerance of ambiguity. Now, writing in Behavioral and Brain Sciences in response to Hibbing roughly a decade later, Jost and fellow scholars note that:

There is by now evidence from a variety of laboratories around the world using a variety of methodological techniques leading to the virtually inescapable conclusion that the cognitive-motivational styles of leftists and rightists are quite different. This research consistently finds that conservatism is positively associated with heightened epistemic concerns for order, structure, closure, certainty, consistency, simplicity, and familiarity, as well as existential concerns such as perceptions of danger, sensitivity to threat, and death anxiety.

Astrologers might consider that a heavily emphasised Saturn, and/or its signs Capricorn and/or Aquarius = higher potential for a person to exhibit a more conservative mindset. Absent that emphasis there'd be plenty of leeway for a variety of other, more liberal preferences. There's obviously much more to it than that - still, it'd be a good place to start. Flowing from that, there'd be a possibility that time's cycles, mini-cycles, maxi-cycles and all between, as defined by planetary movement, in coordination with a given set of inherited genes, might incline the political mind of the newborn, when grown, to orient leftward or rightward.

(NEXT POST will be Wednesday's.)

The Mind - Missing Ingredient?

Steven Pinker, research psychologist and professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT and author of "Words and Rules", HERE asks :

"What is the missing ingredient — not genes, not upbringing — that shapes the mind?"

Astrologers may know the answer, but not exactly how the process works. Why not test a theory that broad astrological principles may be involved in the answer to this question? Astrologers, in cahoots with psychologists such as Professor Pinker, might discover much of value to both science and astrology .

Brief extracts:

"If genes have any effect at all, it must be total. But the data show that genes account for about only about half of the variance in personality and intelligence (25% to 75%, depending on how things are measured). That leaves around half the variance to be explained by something that is not genetic........................
...............growing up in the same home — with the same parents, books, TVs, guns, and so on — does not make children similar.

So the variation in personality and intelligence breaks down roughly as follows: genes 50%, families 0%, something else 50%. As with Bob Dylan's Mister Jones, something is happening here but we don't know what it is. (I say......"Or do we?")

Perhaps it is chance. While in the womb, the growth cone of an axon zigged rather than zagged, and the brain gels into a slightly different configuration. If so, it would have many implications that have not figured into our scientific or everyday way of thinking.................... "

And again...

David Sloan Wilson's article
"Are Liberals and Conservatives Different Species? The Answer is Yes" is an interesting read, but realising that astrology cannot command the $$$ required for an experiment such as the one he describes leaves on feeling a tad deflated. If only more scientists would open their minds, experiments like this one could be modified to take in birth data so that it could be analysed by astrologers. Dream on!

Another piece along similar lines:: Howie Klein on
The Liberal Mind vs the Conservative Mind -- Genetic?

Would we be any better off knowing the whys and wherefores of astrology though? I used to think so - passionately. I've lately grown doubtful. There are people with too much power who would be more than happy to use any tiny piece of information for their own benefit and enrichment, to the detriment of others....namely the rest of us. It'd be just another gadget in the already overflowing toolbag of the oligarchs, the 1%, the NSA, etc.etc.etc.