History teaches us many things, but some of them we refuse to acknowledge. People were always divided into separate countries and cultures (belonging in Maslov's hierarchy), and this will prevail. We can see it even now, when creating conglomerates like EU, there are and will be tensions inside. Religion is one of Maslov's pyramid elements. This will not be removed, since once people have all other needs fulfilled, they will need to find transcendence. Love is also one of major, and in current society where people's needs for oxitocin are muted by dopamine, this might and probably will flare up at some point of time.
Young people are flocking to astrology
151–160 of 972 posts
Re: Young people are flocking to astrology
#152What should be really scary is that people who believe in any kind of magic(celestial bodies governing your life, wizard man in the sky) will believe anything, because trusting something with zero proof is so familiar to them.
>celestial bodies governing your life
Celestial bodies are governing your life.
>will believe anything, because trusting something with zero proof is so familiar to them
This seems utterly ridicolous and false. Especiall since many of those beliefs directly disavow each other.
Re: Young people are flocking to astrology
#153My girlfriend is in the middle of her PhD program and is very intelligent but she's really into this stuff. She makes comments about it in public and I cringe. But the worst part is that half my female friends and all my gay friends love astrology. It's very weird.
> is very intelligent but she's really into this stuff. I was working on an astrology widget for a portal site, and read every advice in it every sign for months at lengths. None of the advice were ever highly impacting, nor seemed to have a chance to bring problematic results. At best it felt like a nice way to get some variety into someone's life ("wear something green today to improve your luck") In that light, I…
The whole point of public astrology is to make statements that are general and harmless. Genericity means people patternmatch the advice to their daily experience often enough to feel the advice was indeed meant to them.
”Your week starts you being stressed, but come Friday things will look out better. Weekend will energize you. Remember to care for yourself. Coming months will offer you a happy surprise.”
Personal astrology then has similar aspects as tarot and geneal counseling. As any roleplaying game enthusiast knows, mapping life to fixed ruleset is great fun. What makes this pathological is if people actually believe this stuff. But in the non-pathological case I suppose it works similarly as therapy for non-clinical stuff - people helped to identify their issues and are coached to work through them. People are really blind to aspects of their own life (speaking from experience) and need things pointed out to them in a safe setting.
Personally I feel it’s infuriating bs, but recognize it’s mostly harmless and may actually help some people work out some issues.
Re: Young people are flocking to astrology
#154There are epigenetic markers which can identify the season or perhaps even month you were born. If you might think there is a link between personality and birth order and that perhaps metaphor is useful in storytelling or group dynamics … then one could loosely link these concepts together and consider it more than something like a party trick.
Not only that, but the time of year you're born probably also impacts how you develop socially since you might end up being a bit younger or older than your peers at school.
Re: Young people are flocking to astrology
#155One of my favorite philosophy books is A Secular Age by Charles Taylor. It has a lot of interesting ideas, but a key one is that the “subtraction thesis” of secularity is wrong. By this, he means the narrative that secular society today simply “subtracted” religious beliefs and behaviors of yesteryear. Instead, these things have just morphed into different forms, with astrology being a prime example. It can be unders…
This is why I think that it is perhaps beneficial to not completely remove religion, but replace it with something that is more aligned to the 21st century. Let's be honest, humans are very flawed and prone to succumb to religious thinking; regardless of how smart/dumb you are. Superstitious thinking can arise from simple day to day observation.
So it is much better to fill in the void with something dull like "do good, because mother Gaia watches over you" than to let some random beliefs to fill it. I personally belief that the self-introspection, consciousness-obsessed cultures like Hindu and Buddhism actually have one. Consciousness is the one thing in this world that is actually mysterious. So let's start mysticism from there.
Re: Young people are flocking to astrology
#156Mental health therapy carries significant social stigma and is not affordable to many people who need or want it. Having regular conversations with an astrologer is a cheaper, more accessible, and more socially acceptable alternative, even if it isn't as effective (or at all effective). The same principle applies to most forms of "alternative medicine"; people cope with what they have.
This would imply that wealthier Americans holder fewer such beliefs but my experience has been the opposite.
Not entirely but certainly a luxury belief.
Re: Young people are flocking to astrology
#157I don’t understand why people would be flocking to bunk like astrology in a day and age when we have the evidence and tools to improve mental health using psychotherapy, seratonin reuptake inhibitors, and lithium.
Re: Young people are flocking to astrology
#158It is so sad to see that despite being the most educated generation in history, there still seems to be a need for supernatural meaning in young people's lives.
Re: Young people are flocking to astrology
#159Correlated with decline in critical thinking skills unfortunately.
I don’t think there’s a decline, it’s just social media makes the existence of such people more apparent.
Social media has been around for quite some time, and the "industry" (if you may call it that) is growing, so it doesn't look like "it's just exposure".
Re: Young people are flocking to astrology
#160I always love getting my tarot cards read. Do I believe it has special knowledge of the universe? Absolutely not. Does it get my thinking creatively and critically about the personal story that I have with my self? Yes. And that has some value.
Of the atheist STEM postgrad degree people I know that love to talk about astrology/tarot, they usually retreat to this type to defence: it's a useful tool for introspection. Sure. But then if I ask them to admit that believing in it is unscientific, the response is something along the lines of "well it could be true". They know there's no evidence for it, but they're probably afraid of offending close friends that a…
What is your standard of evidence for the usefulness of a particular mode of analysis?
Doomsday weapon, perhaps?