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Young people are flocking to astrology

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Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#171

Post by BiteCode_dev »

LargeTomato wrote: post #37

My 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.

I worked in various "alternative" industries in my youth.

One day I was having an informal diner with people that, in another context, could have been business partners.

One guy was making a killing with an astrology service by phone. He started with those text message based games, that were popular in the 2000'. Remember? "Send 'love' to this number to know if he loves you".

And eventually created a full phone call based business with about 200 freelancer astrologists and mediums. He just redirected, and took a cut. He made banks.

What he told me that night was that 99% of his customer base were women.

"You have to see astrology as porn for women", he said. "Porn public is mostly male, astrology mostly female. Both know it's not real, and most won't spend more than a few minutes on it. But many pay for it even if they would never say they do".

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#172

Post by thinkingemote »

mistercheph wrote: post #157

I 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.

Maybe they are not using astrology to improve their mental health. At least maybe not primarily.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#173

Post by vkou »

ZainRiz wrote: post #118
Err_Eek wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(As an atheist who found The God Delusion to be one of the most important books I've ever read, as it gave me a solid framework of arguing in what I already considered to be true) It's okay to read more digestible books, and not serious academic studies. In fact it's more than okay -- in order to understand an academic study you likely need to do a lot of reading on the topic before hand. A pop sci/culture book is ve…

The challenge with books like The God Delusion is that it's barely one step above strawman arguments. It attacks claims made by some simple lay people, based on their half-baked understanding of their own faiths (which they never really dug into). However, people well versed in the religion don't actually make any such claims. The arguments being debunked are ones that religious scholars themselves would have disagre…

My experience with religion in the public sphere is that ~all of the religious arguments that are actually advanced in that sphere have nothing to do with ones made by religious scholars.

Attacking a strawman is perfectly appropriate in this case, because the strawman is what actually drives policy.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#174

Post by goku12 »

lm28469 wrote: post #162
Jean-Papoulos wrote: post #158

It 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.

Are we really surprised that after destroying religions and traditions young people look for things other than money and careers ? Almost as if consumerism was showing its limits...

From where I am, I can see religion and traditions destroying plenty of lives. Astrology often causes problems for many getting married. Not to mention the religious conflicts that take lives or rigid traditional views severely limits opportunities for many communities. Consumerism may be bad. But that doesn't justify the damages an unscientific world view can cause. Scientific temper also doesn't equate to consumerism.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#175

Post by onecommentman »

nprateem wrote: post #66

I had an argument with a girl the other day who was adamant she wanted to know my star sign. I said "you tell me" and after 10 guesses I finally told her. She then went on to tell me what I must like etc - most of which was complete bollocks obviously. I told her her beliefs were akin to racism. Just because of when I was born she thought it was acceptable not to bother to treat me as an individual but as automatical…

A few decades ago, when astrology was last really popular, I was in a high school class and a few kids knew that I could actually cast a full natal horoscope. So they asked me to guess their (Sun) sign. I stopped when I was ahead, but had gotten four out of four right on the first guess and had a legitimate (?) reason for each. Don’t know how my reputation changed as a result…I was way more pocket-protector nerd than goth/warlock (which wasn’t a thing yet).

As far as archetypes go for human psychology, astrological signs themselves have a lot going for them: simple, vague, engaging, nice emojis, deep historical roots. Could be something going on in terms of seasonality, birth month, school entrance date and childhood development for Sun signs, but mostly natal astrology is a cute neutral way to get people to talk about themselves. Pretty certain the stars don’t impel much less compel but I’d prefer a frivolous discussion over what a Leo is really like over any given random political argument where no side has a clear enough understanding of the whole picture to justify their own rage.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#176

Post by steve_adams_86 »

Pamar wrote: post #85
RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #70

Mental 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.

I agree in general. I think that if for some reason you do not want to see a therapist some kind of "alternative" (like Family Constellations or Jodorowsky's Tarots/Psychomagic may offer some solace. The main problem is that (in my limited experience) they also conveniently offer solace but not much impulse to actually try to change things.

I don’t know if this is true, but I wonder if these alternatives offer very top down perspectives on an individual’s life and circumstances, rather than one of personal responsibility and agency. One is kind it like “here’s how things are, and here are the deterministic, universal reasons as to why that is”, while the other might be more like “here’s how things are, and here are the ways you could choose to reason about it and navigate to a better place from here”.

I actually don’t know; I’m totally speculating, but curious. I used to know someone who went for tarot readings as a means of coping with losing her husband and I find it very sad yet fascinating. She didn’t seem to get much from it in a constructive sense, but she did get someone focused on her and her experience for an hour or so. That means a lot, too.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#177

Post by lm28469 »

goku12 wrote: post #174
lm28469 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we really surprised that after destroying religions and traditions young people look for things other than money and careers ? Almost as if consumerism was showing its limits...

From where I am, I can see religion and traditions destroying plenty of lives. Astrology often causes problems for many getting married. Not to mention the religious conflicts that take lives or rigid traditional views severely limits opportunities for many communities. Consumerism may be bad. But that doesn't justify the damages an unscientific world view can cause. Scientific temper also doesn't equate to consumeri…

Oh it's not only the astrology loons, you have the UFO crowd, conspiracy theories crowd, people who make their political cult leader a semi God, &c. it's also super easy to embrigade them in extremist causes by promising them to be part of a group

Instead of having one big cohesive group you get hundreds of sub groups with a lot of conflicts

I'm not advocating for going back to that, which wouldn't even be possible, just saying we lost something and what we replaced it with is lacking in a lot of aspects

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#178

Post by steve_adams_86 »

LargeTomato wrote: post #37

My 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.

Two of my favourite and easily most intelligent friends are deeply into astrology and have been for decades. One is a PhD as well, the other an accomplished writer.

It’s always hard to put these things together, though it’s actually very stimulating to talk with them about it. It’s an entire world for them, loaded with meaning and salience. It doesn’t take away from how intelligent I think they are (they both possess capabilities I can’t fathom), but I don’t think it’ll ever properly make sense to me.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#179

Post by goku12 »

Lammy wrote: post #80

The celestial objects probably have nothing to do with it besides serving as convenient and consistent identifiers, but why wouldn't the time of year of a person's birth have an effect on their development? Like if a toddler is of the age for first words in summer where long daylight and warm weather encourages interaction with more people than just immediate family vs being that age in winter where short cold days a…

> Like if a toddler is of the age for first words in summer where long daylight and warm weather encourages interaction with more people

In that case, we need to look at more than just the time. As somebody else pointed out, we need to consider the Earth latitude where the person is born - since that affects the length of daylight. Similarly, we need to consider the pandemic for babies born during that time - since the longer daylight would have made no impact on their isolation. Despite all that, I have never seen anyone consider anything more than time for astrology.

> Also a lot of anti-astrology screeds have an air of “I don't hate women, I just hate everything women like” lol

It's easy to push off anti-astrology arguments as misogynistic. However, many statements here give a hint that astrology may be more prevalent among the female folk. What if that trend really exists? There are so many practices that are biased by gender - it may be worth studying that possibility.

My personal experience though, is different. I'm from a society where belief in astrology is biased by the generation you belong to, rather than the gender.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#180

Post by 5041us »

keiferski wrote: post #116
Err_Eek wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(As an atheist who found The God Delusion to be one of the most important books I've ever read, as it gave me a solid framework of arguing in what I already considered to be true) It's okay to read more digestible books, and not serious academic studies. In fact it's more than okay -- in order to understand an academic study you likely need to do a lot of reading on the topic before hand. A pop sci/culture book is ve…

It’s not so much about accessibility, just quality of argument. As I said, basically no one that has read and thought significantly about religion thinks that Dawkins’ works are anything other than simple-minded polemics. It’s the equivalent of watching a 5-hour YouTube video about programming and thinking you understand computer science, except that books by Dawkins et al are not even very good, impartial introducti…

Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality might not be complicated to read. And while all this stuff about good and evil is valuable context to understand religion, all the other slave morality babble feels pretty close to a YoutTube rant video.
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