Astrology - Are you a believer?

[Lady_X]

i have guessed peoples signs a lot actually...i know stuff.

 

[Mole]

One astronomer not believing in astrology doesn't mean no astronomer believes in astrology.

Pretty... simple... logic... there.

The most logical people I have met are those suffering from a paranoid delusion.

 

[Zarathustra]

So you've been there?

And then I assume you figure Joseph Campbell and Huston Smith to not be "real" academics because they spent so much time there?

Nor Abraham Maslow? Nor BF Skinner? Nor Susan Sontag? Nor Aldoux Huxley? Nor Moshe Feldenkrais? Nor Alan Watts? Nor Ray Bradubury? Nor... (the list goes on and on)

Esalen Institute - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Victor, based off onemoretime's comment, I thought you might actually be intelligent, but I'm starting to learn that one should take whatever onemoretime believes, and believe the opposite, and one can then be assured that he is very, very close to the truth.

 

[Moiety]

Ummm, first girl commented to second girl about a guy who's been in the store one time, and when the guy came back three months later, the second girl just happened to know it was him?

Really?

That's the leg you're trying to stand on?

Interesting... that really says a lot about your openness to new possibilities/ideas...

Oooh a Libra INTJ lecturing a Libra ENFP on openness to new possibilities/ideas. I like it

I'm open to everything, I just like to feel convinced. But it's also a matter of being practical. Will knowledge of astrology make me live a happier life? Scratch that...knowledge is good even when it sometimes makes us less happy. But do and should I trust any one individual when it comes to astrology or do I need to become an astrologer myself to get something out of it? Do different astrologers even arrive to the same conclusions?

As for the second part of your comment, I'm so glad you asked:
Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View - by Richard Tarnas

Download the real player audio file (second link) under "Interviews"

Thanks. I'll listen to it when I can.

 

[Zarathustra]

I remember Esalen where an ambulance would pull up once a week, every week, and everyone would troop down to have their shots for sexually transmitted diseases.

Esalen is not an accredited University and so anyone who would call themselves, "Director of Research at Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA", is simply pretentious.

Quite like astrology itself.

Btw, it's pretty funny hearing someone who just actually had this exchange call other people pretentious:

No astronomer believes in astrology.

No wonder onemoretime thinks you're the smartest poster on here.

You share the same characteristic: you say completely false statements while thinking you're absolutely right.

An astronomer is only a phone call away.

If you wish, you can pick up the phone and ring an Observatory and ask to speak to an astronomer.

And then you can ask them the truth value of astrology.

My guess is that the answer will be zero.

One astronomer not believing in astrology doesn't mean no astronomer believes in astrology.

Pretty... simple... logic... there.

 

[Zarathustra]

Oooh a Libra INTJ lecturing a Libra ENFP on openness to new possibilities/ideas. I like it

Wait...

Who's the Libra ENFP?

I'm open to everything, I just like to feel convinced. But it's also a matter of being practical. Will knowledge of astrology make me live a happier life? Scratch that...knowledge is good even when it sometimes makes us less happy. But do and should I trust any one individual when it comes to astrology or do I need to become an astrologer myself to get something out of it? Do different astrologers even arrive to the same conclusions?

As with all things, you should engage it with a critical mind, never allowing yourself to be duped, always taking it for what it's worth, but also being open to any truth that might actually be contained in it.

Thanks. I'll listen to it when I can.

Cool.

 

[Mole]

Victor, based off onemoretime's comment, I thought you might actually be intelligent, but I'm starting to learn that one should take whatever onemoretime believes, and believe the opposite, and one can then be assured that he is very, very close to the truth.

The attraction of Esalen was sex in a puritanical society.

The attraction of Esalen was certainly not the intellect. And the proof of the pudding is in the eating, for Esalen produced no works of the intellect.

However Esalen did specialise in producing sexually transmitted diseases.

 

[Zarathustra]

The most logical people I have met are those suffering from a paranoid delusion.

Oh, you also share onemoretime's characteristic of bringing up completely irrelevant "counterarguments" to arguments that have absolutely decimated your positions...?

How interesting...

 

[Jaguar]

What is this STD nonsense about?

 

[Zarathustra]

The attraction of Esalen was sex in a puritanical society.

The attraction of Esalen was certainly not the intellect. And the proof of the pudding is in the eating, for Esalen produced no works of the intellect.

However Esalen did specialise in producing sexually transmitted diseases.

So you've read everything by every author/thinker who's ever spent time studying at Esalen, and deemed them to be "not works of the intellect"?

Have you read either one of these books?

Passion of the Western Mind

Cosmos and Psyche

 

[Zarathustra]

What is this STD nonsense about?

It's about Victor grasping for any lifeline he can to try and get out of the quicksand he's put himself in...

 

[Zarathustra]

The attraction of Esalen was sex in a puritanical society.

The attraction of Esalen was certainly not the intellect. And the proof of the pudding is in the eating, for Esalen produced no works of the intellect.

However Esalen did specialise in producing sexually transmitted diseases.

So you've read everything by every author/thinker who's ever spent time studying at Esalen, and deemed them to be "not works of the intellect"?

Have you read either one of these books?

Passion of the Western Mind

Cosmos and Psyche

How bout all of these people, Victor.

You read all of their works and ready to put them in the "non-intellectual" category:

Past teachers
Ansel Adams
Joan Baez
James Baraz
Robert Bly
Gregory Bateson
Ray Bradbury
Joseph Campbell
Fritjof Capra
Carlos Castaneda
Deepak Chopra
Harvey Cox
Erik Davis
Warren Farrell
Moshe Feldenkrais
Richard Feynman
Matthew Fox
Fred Frith
Buckminster Fuller
Spalding Gray
Stanislav Grof
Michael Harner
Andrew Harvey
John Heider
Paul Horn
Al Chung-liang Huang
James Hillman
Albert Hofmann
Aldous Huxley
Sam Keen
Ken Kesey
Paul Krassner
R. D. Laing
George Leonard
Dennis Lewis
John C. Lilly
C. Allen Lockwood
Amory Lovins
Abraham Maslow
Peter Matthiessen
Rollo May
Terence McKenna
Robert Nadeau
Claudio Naranjo
Sara Nelson
Babatunde Olatunji
Dean Ornish
Humphry Osmond
Linus Pauling
Fritz Perls
J. B. Rhine
Carl Rogers
Ida Rolf
Gabrielle Roth
Jerry Rubin
Douglas Rushkoff
Virginia Satir
Will Schutz
Daniel Sheehan
B.F. Skinner
Huston Smith
Gary Snyder
Susan Sontag
Paul Tillich
Arnold J. Toynbee
Alan Watts
Robert Anton Wilson
Andrew Weil
Marion Woodman

Scholars in Residence
Esalen has sponsored long-term residencies including
Gregory Bateson
Joseph Campbell
Stanislav Grof
Sam Keen
George Leonard
John C. Lilly
Babatunde Olatunji
Fritz Perls
Ida Pauline Rolf
Virginia Satir
William Schutz
Brother David Steindl-Rast
Alan Watts
and others who have lived and worked at Esalen as part of this program.

 

[Jaguar]

It's about Victor grasping for any lifeline he can to try and get out of the quicksand he's put himself in...

I'll send him some protection.

 

[Moiety]

Wait...

Who's the Libra ENFP?

Me. I was born/nurtured an ENFP, but then I got accustomed to the Sith side of things.

As with all things, you should engage it with a critical mind, never allowing yourself to be duped, always taking it for what it's worth, but also being open to any truth that might actually be contained in it.

That's me default modus operandi, but thanks for the advice. Still, my questions were more than just a Ne rant, so if you have any answers to them I'd welcome some insight.

 

[Mole]

The Fighting Spirit

Oh, you also share onemoretime's characteristic of bringing up completely irrelevant "counterarguments" to arguments that have absolutely decimated your positions...?

How interesting...

C'mon you're like Monty Python's Black Knight.

When I cut off one arm, you tell me you are only beginning to fight.

And when I cut off the other arm, you tell me you are just warming up.

And when I cut of one leg, you tell me you will decimate me.

And when I cut off the other leg, you tell me it's completely irrelevant.

What a fighting spirit!

 

[Night]

Needless to say, I opened up a bit more to astrology after this experience.

Z, this is all anecdote. There's no falsifiable basis for anything you've offered here.

So two consecutive retail clerks guessed your astrological sign. So, what? It doesn't necessarily follow that their presumption was anything more than simple, dumb luck.

Let's examine the data:

Clearly, you were in the store to purchase some form of clothing; ergo, you have specific aesthetic taste. So, her statement confirming that fact is a no-brainer.

Plus, it sounds like you had a bit of conversation beforehand, as your provided detail was exceedingly specific:

When I'd originally bought the jeans, I was helped by a tall, very attractive, sandy blond Lebanese girl who'd grown up in Switzerland. I was trying on some jeans in the dressing room, and she and I were talking, when all of a sudden she says to me, "You're a Libra."

Perhaps you casually mentioned something that tipped her off, in terms of your birth date? Perhaps it was autumn when you were in the store. Did the topic of seasons come into play at all? Maybe she was attracted to you and was attempting to animate details of your life to perpetuate conversation?

Plus, didn't you say they both worked at the same store? Maybe it's some weird fad they shared. Or, maybe the first girl discussed you with the latter.

What you've offered sounds a lot like confirmation bias. Or, cold reading. I wouldn't put much stock into astrology based on this experience. Plus, like any worthwhile clinical metric, shouldn't you repeatedly expose yourself to similar variables under approximate conditions to verify hypothesis?

At best, it sounds like your sample set is incomplete.


It might interest you to know that I'm a Sagittarius and have very particular aesthetic values myself.

 

[Mole]

left-overs

How bout all of these people, Victor.

These are all avatars of the New Age. And the New Age ended with the advent of AIDS.

Of course we still have our left-overs, for MBTI and astrology are left-overs from the New Age.

Some of course like left-overs, but I feed left-overs to the dog.

 

[JocktheMotie]

Tarnas' Introduction to Archetypal Astrology

I was curious as to how he'd explain the causal mechanism. His explanation avoids the assertion that cosmic alignment causes a direct impact on human nature, but that it's more accurate to say that cosmic alignment represents the current archetypal forces present in the universe [or local region, I suppose] at the time.

I find it very New Age-y and lacking in scientific rigor. Not really into these kinds of things. But, to each his own.

 

[Zarathustra]

Tarnas' Introduction to Archetypal Astrology

I was curious as to the causal mechanism. His explanation avoids the assertion that cosmic alignment causes a direct impact on human nature, but that it's more accurate to say that cosmic alignment represents the current archetypal forces present in the universe [or local region, I suppose] at the time.

 

[Zarathustra]

C'mon you're like Monty Python's Black Knight.

When I cut off one arm, you tell me you are only beginning to fight.

And when I cut off the other arm, you tell me you are just warming up.

And when I cut of one leg, you tell me you will decimate me.

And when I cut off the other leg, you tell me it's completely irrelevant.

What a fighting spirit!

Sure thing, Victor.

Keep telling yourself that.