Waves

Oil Platform Explodes In The Gulf Of Mexico Off The Louisiana Coast

Deep­wa­ter exploded when Mer­cury was ret­ro­grade? Is this a trend?
Read the Arti­cle at HuffingtonPost

Paradox2140:We Have NOT Been Here Before

Unprece­dented Power & Peril

Likely since humans have fig­ured out the dif­fer­ence between past and future, we have pre­dicted the end of the planet. We still do. Some sce­nar­ios include mag­netic shits or aster­oids. Life hap­pens. Now, under Paradox2140, how­ever, humans can include a capac­ity never before avail­able: com­plete global self-destruction. Cheers!
Within 50–70 years of dis­cov­er­ing the power of E=MC2, dom­i­nant cul­tures fig­ured out how to build weapons that could wipe human life from the planet for hun­dreds of thou­sands of years. We have not been here before.

Make Sure the Kids Are Armed Too!

Thank the Indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion for bring­ing us to this place. Hold your rants against machines, or ques­tions about my Lud­dite nature. Indus­tri­al­ism did not come with an instruc­tion man­ual. No one knew that overly cheap, carbon-based energy would help us set off a pop­u­la­tion time-bomb now exac­er­bat­ing climate-change. When it comes to tech­nol­ogy of the type intro­duced within a brief sliver of time since the 18th Cen­tury, human­ity holds no expe­ri­ence. With­out real­iz­ing the ram­i­fi­ca­tions, his­tory handed lethal weapons to pubes­cent teens with­out guid­ance or instruc­tion. Oops.
Take this not as crit­i­cism. Indus­tri­al­ism arrived on the heels of cen­turies long Euro­pean com­pe­ti­tion for some­times spo­radic resources. The idea of empire had been around since Baby­lon. The con­flu­ence of tech­nol­ogy and 19th Cen­tury impe­ri­al­ism cre­ated a global dash for resources the bled into 1893Neptune-Pluto2384, con­tainer of Paradox2140:Progress. Our nat­ural col­lec­tive instincts seem to inspire short-term exploita­tion of resources. Cul­tures, on which our mod­ern lives now grow, once accus­tomed to famine and epi­demic, now must see cen­turies into the future. Part of what makes Paradox2140:Progress a para­dox is that we began using dan­ger­ously inex­pen­sive energy before we knew the down-the-line costs. We are cursed with the tra­jec­tory that easy petro­leum and coal launched. The only way to cor­rect that choice is with time-machine. Even if we mag­i­cally dis­cover car­bon fuel replace­ment tomor­row, the impact will be felt for centuries.

A World Beyond Imagination

A world that imag­ined mechan­i­cal, New­ton­ian physics could not imag­ine one the one of quan­tum mechan­ics. We are left with Para­dox of Progress, the real­ity we now deal with. No cul­ture in his­tory has faced the com­plex­i­ties of our times; none has come close to our edu­ca­tional capac­ity, lit­er­acy and tech­ni­cal prowess. We have no choice but to make it up as we go along.

We have not been here before.

Paradox2140 and 21st Century Enlightenment

Same Con­clu­sions, Dif­fer­ent Methods

Watch­ing this lat­est RSAn­i­mate video, 21st Cen­tury Enlight­en­ment, feels like watch­ing Paradox2140 in ani­mated form. I was espe­cially struck by the sec­tion where I start the above video, when the ques­tion became “What is Progress?”. The clip above begins at that point because it starts the quest to ask the same ques­tions of Paradox2140:Progress. Both projects inter­sect, chiefly regard­ing Sus­tain­abil­ity and Sci­ence & Tech­nol­ogy, with the chief dif­fer­ence lying with inten­tion: The 21st Cen­tury Enlight­en­ment Project seeks to add human­ism to Progress, to forge a new mind­set that uses Progress to release us from many cur­rent con­straints. Paradox2140 reveals the Para­dox of Progress in con­text of all other Neptune-Pluto para­doxes, while also dis­cussing it within its own con­text.

Watch the video and then click on the win­dows below it to com­pare to rel­e­vant Paradox2140 para­doxes. Expect more on the 21st Cen­tury Enlight­en­ment Project. Our paths run parallel.

The Com­plete 21st Cen­tury Enlight­en­ment Video:

‘Professional Left’ Saga Says More About Media Than Obama

We live in a dif­fer­ent time we’re just get­ting used to. I call it Paradox2140:Progress and under that I cat­e­go­rize this under Infor­ma­tion Over­load (http://measur­inghistory​.com/waves/discussions/paradox2140-progress/the–more-we-know/).

Why is it para­dox­i­cal? We have the tech­nol­ogy to exam­ine and con­vey infor­ma­tion down to the mol­e­c­u­lar level, poten­tially to and about any­body in the world. Yet, so many use it to trans­mit lies, mis­truths or mis­lead­ing infor­ma­tion. Is it not para­dox­i­cal that the Inter­net that sup­pos­edly opens up the infor­ma­tion to every­one, may kill jour­nal­ism?
Read the Arti­cle at HuffingtonPost

Why 2045 Matters

A Reli­able Midpoint

Few can doubt the next oppo­si­tion of Uranus-Pluto, circa 2045, will accom­pany one of those moments noted as spe­cial in human his­tory. The last four asso­ciate to Coper­ni­cus’ Rev­o­lu­tions, the Age of Rea­son, the French Rev­o­lu­tion and Planck/Einstein theories.

So why bring 2045 up now, 35 years away? Takes time to plan a rev­o­lu­tion. Be cer­tain, here. I am not call­ing for one, I sim­ply expect one, of some sort to man­i­fest. Of course, some will cor­rectly reply that the episodes involv­ing physics of the last oppo­si­tion, 1902–1905 were rev­o­lu­tions of a dif­fer­ent sup­port, but that would for­get the 1905 Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, the Young Turks and the gen­eral unrest sur­round­ing labor and class issues that par­tially inspired World War I.

2045, by falling into this sequence, and by the virtue of its com­ing so near to so many global “dead­lines” (sur­round­ing food, cli­mate, habi­tat and demo­graph­ics) fits the descrip­tion of sig­nif­i­cant shift of direc­tion in history.

Why Plan Ahead?

This quote from CIA World Fact­book gives one idea of the chal­lenges the United States faces:

“The onrush of tech­nol­ogy largely explains the grad­ual devel­op­ment of a “two-tier labor mar­ket” in which those at the bot­tom lack the edu­ca­tion and the professional/technical skills of those at the top and, more and more, fail to get com­pa­ra­ble pay raises, health insur­ance cov­er­age, and other ben­e­fits. Since 1975, prac­ti­cally all the gains in house­hold income have gone to the top 20% of house­holds. The war in March-April 2003 between a US-led coali­tion and Iraq, and the sub­se­quent occu­pa­tion of Iraq, required major shifts in national resources to the mil­i­tary. Soar­ing oil prices between 2005 and the first half of 2008 threat­ened infla­tion and unem­ploy­ment, as higher gaso­line prices ate into con­sumers’ bud­gets. Imported oil accounts for about two-thirds of US con­sump­tion. Long-term prob­lems include inad­e­quate invest­ment in eco­nomic infra­struc­ture, rapidly ris­ing med­ical and pen­sion costs of an aging pop­u­la­tion, siz­able trade and bud­get deficits, and stag­na­tion of fam­ily income in the lower eco­nomic groups.
The World Factbook:United States

Why did the econ­omy col­lapse in 2008? Because from the 1980s a good por­tion of home­own­ers around the world financed their lives on credit. The choice has much to do with ‘prac­ti­cally all the gains in house­hold income have gone to the top 20%’. The wealth imbal­ance, about equal to that before the Great Depres­sion, grows wider, yet only gets men­tioned as a ter­tiary cause; far from hav­ing a solu­tion, we do not yet know the prob­lem. Good luck get­ting the polit­i­cal class to acknowl­edge. So, after watch­ing the prob­lem grow for thirty-five years, why should we think we can solve in the next? Or more pos­i­tively phrased: how do solve the prob­lem in that time? And yes, the US is not the entire planet, but its mil­i­tary and econ­omy still dwarf the rest, so its tra­jec­tory affects all. Besides, many issues now face us all in a glob­al­ized world.

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Paradox2140:Progress and the 21st Century

Estab­lish­ing a Baseline

Paradox2140 seeks to estab­lish a base­line, a foun­da­tion based on the issues we face and the mood of the pub­lic. i.e, the moti­va­tion and abil­ity to rec­og­nize prob­lems and, in turn, address them. Since this pub­li­ca­tion now seeks to dis­cuss the rest of the 21st Cen­tury in depth, begin­ning at this base­line proves para­mount. In short: How is that Progress thing work­ing for you?

Mea­sur­ing Against the Standard

At this point Paradox2140 assumes Resources, Sci­ence & Tech­nol­ogy, One World, Sus­tain­abil­ity, Infor­ma­tion Over­load and New Moral­ity as cat­e­gor­i­cal para­doxes that make up the greater one of Progress. Please know that I will likely add sev­enth para­dox: Cor­po­ratism. Since Paradox2140 is open-ended, it is sub­ject to revi­sion; nonethe­less, read­ers should trust that most of the para­doxes will remain as they are.

The Results Are In!

This post intends to pro­vide a brief report and update such over time. Detailed dis­cus­sion will appear here and there. Over­all, soci­eties abil­ity to rec­og­nize the para­dox has a long way to go. Ways to address some of the issues appear from time to time, but the need to inte­grate changes lacks a cohe­sive plane, a view that sees the many cri­sis we face as part of one big prob­lem, rather than many dis­con­nected lit­tle (0r not so lit­tle ones). To be sure, soci­ety may never rec­og­nize the meta-issues, yet go on to address them. On the other hand, hav­ing the capac­ity see the issue and not address, would seem like folly.

Exam­ples

Sus­tain­abil­ity

Sus­tain­abil­ity includes the cat­e­gories of Con­sumerism and Infra­struc­ture. Every cul­ture on the planet must now bal­ance the need for a con­sumer econ­omy against the impact mass con­sumerism demands. As bad as the Gulf Oil vol­cano turned out, one of the most dis­heart­en­ing showed that all the oil lost made up a few days of US con­sump­tion, if that . Infra­struc­ture needs have grown more com­plex as they have grown more global. Day-to-day trans­ac­tions now require satel­lites. Yet ask­ing about infra­struc­ture plans for the next decade, next cen­tury or half-century would pro­duce blank stares. I believe this ‘short-termism’ as a myopia mod­ern soci­eties des­per­ately need to address. The con­se­quences of our deci­sions now have decades-long, if not cen­turies long consequences–nuclear waste is just one of many indus­trial con­se­quences con­ve­niently ignored in pur­suit of imme­di­ate profit–should not the struc­ture that car­ries our deci­sions also include a long-term view.

Resources

Energy sources con­tribute greatly to the Para­dox of Progress, though other resources, such as human efforts and water also require our atten­tion. Cheap energy, or more pre­cisely, mis-priced energy stands as one of our great­est para­doxes, and, per­haps, the one most dif­fi­cult to address. The prob­lem of under­pric­ing energy–if we fac­tor in the full costs, from cul­tural dis­place­ment to envi­ron­men­tal impact, the true costs are quite higher than the price listed at the pump–goes back to the sources of dis­cov­ery. Oil and coal both looked like prac­ti­cally free energy in com­par­i­son to pre­vi­ous forms of con­vert­ing resources into effort. Now, how­ever, even when we know the costs, the will to hon­estly assess how much energy actu­ally costs over the long and short term does not even rate dis­cus­sion in many cases.

Your Turn

Has the above inspired your thoughts on how soci­ety addresses the para­doxes of Sus­tain­abil­ity, One World, New Moral­ity, Sci­ence & Tech­nol­ogy, Resources and Infor­ma­tion Over­load. Do any cul­tures even come close to address­ing any para­dox? Do you think any para­dox is closer to recog­ni­tion? Can any soci­ety reach the self-awareness to hon­estly dis­cuss the true sources of its prob­lems? Please use com­ments, below, or post to the wall of Mea­sur­ing His­tory of Facebook

.The Long Run

Paradox2140:Progress cov­ers 1893Neptune-Pluto2384, the Neptune-Pluto wave that spans 1893 to 2384. Mea­sur­ing His­tory will use the cen­turies for intel­li­gent revision.

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1930 and 2010 Compared: Introduction

A Many Part Essay Com­par­ing the Two Periods

For obvi­ous rea­sons, I will leave the com­par­isons between the early 1930s and 2008–2012 to oth­ers who have already per­formed the task. From the begin­ning, I can tell you that both times, like any, are dif­fer­ent. How­ever, enough sim­i­lar­i­ties exist and the line from the first event to the next dis­play­ing so many con­nec­tions, the effort has to be pur­sued. Keep in mind that the essay means to present an over­all pic­ture, show­ing how one period con­nects to the other, rather than a side-by-side comparison.

The Really Big Picture

As the dia­grams show. The main rea­son for com­par­i­son comes from how sim­i­lar con­fig­u­ra­tions, Saturn-Uranus-Pluto T-squares, appeared dur­ing both finan­cial cri­sises. The first of such, circa 1930, includes the Uranus-Pluto wave, 1849Uranus-Pluto1966, bring­ing events near 1849 into the pic­ture. Impor­tantly, this wave began under the pre­vi­ous Neptune-Pluto wave, 1399Neptune-Pluto1892, when cul­tures shifted from medieval to mod­ern prac­tices and view­points. That the lead-up to the Great Depres­sion fol­lows the path of the last Uranus-Pluto wave of the pre­vi­ous Neptune-Pluto hints that some of the finan­cial dis­tress of that period relates to that tran­si­tion. The Great Depres­sion of the 1930s was the first glob­al­ized depres­sion, one totally related to the full indus­tri­al­iza­tion of the planet. Just as sig­nif­i­cantly, that 1966Uranus-Pluto2100 is the first Uranus-Pluto wave of 1893Neptune-Pluto2384, sug­gests it comes with dif­fer­ent con­cerns. Specif­i­cally, the pre­vi­ous Neptune-Pluto wave con­tained the Para­dox of Sec­u­lar­ism, where Church reform, unleashed sec­u­lar­ism as a modus operandi. 1893Neptune-Pluto2384, on the other hand, deals with the Para­dox of Progress. This lat­ter char­ac­ter­is­tic appears as more obvious–the 2008-? Great Reces­sion clearly has obvi­ous ties to the Progress and its ram­i­fi­ca­tions. Con­versely, the 1930s episode seems more con­nected to 1850s type issues of nation­al­ism and ‘iron and blood’ indus­tri­al­ism, than the slicker, more financial-services causes of the 2008 col­lapse.  The dif­fer­ence shows up repeat­edly though­out this comparison.

The Big Pic­ture: 1848–2102

Because the 1930 T-square includes 1849Uranus-Pluto1966 and the 2010, 1966Uranus-Pluto2100 the range our sur­vey ties the 1850s to the early 22nd Cen­tury. The list shows all of the peri­ods, hint­ing at why and how the times are sim­i­lar, yet different.

1930 T-square

• 1849Uranus-Pluto1965
• 1897Saturn-Uranus1942
• 1915Saturn-Pluto1947

2010 T-square

• 1966Uranus-Pluto2100
• 1989Saturn-Uranus2032
• 1983Saturn-Pluto2020

As you may have guessed, both peri­ods clas­sify as turn­ing points, a nexus of longer and shorter-term influ­ences com­ing together to cre­ate an event with its own momen­tum. I have already pre­sented From Rev­o­lu­tion to Protest, about 1966Uranus-Pluto2100. Expect more posts on the other waves from var­i­ous per­spec­tives. By the end, the reader will gain greater per­spec­tive that will lead to greater under­stand­ing of each time.

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Tags: 1848, 1849Uranus-Pluto1965, 1929, 1930, 1960s, 1966Uranus-Pluto2100, civil rights, culture wars, feminism, financial collapse, Great Depression, Great Recession, nationalism, Pluto, Saturn, sixties, t-square, Uranus

That 360°/0° Thing

The For­got­ten side of Begin­nings

A major rea­son to use waves as a mea­sur­ing device lies with the abil­ity to view cycle as a unit. See­ing cycles in cir­cu­lar form tends to stack one on top of the other, oblit­er­at­ing the view. Another advan­tage comes when look at the both ends of the wave, 360°/0° at the begin­ning 0°/360° at the other. In cir­cu­lar form this point blends into itself; it passes with­out much notice. Waves change that view. The end and the begin­ning hold dis­tinct posi­tions in Mea­sur­ing History.

Every Begin­ning is An End

A birth best demon­strates a begin­ning. The start of life comes ripe with poten­tial, both pow­er­ful for the atten­tion a new­born requires and vul­ner­a­ble for almost com­plete depen­dence on oth­ers. Pow­er­ful with the energy of youth, yet frag­ile for inno­cence grad­u­ally lost along the way. And here we typ­i­cally con­cen­trate our atten­tion, the look ahead. The shadow side of he expe­ri­ence, goes unmen­tioned, but plays an equally impor­tant role: that which can no longer exist because of what replaces it.

Feel the New

The 1960s and the 1990s both have a feel­ing of the new. Both fea­tured con­junc­tions between very dis­tant plan­ets, Uranus and Pluto in the 60’s, Uranus and Nep­tune in the early 90’s. Because Sat­urn con­joined both Uranus and Nep­tune in the late 80s, the feel­ing of new, a step into new era stretched from then until a few years past the 1992–93 Uranus-Neptune con­junc­tion.
The feel­ing, the opin­ion that the 1960s saw great leaps in many areas has been con­firmed from many quar­ters. From economies, to sci­ence, music, gen­der, diplo­macy, pol­i­tics and cul­ture, the decade still stands as a time of great depar­ture from the past. Changes such as civil rights leg­is­la­tion, move­ments for greater gen­der equal­ity, even rock’n’roll can­not be undone. Uranus-Pluto waves, con­nected with the print­ing press, the Age of Rea­son, the French Rev­o­lu­tion con­tin­ued its legacy of sig­nif­i­cant and dis­rup­tive change, adding the Inter­net to the resume.
The 1990s began as the Berlin Wall (and Soviet Union) fell, Europe entered a union and the US flexed its mus­cles in the Gulf War. Inter­net and cell net­works reached crit­i­cal mass, accel­er­at­ing cul­tural change cer­tainly still closer to infancy than matu­rity. China’s Tien­an­men Square Mas­sacre announced how that nation would mod­ern­ize on its own terms. I was old enough to know bet­ter by this time, and the feel­ings of new, of step­ping into a new time was tan­gi­ble, an emo­tion shared by many. I know the idea that outer plan­ets tell us when we enter new his­tor­i­cal episodes stretches credulity, but the evi­dence repeats through­out time. 1648 (Uranus-Neptune con­junc­tion), 1821 (another Uranus-Neptune con­junc­tion) 1892 (Neptune-Pluto con­junc­tion), all share these char­ac­ter­is­tic. Do your own exper­i­ment and I think you will agree that these times stand out as turn­ing points, when sig­nif­i­cant cul­tural shifts occurred.

Remem­ber the Passing

The 1890s, the 1960s, and the 1990s also included the feel­ing of pass­ing, of an age or tra­di­tion fad­ing into mem­ory. The 1890s, heady with new inven­tions and lifestyles, came with the anx­ious feel­ing that the old slipped away in the din of excite­ment over the nascent and untried. Dur­ing the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Soviet col­lapse looked immi­nent, the old worry of national insta­bil­ity in the soon defunct East­ern Bloc arose (for good rea­son); Mar­garet Thatcher fret­ted over a united Ger­many. The prospect of an entirely dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion brought up dor­mant con­cerns.
Per­haps because so many cover the 1960s, but a sense of pass­ing appears in all aspects tied to the decade. The US poor show­ing in Viet­nam eroded con­fi­dence in mil­i­tary solu­tions. Civil rights leg­is­la­tion removed built in advan­tages some groups held over oth­ers. Fem­i­nism undid years of Hol­ly­wood dri­ven pro­pa­ganda aimed at women. The move­ment in the West away from less tra­di­tional fam­ily struc­ture began then. For every new devel­op­ment, a way of life dis­ap­peared or took on a lesser role. These fall on the 360° side of the equation.

Fin­ish What Was Started

The full pic­ture of hon­or­ing the 360° side shows up when we look at all of 1849Uranus-Pluto1965, real­iz­ing that much of what tran­spired in the 1960s had roots in the time around the 1850s. Abo­li­tion move­ments sup­plied the foun­da­tion for civil rights action and leg­is­la­tion; the fem­i­nist move­ment began in Seneca Falls in 1848; ‘60s protests, riots and sit-ins extend the legacy, and sim­i­lar results, to the 1848 Rev­o­lu­tions: spe­cific pro­tester requests went unmet, but their pres­sure forced cul­tural change. Inter­na­tion­ally, the some­times lit­eral fight for inde­pen­dence in Indochina, the sub-Continent and Africa sim­ply extended a trend begun in 1848, an episode then whose true result ended with the nation­al­iza­tion of Ger­many, Canada and Italy. Both times fea­ture the same imper­a­tive, the desire to con­trol local economies, means of pro­duc­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Peo­ple wanted to be Viet­namese or Pak­istani for the same rea­sons peo­ple want to be Ital­ian or Bel­gian: no one rea­son, but many com­pel the choice for independence.

Rail roads also fit in here. Circa 1848  they were about to bring about the great­est expan­sion in human indus­try and pop­u­la­tion, and by the mid-1960s, fade into sen­ti­men­tal­ity. Of course, trains will not dis­ap­pear, but now rank next to other forms of trans­port, includ­ing aero­space in its many forms. The pres­i­dent flies Air Force One, instead of fol­low­ing the whistle-stop tour. But their roles, their 360° pres­ence, should not be for­got­ten. Rail roads changed diplo­macy, pol­i­tics, indus­try, cul­ture, gen­der expec­ta­tions, labor rela­tions; inspired time-zones, trans-continental travel, civil engi­neers, cities, destruc­tion, great archi­tec­ture, new mar­kets, robber-barons, mech­a­nized war and expo­nen­tial pop­u­la­tion growth. When in the the 60s Ken Kesey, the road-trip, car-culture replaced rail-road cul­ture (big-bands trav­eled by rail, where pop-bands travel by van, bus or plane), con­sider it a sig­nal of the end of rail road’s influence.They still play a role but no longer a major one. Rail­roads are so 360°.

Tags: 1848, 1848 Revolutions, aboloition, Cold Wat, EasternBloc, feminism.civil rights, hippie;1960s, LBJ, nationalism, nations, Nixon, Seneca Falls, Soviet, Thatcher

The Future Began in 1965

1966Uranus-Pluto2100

The 1960s fea­tured rock­ets. Rocket cars. Nuclear Rock­ets. Rock­ets to the Moon. Rock­ets were noth­ing new, but ones fes­tooned with elec­tron­ics, were. Rock­ets turned into guided mis­siles, trans­form­ing space, time and diplo­macy. Fast was in. Slow was off the table.

Quick, Make Up Your Mind

Peo­ple didn’t notice it then, but the ‘Instant’ world began in the 1960s. Instant Cof­fee, Instant Pic­tures, Instant Sex. Since then, Instant has only got­ten faster (but instant cof­fee still sucks). The king of Instant, the Inter­net (actu­ally packet tech­nol­ogy, which also pow­ers cel­lu­lar net­works), was invented in the 1960s because of what might hap­pen when nations fire rock­ets at each other. But Instant did another thing: it turned news into his­tory. No longer did peo­ple wait a few days for news; reports came hourly, now minute to minute.

Cue: “We just saw his­tory here, today, Ladies and Gen­tle­men. Now, to our reporter on the street for an instant reac­tion.“
“Excuse me Ms./Mr. Pub­lic could you tell me how you feel about the his­tory we wit­nessed today?”

That’s what began as 1966Uranus-Pluto2100 did. Instant cul­ture. Instant immersed cul­ture. Rock­ets. Satel­lites. Elec­tron­ics. All now part of a grow­ing net­work. Aero­space. Many of the com­po­nents had been around for a bit, but how to use them, how to com­bine them changed. For­ever. Uranus-Pluto is like that.

That 360°/0° Thing.

1966Uranus-0°-Pluto2100 can also be read 1849Uranus–360°–Pluto1965. The end shapes the begin­ning. The path along the quad­ra­ture align­ments from 1849, to 1874, 1902, 1930 and 1965 brought us from rail roads and telegraphs, through tele­phones and auto­mo­biles, to air­planes and mass-production, to nuclear tech­nol­ogy and rockets.

Net­works of steel and wire, lead to ones of steel and more wire, to ones through the air, both phys­i­cal and vir­tual. Along with these accom­pa­ny­ing changes appeared. The dis­tance between field and table decreased dra­mat­i­cally, in time, alter­ing all sorts of equa­tions. The same tech­nol­ogy that sent freight and peo­ple down rails also pow­ered machines on the farm.

People’s lives began to revolve more around machines than farms, chang­ing the focus on where to live. Bet­ter to live in the city, near the fac­tory. So your fam­ily moves there, along with the shops, the offices and schools. Since you won’t need the many hands needed on a farm, you will have fewer chil­dren, also bet­ter for city liv­ing. Women live health­ier lives, with more free time. To get away from the fac­tory, some of the chil­dren learn math­e­mat­ics, law, even the arts.

Abstract thought and art and music chal­lenge pre­vi­ous lim­its. New­ton­ian Physics, mechan­i­cal and causal, gives way to Quan­tum Physics, where dif­fer­ent states can exist simul­ta­ne­ously in dif­fer­ent loca­tions! And because we could see abstractly, we could see atoms. Well, at least we could see how they moved. And, then we learned how to split them! So when we blew stuff up, it stayed blew up. We also used it as a new way to heat up water. So the 360°/0° thing applies here because all those things hap­pened dur­ing the last Uranus-Pluto wave; all those things occurred between 1849 and 1965; the past that shapes the future.

Rock­ets, the New Rail Roads

At 1711Uranus-270°-Pluto1848, near 1821, exper­i­men­ta­tion with rail roads began. After 1849Uranus-0°-Pluto, near 1848, rail roads, lit­er­ally, became part of the land­scape. Near 1849Uranus-270°-Pluto1965, circa 1929, God­dard began rocket exper­i­ments that lead to the moon landing.

Space rock­ets improve all the time, but their launch no longer is a big tourist attrac­tion. We note their depar­ture like we do a pass­ing train. What­ever rock­ets evolve into by 2100, we have already begun down that path. We have already seen how the Inter­net change from its Morse Code-like begin­ning to its more use­ful tele­phone off­shoot, more instant lives, even more instantly.

The Future’s Not So Clean Any More

We need remem­ber that Rachel Car­son’ s Silent Spring just pre­ceded the 1965 Uranus-Pluto con­junc­tion, with a mes­sage equally as wor­ri­some as the “Bomb”. Indus­try that exploded from 1850 on, came with dirty side-effects grow­ing in pro­por­tion to the its influ­ence on cul­ture. Since her mes­sage ignited aware­ness, our capac­ity to spoil the envi­ron­ment grows. We lit­er­ally have changed the weather, for decades, prob­a­bly cen­turies. Mean­while, we demand more resources, so we can grow more pop­u­lous and demanding.

Pol­lu­tion is no longer local; China’s smog is also California’s. British Petroleum’s neg­li­gence is Louisiana’s night­mare. Jet­sons car­toons now come with a Sur­geon Gen­er­als warn­ing. The future is loaded down with car­bon. The past shapes the future.

1792, 1902, 2045

The next Uranus-Pluto turn­ing point comes near the oppo­si­tion of 2045. These oppo­si­tions do not sub­tly arrive and dis­ap­pear into his­tory. Remem­ber 1792 for being close to the French Rev­o­lu­tion, the Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion, the final split of Poland and a dra­matic shift toward indus­try. 1902 fea­tures planes, radios, air con­di­tion­ing, impe­r­ial bat­tles, strikes and rev­o­lu­tions. along with the avant garde, and the abstract. The turn of the cen­tury clearly departs from the past.
~2045 will likely amaze in ways both chal­leng­ing and awe­some. The chil­dren who barely knew what a land-line was will hit middle-age, just as many demo­graphic time­lines reach crit­i­cal junc­tures. Pop­u­la­tion will close on 9–10 Bil­lion, just as our oceans may run out of fish. We could be closer to 400 than 350.

What­ever deci­sions made or delayed regard­ing energy sources circa 2010 will show con­se­quence at this time. At this point, since most cul­tures defer atten­tion to these mat­ters, and given the his­tory of Uranus-Pluto oppo­si­tions, this astrologer sus­pects upheavals a long the line of Paradox2140:Progress . I won­der how much Louisiana Light Crude will haunt the Gulf of Mexico?

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Uneven Distribution of Evolution

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