It feels pointless to say this and not say all religion is bullshit, even though not all religion is right wing in the same way.

Astrology is a cope just like xtianity and new age and islam and buddhism. Life is shit, people need something to cling to.

I don’t know if astrology is really. What I do know is, if I was god and I had to make new soles every day I would automate that shit. The easiest way to do that would be to plug in date and time you were born to some sole making algorithm. The algorithm would probably be complexes, but the humans might figure out some common trends for sole made around the same time.

No shit?

Lmao you’re a Gemini aren’t you

Astrology is counterrevolutionary and I am only being a little hyperbolic / facetious when I say that. It actively encourages and reinforces nonmaterialist analysis and magical thinking while encouraging hyperindividualism. These are all ingredients that are part of the “crunchy to fascist” pipeline that has led many people who were new age hippies 20 years ago to go full MAHA eugenicist today.

Let me be clear , astrology is not itself fascist, but it is part of a proto-fascist millieu. But worse than that, I fear it undermines people’s ability to grapple with reality. I do not mean astrology makes people too stupid to understand reality, which is a STEM-lordist perspective, because I do not believe there is any such thing as a “stupid” person. Rather, I mean that the act of clinging to a belief in astrology encourages a toxic emotional orientation toward the world and fragility when it comes to inconvenient truths

In order to believe in astrology, one must fundamentally reject an ironclad commitment to material analysis in favor of a more woo-woo vibes-based approach which centers their feelings and psychological biases as the arbiters of reality. This is why astrology fanatics do not respond to any science about it. Talk about gravity, and they come up with some excuse. Talk about the many psychological studies done that show the Barnum Effect’s relation to astrology, and they wave it away. The rule they’re operating on is that what they feel is true is more important than what is actually true.

This is a liability, a fragility, and there is also a sort of liberalism about it. When I say something incorrect about, say, black holes, my response when someone corrects me and tells me the facts is a simple and excited “oh thanks for correcting me, that’s so cool!” and follow-up questions about it because I’m excited to learn and secure enough in my own sense of worth that I can handle being wrong sometimes. It’s not even “Oh no, I was wrong, gotta feel terrible about myself”, it’s “Yay I get to learn!”. I don’t say “well maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle and what I said isn’t actually completely untrue? (because I desperately need to feel like I was right)” But responses to my critiques of astrology have tended to be more annoyed and personal, shifting the goalposts, feigned half-agreement to offer compromise (“well newspaper astrology is an oversimplification but if we throw on more parameters then it works”) because the social contract demands that compromise be met with compromise. That latter thrust is a liberalism, an attempt to “compromise” in the middle between “astrology is false” and “astrology is true”. But truth and falsehood are binary states, and if you compromise the truth you get a falsehood by definition.

It is a liability I keep in mind when evaluating how much to trust and rely on which comrades in what ways. I see belief in astrology being more comorbid with people who will make consensus-based and vibes-based assessments rather than looking at the world as it actually is. This is a liability because they have demonstrated that when they are forced to choose between inconvenient reality and convenient fiction, they will take the path that’s emotionally easier for them even if it’s wrong. Without getting into details, I’ve seen that play out badly. It wasn’t astrology that misled them, but the tendencies that led them to cling to astrology. I dodged harms that others did not because I was willing to acknowledge inconvenient realities and go against the denialistic consensus, choosing the harder path forward, while they did not and chose the easier and more socially-acceptable path, to their detriment.

And speaking of the social dynamics, from the outside it looks like some people got into astrology because it’s The Thing to be doing. I knew a guy who did it because it helped him get laid but then since he was dating people who believed in astrology, he had to keep believing in astrology. It’s a social thing to do to be social with other people. If my one-cuttlefish war against astrology won tomorrow and suddenly the majority of people in queer leftish-adjacent circles here decided that astrology is cringe, would most people still stick with it because they’re True Believers? Or would they quietly drop it because they were using it as a social gimmick in the first place? I don’t know.

Denial is an emotional protective mechanism. Astrology is protecting something for these people. It’s providing something, like maybe a way to express their feelings or describe their personality. But wouldn’t it be better to learn how to express these things directly without resorting to a framework that requires you and the listener to believe in complete lies? There’s a lot of harm that comes from ineffective and indirect communication, and this fosters that. Don’t tell me your Mars is in Gemini and it’s a retrograde week so that’s why you’re insufferable today (idk if any of those words made sense because I don’t know astrology and if I did it still wouldn’t make sense because astrology isn’t real). Take some goddamned personal accountability for your actions and tell me you have an anger problem because of some traumatic stuff you don’t want to get into the details about that you’re trying to get some help for in therapy, and I’ll be way more willing to grant you patience and work around the big feelings with you than if you say “I’m just like that because of the stars and there’s no changing it, haha, isn’t it quirky”. Unless perhaps gaslighting yourself into believing that bad behaviors are innate parts of ourselves is your way of avoiding trying to be better and grow up?

In summary: Astrology is bullshit, and it’s worth struggle-sessioning over and discouraging it. I think coddling it holds people back from becoming more resilient and competent people, which are what we need for a revolutionary cadre. However, more important is to use this example to engage with people who are caught up in it and help them patch out the underlying vulnerabilities that leave them open to falling into this trap in the first place. Because if we just debunk astrology or socially pressure them out of it, the liabilities will not be fixed to prevent future harm, and they’ll fall for some other bullshit instead. I sometimes try to cook up an effort post about those underlying liabilities, but it’s a lot of work to articulate and then condense it into something readable, and thus far I have not been able to.

Why do I not say the same about religion at large? Because established religions constitute a much different cultural force than new age belief systems and can provide a set of moral ethics that lead people to leftism — after all, it was my religious upbringing that laid the ethical foundations which led me to Communism. But Astrology provides no ethics save for hyper individualism, which too often lead to reactionary or at the very least really harmful behavior.

Yes astrology is bullshit, but the hate it gets is disproportionate compared to other kinds of woo, and I believe it is because it is a thing that has historically (In recent history anyway) appealed to women and is culturally associated with women. Unlike basically any other kind of woo, astrology doesn’t have a noteworthy body count, it harms basically no one, and it just sits there being a bit silly.

Yall are a bunch of boring nerds

This is Sinophobic against the Chinese Zodiac. /S

biology: science about living organism

geology: science about rocks

entomology; science about insects

anthropology: science about human societies/cultures

astrology: magic that says stars influence humans, not in the sense of giving directions, but dictate personality from birth.

wtf is this bullshit.

Anthony of Boston erasure

your only like this because jupiter is in gatorade

Typical Taurus take.

It’s not real like Tarot.

Seriously I don’t believe in Astrology or Numerology.

I like Tarot because it’s a fun parlour game to do with friends and it gives me something to do alone when I’m stressed that aids self reflection.

I’ve got to say I’m very skeptical of cis het men with strong opinions about Astrology though. It’s like Reddit atheism, even if it’s correct I find it a personal red flag.

its astral phrenology.

youre making a prediction about me based on where stars are in the sky. No different than where the lumps are, on my head.