The Anthropocene and Time
Whether astrology is a valid way to organize reality and chart one's life or not, I think it's useful to explore the relationship between the belief in human agency and exterior forces which compel us to act in certain ways. Sylvia Federici, in her book Caliban and the Witch, states that part of the inquisition in Europe was to stamp out any magical beliefs that impeded productivity. One of those beliefs was in astrology, and so, people would often take off days from work if it was an inauspicious astrological date. Dale Pendell, in his book, Pharmako/Gnosis, relays the synchronicity of the industrial revolution, the invention of the clock, and the introduction of coffee into Europe. From these two scholars, we can see that our modern concept of time is built on exploiting maximum labor from workers. Thus, time and the way it works is built in the human psyche and directly related to the economic system which shapes how humans must adapt for the purpose of survival.
I feel inspired to comment on this post because there was a time that science and magic were the same thing. Or at least my teachers have said that. And in China as soon as the more modern science was denying magic as no science it became two separate things in the minds of most people. But they are one and the same.
ReplyDelete