Guest Writer
(Concluded from Part 2, yesterday.)
New Humanitarians: We Must Start Where We Are
Part 3/3 – The Long, Long, Long Term
By Shayne Laughter, ©2019
Feels like we’ve been waiting forever for the RV.
Of course we haven’t. But whether it’s five years like me or fifteen years like some, looking back at the promises and hopes and disappointments makes it feel like forever.
Question is, how far forward can we look with this endless wealth?
We are encouraged to accept 25-year payouts of our negotiated principal’s interest. So it’s possible to think only about a 25-year plan. But 25 years is just one generation. What about the generations after that?
A multi-generational vision for projects using our RV wealth sounds like a good idea; however, what’s been demonstrated in long-lived family businesses is that the third generation loses interest and energy.
The business either closes or gets sold out of the family and changes according to the new owner’s quest for growth and profit. That phenomenon might spring from the conventional profit-driven business model that resists change.
I’m adopting a looser model for my multigenerational plans with the aim of inspiring and instructing future generations on how to study events and systems and come up with action plans themselves (so I don’t have to do it from the grave).
At the same time, I have found a way to look at the future and extrapolate what kinds of challenges and opportunities humanity will face in the next 2,000 years, or all during the Age of Aquarius.
It uses a field of astrology called the Precession of the Equinoxes.
This is my over-simplified version of a complicated subject, so you’ll have to do your own Googling as I go along.
We have heard of the Age of Aquarius, and if you know something about astrology, you’ll remember that each Age (i.e., the time it takes one Zodiac sign to cross the sky) lasts about 2,000 years.
I looked backwards into history and saw that as each Age played out, certain developments of human civilizations around the world tended to reflect the signature qualities of that sign.
And as the Ages changed, the status of a particular field of activity changed. Let’s use Agriculture as an example:
Age of Gemini (8,000 years ago) Nomadic herding was the dominant activity for food and social structures. Planting seeds and harvesting in one place permanently was a marginal activity, a Rumor.
Age of Taurus (6,000 years ago) Agriculture was the hottest thing going! It was the Frontier of power.
Age of Aries (4,000 years ago) War, heroism and conflict had become the new, exciting, mysterious Frontier. Agriculture was the Status Quo.
Age of Pisces (past 2,000 years) As the Frontier of power turned to religions, priesthood and cities, Agriculture’s status remained necessary, but the mass sentiment towards it was of Decadence.
Being a farmer was embarrassing, lacking culture and education. Who wanted to stay down on the farm anymore? People went to the cities to seek their fortune.
And then … as humans separated from Agriculture, it became industrialized, a force for poisoning the Earth (one of the signatures of Pisces is poison and toxins).
Age of Aquarius (now, and the next 2,000 years) If you have studied Astrology, you will know that the signature qualities of Aquarius are humanitarianism (hello!), invention, electricity, communications, and networks (double hello!).
It should be obvious that these qualities have entered the thinking and activities of human civilizations since about the last quarter of the age (ie. the Renaissance), and really ramped up in the final century of the Age of Pisces.
That is to say, Aquarius energy was a Rumor that grew in strength from the Renaissance on, and declared itself the next Frontier of power during the final (20th) century.
So, looking ahead, and knowing that Agriculture became degraded into Decadence during Pisces, what happens to it in Aquarius?
Maybe something you didn’t expect, but you can see it happening. Agriculture becomes a Spiritual Practice. Reconnecting to the Earth, to food, to water, to ecosystems has become a conscious path for millions upon millions.
Now you can use the signature qualities of a Zodiac sign’s Age to track human development though history, looking at archaeological record, art history, religious practice, and written documents.
What starts out as a Rumor invading minds in one Age becomes the Frontier of power in the next (the Age of the sign ruling these qualities); those anchored qualities provide the stability of Status Quo for the next Frontier of power. Status Quo gets boring, degrades into Decadence, and finally is stripped back to its essence as Spiritual Practice.
More importantly for New Humanitarians, you can also use this progression to look ahead, and speculate how human society may develop in the next 2,000 years.
In Aquarius, we have to consider what forces are Status Quo (stable but getting tired), what is now Decadent (War) (hooray), what has passed into Spiritual Practice (Agriculture and all things Earth), and what will be tickling our dreams as Rumor.
There’s one more reason why I need to pass around this tool for looking at the future. Using astrology again, we understand that each sign has its positive signature qualities, and its … not so positive ones. Pisces, for example, has shadow qualities of delusion, illusion, intoxication, alcohol, drugs (both narcotic and pharma), addiction, oil, and poison.
If we use this progression as a lens for really studying history, we can see how in the last 500 years of the Age, the Frontier starts to harden, and manifest more of the sign’s shadow.
Think about what Aquarius’ shadow qualities are – rigidity, inhumanity, lack of empathy and compassion, emotionally shut off, narcissism, superiority complex. Qualities that create extreme isolation.
As New Humanitarians planning for the next 80 generations, how do we instruct our multigenerational projects to mitigate this sclerosis before it begins?
Answer: Use the incoming Rumor.
The next Age after Aquarius will be Capricorn. Check out the positive qualities of that sign: Integrity, personal responsibility, balanced restraint, valuing community and one’s place in it, capacity for both high vision and great depth.
These impulses will guide the generations of the final quarter-Age as they begin to rebel against the Aquarian shadow. We can prepare our project staff to be among the vanguard teachers, by wiring positive Capricorn qualities into our Aquarian Frontier work.
O children of Aquarius, remember — Capricorn is coming!
END