I live in an academic town where “white privilege” is, of course, one of the current insults tossed around by politically correct (usually white) folks who have latched on to this election year’s iteration of Black Lives Matter as their latest cause, making them feel important and special, superior to others whom they label “racist.” At least some of these others, and I include myself here, simply cannot abide the prevailing mental program of subsuming individuals into group identities of any kind, including color, race, gender, class, status, age, religion, politics, nationality, etc.

Question: where and when and how and why did this identification with some tinier and tinier niche group rather than the full, complex, unique expression of the individual self begin?

For example, take gender: how many genders are there now, and how many pronouns to go along with each tiny gender niche? I grew up with two genders back in the 40s and 50s. I still recognize two, since I acknowledge biology as primal on 3-D material planet Earth.

And yet, isn’t it obvious that each unique individual enjoys or endures some combination of both masculine and feminine qualities internally? And doesn’t it become obvious through lived experience that our sacred duty is, over time, and with patience, to learn how to consciously balance and integrate the “anima” and the “animus” within?

When will all the individuals in the LGBTQIA+ grouping deepen their conception of their own individual essence? When will they realize that the “inner marriage” is what the drive for “individuation” is all about?

Read Jung, please!

Stop basing your whole “identity” on your superficial outer covering, your body!

Okay. Enough ranting.

As we all know, this all-too-familiar analytic penchant for “divide and conquer” has been used for centuries as a devious and deliberate strategy to get and keep people fighting each other while their puppet-masters continue to rule the roost.

I wonder: might the current divisive and counterproductive group identity fetish be the result of the mind control endured over the many decades that kids in schools have had to work in groups, with group goals and group identities? And was this group identity preference in school curricula actually an insidious and deliberately designed prelude to the now prevailing academic bias for socialism over capitalism in so-called “higher education” that has been spreading like a cancer since the 1970s?

NOT THAT I’M A CAPITALIST!

BUT I’M NOT A SOCIALIST EITHER!

Too much capitalism tends to selfish greed and domination. Too much socialism tends to cultish, robotic behavior, communism.

Rather, let us begin to experiment, in human society, at the grass roots level, with a dynamic and prolonged struggle to creatively marry these two seemingly incompatible ways of living on earth into new ways of both being, and being with others. To this end, let us encourage experiments which include the best of capitalism (freedom, including freedom to fail and learn from mistakes plus a risk-taking entrepreneurial attitude) and the best of socialism (connectedness; security; knowing others have your back).

Astrologically, a massive potential for experimentation is to be ignited at the Winter Solstice, 2020, when Jupiter and Saturn both reach 0° Aquarius, a mental sign that values the synergy of group thought and cooperative, horizontally networked action via the exploratory efforts of fully expressive, creative Leo individuals.

Jupiter and Saturn will then travel through Aquarius together for one year, until Jupiter leaves for Pisces, with Saturn remaining in Aquarius until 2023. The values and promise of Aquarius will then deepen profoundly when Pluto itself goes into Aquarius in 2024, to remain for another twenty years!

To my mind, the second Trump administration needs to be devoted to the initiation of this kind of radical experimentation, if the U.S. and the world is to survive Pluto’s first return to its original position at 27° Capricorn between now and 2023 after 248 years. The time for U.S. hegemony and warmaking (both sophomoric, unevolved uses of Plutonian power) is over. President Trump knows that. And he wants his second term to be crammed full of exciting discoveries. You can feel that in him every time he speaks.

Here in Green Acres Village, we’re ahead of this curve, already consciously experimenting with aspects of both capitalism and socialism — plus all other contradictions, i.e., paradoxes, that we come across, especially those concerning Individual and Community, Work and Play, and most fertile of all, Light and Shadow. All these contradictions/paradoxes exist within the self, within the group, between the group and the neighborhood, the neighborhood and the city, on and on, in widening circles, from the center of the self on out. 

An example: until this year, we held and worked all our gardens in common. This year, we’re experimenting with each household having its own garden (two or three people in each house), and a common garden besides. Result? The frisson between the new (socialist) cooperation among people inside each house and the new humorous (capitalist) competition among the three households over which house has the “best” garden have noticeably ramped up the energy for food production. YES!

But to get back to where this post began:

Here’s Jordan Peterson on the perniciousness of “white privilege.” I heartily agree.