This isn’t going to be a long blog; more of a mild rant, actually.
Readers of my blog know I blog about anything and everything that captures my attention but mostly my blog is filled with thoughts, stories, and insights that I gather while dealing with my cancer. Recently, I also blogged about The Skinny On Astrology, why I feel there is still, even in today’s world, a persistent belief in astrology.
One of the reasons why I moved to WordPress from Blogspot is the enhanced logging I get from WordPress. I was looking through my logs this weekend and I saw a disturbing trend; my post on astrology is, on average, 4-5x more popular than any other posts I have created. I link all of my posts to StumbleUpon, and a lot of my random traffic is driven from SU. I get a persistent and steady stream from my regulars, but SU can spike my traffic way up if a topic is interesting enough to the masses.
Apparently, astrology, not cancer, is important to the average StumbleUpon user.
I was shocked. I know that the Internet isn’t a tool for the elitist, intellectual, few. I’ve known that since the says of AOL when you couldn’t enter a chat room without being asked your “Age/Sex/Location” from every cyberslut trolling the boards. The Internet is just like real life and the bell curve of intelligence and interests runs the same gamut as real life. So I’m not sure why I am surprised that Astrology is more important than cancer. But I am.
I suppose I am disappointed. Astrology is crap, baloney, pseudo-science at best, and maliciously harmful at worst. It has no place in our world and is a relic of yesteryear that doesn’t have the good sense to die, because people with an astounding lack of critical thinking skills refuse to give it up. It doesn’t matter if it’s western sun astrology or Chinese zodiac astrology – all astrology is fake.
Cancer is one of the largest growing problems facing our society today. It kills hundreds of thousands of people a year. It attacks everyone and no one is safe. EVERY one of you reading this has been touched by cancer. It is a real problem. Ignorance of cancer can KILL YOU.
How sad is it that the cyber-surfers of the world are more interested in astrology than in the real-world problems and challenges of cancer and survivorship?
Sad to think… but I think people are more uncomfortable with the subject of cancer than astrology. Why? Perhaps because they see it as a black hole. Perhaps because they know someone with it/had it/died from it/remission/etc. and they just never really grasped how fully encompassing it can be — every waking moment. Perhaps because it’s not ‘fun’ and ‘entertaining’.
It’s the “bury my head in the sand” mentality. And yes, you are so right… ignorance of cancer can kill.
Good post… like always!
Dood… you’re missing the bigger picture here. If living with an ‘esoteric’ astrologer has taught me one thing it’s that Mainstream astrology (aka Horoscopes) is, indeed, total bullshit; True Astrology, that is, ESOTERIC Astrology, is not.
On the surface, mainstream astrology conveys generalized feedback that can answer anyone’s question so long as they fit into a 30 day window of that particular zodiac sign. The sad part is that this type of garbage is what caught on, while the real shit remains a “secret” that actually requires you to seek its enlightenment. Hence “esoteric”.
People brag about their horoscopes because of that generalization. The chances of a “horoscope” being -even somewhat remotely- true seem about as high as the “luck” one might receive from keeping a dead animal’s foot in their pocket. It has to do with that “belief”. If you BELIEVE that storing a limb from a fluffy rodent in your pants will bring you good luck, you’ll probably perceive the many ‘states of being’ that we all face every day to be more in your favor, simply because your mind’s desire is to be more aware and open to them. These “happenstances” don’t actually occur more often, you’ve just lowered your standards, so-to-speak. Horoscopes are necessary in society because they help zombies stay on the lookout for those postitive “circumstances” in life; but the actual message is no different than keeping an inspirational calendar on your desk.
As for cancer’s popularity in the world, it really shouldn’t surprise you that these articles receive less traffic. What did you find yourself doing before you had (or knew you had) cancer yourself? Would you have rather read an article about an unfortunate case of cancer, or a strongly opinionated blurb on a mystical science? Judging by your own analytics, it would seem people are more interested in something that excites them. There’s nothing exciting about cancer…
[purely opinion]
To me, cancer seems more like a beckoning from one’s own soul. A higher-self begs one for their attention, literally dying for them to do something creative. It wouldn’t matter if that particular ouput even reached anyone, so long as it satisfied the inner urge to bring about something positive in that person’s life; even a smile. People die from cancer when they let it defeat them. You should know better than anyone; you were out of work long enough to be able to focus on something so purely creative that it took your mind off of a terminal illness. Then what happened? Creativity killed your cancer.
You are a SURVIVOR man! A hero in your own world! And don’t discredit attitude for your feat – it absolutely has everything to do with it! You’re actually even such an inspiration to ME; and I don’t have cancer! Althought…I AM one 😉
[/purely opinion]
You have made me curious, EMo. What is “esoteric” astrology, what disciplines is it, how does it work, and why is it more accurate than mainstream astrology? I guess first I need to understand what the definition of astrology is. My understanding is that it is a belief that the positions of the stars and planets at the time of a person’s birth can be used to determine a person’s likely destiny, fate, or to give predictions of future events. What am I missing? What is this little-known side of astrology that I am not aware of?
As for cancer; cancer is a physical disease, but I do agree with you 100% there there is SOME kind of X-factor involved in attitude, stress, well-wishes, prayer, etc that can affect a person’s battle and subsequent recovery. My blogging and writing during my cancer treatments kept me sane and in a large part helped my body recover faster because I was not so focused on my illness that it consumed me. I’m not sure that creativity literally killed the cancer, but it has some kind of effect on it. There is so much we don’t know about mental health and disease recovery, so I don’t want to belittle my attitude and actions during treatment, but I also ALWAYS want to make sure the fantastic doctors and nurses who cared for me and treated me are acknowledged.
Still though – something has gone very right for me, so far. Makes you wonder wonder why/how I can come through my battle (this far) so well when others are not so lucky.
Thus is the great debate of why bad things happen to good people. 🙂
First, I’d like to ponder on your definition of astrology. A “belief”, to me at least, takes a simple study a bit far into a realm it shouldn’t be in the first place. That’s not to say that there aren’t people out there that use astrology as a system of belief, or faith even, I’m merely stating that astrology is much more trivial than that. Astrology could be defined (by collective definition) as the study of the supposed influences based on the position of planets, etc on human affairs. Notice that I didn’t go into anything as granular as predicting the future or anyone’s “fate”, but left it at a level that might just qualify this practice as a science.
Second, in order to understand astrology fully (and to be able to completely dismiss it without me getting in your face 😉 haha!), one needs to swallow the fact that astrology goes beyond a daily horoscope published by some lonely developer of a Facebook application. The people that want to pull up their inbox to find a fortune-cookie-horoscope-email will probably never see anything beyond the surface of a truly mystical science. And without the desire to know the “why” part of the equation, they might never come to grasp the fact that astrology can’t and doesn’t state things as they ‘are’, but merely how they ‘tend to be’ based on in the influences of celestial bodies in our solar system and beyond.
Which brings me to the ‘esoteric’ part. Typically, most astrological data, including that outside of a daily horoscope, tends to exhibit ‘exoteric’ meaning, or the “effects” of the Moon opposition Mars aspect for example. The ‘esoteric’ part of that is unique to one’s own reality and “journey through existence.” One not need rely on astrology to get through life, but could find it a useful tool to bring their consciousness to a level of understanding that might help them be aware of the reason for the effects they might experience.
[analogy_attempt]
If you were watching a race car zoom around a track, but the camera was restricted to see only three feet in front of the car, you could examine that the car swerves to the left every so often. You could never know why. But if you were able to pull back to a wide angle shot of the entire track, or even just more than what you could normally see, you’d come to find out that the car is swerving to avoid a piece of debris in the road as it passes it with every lap.
[/analogy_attempt]
To elaborate further, the word ‘esoteric’ is often defined as a branch of knowledge that is known by few; secret; difficult to understand (…hence known by few…hehe). ‘Exoteric’ in that sense would apply to things known by many; common knowledge; mainstream. So, add up everything I’ve said and form “esoteric astrology,” or a rare form of astrology that deals with interpretation rather than meaning.
Coming around to cancer, the “X-factor” that had an extremely important role to play in your own recovery could be called optimism. Metaphysical philosophies and occult studies teach that changing your way of thinking — not just thinking about things differently, but literally making a conscious effort to shift your perception of the reality around you — has an exponential and adverse effect on our physical health; like how slowly turning a dimmer switch gradually increases the light in the room. It’s said that Norman Cousins suffered from a disease that was fatal in 100% of victims, yet he overcame it with concentrated injections of laughter and vitamin C.
Physicians deserve credit for curing people as much as drive-thru attendants deserve credit for getting orders right. I mean, it’s their job, and they couldn’t have done it without you. You both deserve equal thanks and credit in that way, but I believe something has gone right for you because you chose it to. You made it so by doing what your heart and soul had been dying to do: to break free of a stressful environment, to connect with friends and family, but most importantly to give your creative spark the attention it deserves. I’m not belittling doctors in any way, because by all means they are extremely important and necessary in society, but their attitudes are only as important as your own.