art by Melanie WeidnerAs many of you know, one of the paradigms by which I live is that we are the co-creators of our reality. A healthy capitalist economic system is based on this premise: When consumers feel prosperous, they buy stuff. When they buy stuff, the people who manufacture the goods make more stuff, they create more jobs, and their profits increase and they pay their employees more which causes them to feel more prosperous and they buy more stuff. The company is stronger and wealthier and the stock price rises, which creates more optimism in the stock market.
When Pluto was in Sagittarius, between 1995 and 2008, this process of optimism creating abundance, which is after all a Sagittarian expansionist theme, became corrupted and rather than a healthy balance of optimism fueling production, we had an economy that was based on sheer optimism and speculation.
The globalization that spread like wildfire under Pluto in Sagittarius (the expansion of Sagittarius also includes travel and exploration of foreign cultures) caused the loss of over 3 million jobs in the United States. It can be argued that this contraction in the United States produced the expansion of the economies of China and Inda among others, but the point here is that this contraction of the US economy was not reflected in the "relentless optimism" as I called it that we saw here in the US. As a result, the economy became overinflated and the bubble has now burst and is slowly deflating.
This deflationary period is a natural one, but if we don't understand the underlying reality we can become fearful and panicky, particularly if we lose our job. If we aren't careful we can get caught in a spiral of despair that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as our belief that the economy is crashing creates that reality in our own lives. Sometimes our personal planetary cycles, especially if we are being visited by Saturn or Pluto, make it easy to slip into a gloom from which it is difficult to escape.
It is during these times that it's particularly important to focus on the positive and create strong intentions for the life that you want. It's easy to be positive when life is going great, but when we've lost our job, or our parent has died, or our spouse has left us and taken all of our money - those are times that truly test our faith in life.
Focusing on the positive does not mean ignoring the negative. It does not mean slapping on a happy face and avoiding real problems that affect us. But it does mean a willingness to look for the door that is opening as one closes, and to know that we CAN create a life of prosperity and joy.
This is the principle that has guided through many a dark night of the soul, and which has helped me to create an incredible life. It worked for Barack Obama, whose main message was Yes We Can create change in the world, Yes We Can have a government that serves the people rather than the other way around. It will work for you too.
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As a result of Pluto transits over the course of most of my adult life, I feel little attachment to "things" but have a deep appreciation of internal wealth. A generally positive outlook is priceless (to borrow a phrase from a credit card commercial).
Sure, we face tough economic times but some where around the country and the world, there are people living with far less and they are still happy. If the collective takes a deep breath and realizes they can live quite comfortably with far fewer "toys" (Pluto in Sagittarius), we will be fine.
Besides, it's going to be so much fun watching our new President in action! :-)
Hi Lynn: One of the things that has astounded me in the last few days has been the worldwide joy at Obama's election. The only presidential election in my adult life that I remember feeling any kind of joy about was 1992 (very short-lived), and I don't recall hearing of any kind of international response of any sort. Yes, we truly are a small planet, and I pray that maybe colonialism will finally disappear and maybe be reversed.
I would like to know what you think of the fact that during the time of Pluto in Sag when we saw this global expansion of markets, one of the major things that happened was the creation of a workforce wherever the work could be done for the cheapest, not only resulting in the loss of American jobs as you mention, but in the hugest possible profits for the "captains of industry". So as the American middle and working class shrunk,, and the gap between rich and poor widened immeasurably here, the jobs were being done by extremely poor people elsewhere, often by children. It is argued that these low paying jobs are still better than what existed before in these countries, but to me it seems like slavery. With Pluto in Sagittarius, how could the ideals of that sign be so perverted. Yes, expansiveness I understand (with Jupiter in Sag on my asc, boy do I understand--lol), but how could we ignore what was happening in these countries, to these children, to the environments (no epa in indonesia, not to even mention China's pollution)? Wouldn't the idealism of Sagittarius have made this repulsive to us?
"Besides, it's going to be so much fun watching our new President in action! :-)"
You've got that right Neith! And a very good point that the wealth of a deep internal satisfaction is much to be desired.
"With Pluto in Sagittarius, how could the ideals of that sign be so perverted?"
Julie, I would argue that the ideals were already perverted, but it took Pluto traveling through Sagittarius to bring the perversion into the light where it could be transformed. That's the thing about Pluto - it looks for areas that are corrupt and not bringing us into an enlightened future and then it goes to work. That's the way Pluto works in our personal lives, and on a more global human level as well.
There are some factors in the chart of the US at work as well, such as the presence of natal Pluto in the second house of money and resources where it has a tendency to be ruthless and compulsive (Pluto) in money matters (second house).
As you say, "one of the major things that happened was the creation of a workforce wherever the work could be done for the cheapest, not only resulting in the loss of American jobs as you mention, but in the hugest possible profits for the "captains of industry". This is unfortunately all too common in the history of the United States, and I blame that pesky Pluto in the second house.
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