Sunday, September 20, 2009

Horoscopy or the road to moronic marriages and crappy catastrophies part V

Ok.. we finally come to the end of this long winded discussion. I think I have successfully painted a picture of horoscopy as nothing better than a hobby. But there is something as to why people still use it. Why so many people still need to use random calculations to justify their lot in life. The answer is twofold...
1. People need to believe in something. Something that externalises the cause and effect of whatever is going on in their lives. This is especially true if someone is really suffering in life, they want to look for a reason, any reason why they are in the current state. It always helps if someone else takes the responsibility of the current situation. This is not a bad thing. Tt is a human tendency, it gives hope that one day things will change, or if I appease this god or that planet things will change. Gives them something to do, makes them believe that they are doing something change their lives.
2. People want to play safe, nobody wants to take untoward risks ( unless they are adrenaline junkies ). People believe that by doing all this.. they can empower their lives, strengthen their lives, and are therefore move to consulting astrologers etc. This is especially true when taking big decisions in life, marriage, a business venture. They think it will help them to understand any situation better and then act accordingly.
The first reason is really ok since it is human tendency to believe that something is governing their lives and that something is appeasable/controlloable. This gives them a feeling of having at least some control over their lives. All the human cultures belive in something or the other that is not human and that controls the way life is.
The second reason is also fine, again no one wants to go through life by the seat of their pants, it is good to have some tether of some belief to set one's point of view in life. But both of these stem from one and the same problem. Why can't anyone who does this accept that they are almost completely responsible for what is going on in their lives. If you are not happy in your marriage may it is time to rethink it rather than going to astrologers. If you are consistently unlucky in life.. maybe you are doing something wrong. I know this is very easy to say than to do.. but if almost all of the society thinks like this it will be an amazing place to live in. Everyone taking full responsibility of their own existence here, man that would be cool !! no need for any hookey like horoscopy because no need for any external justification of the any situation. If I am sad right now, yeah I am sad right now. I would rather try address the root of sadness in me rather than try to fix saturn or uranus and how they are looking at me right now. But this is all fine. There is only one thing that I cannot forgive....
Using astrology or horoscopy to predict doomsday or catastrophies... that really boils my blood
I watched a 'documentary' produced by the history channel called "2012: Nostradamus" or something like that. The premise of the whole 1.5 hours of drivel is that in 2012 ther world is either going to end or the end of the world is going to begin. Okm I can live with that, as long as you tell me just exactly WHY the world is going to end. Apparently on december 12 2012 the sun is going to rise in exact alingment with the centre of the galaxy as seen from the earth. Apparently this is very important. Ok.. I can live with that.. again pray tell me why is it important that the sun rising in alignemnt with the galactic centre in just parallax alignment makes it any different from any other sunrise. Granted this happens once every 65000 years or so.. but still what is the big deal. The Halley's comet comes every 76 years.. still why is that a big deal ? (Geroge W bush gets elected only once in 5 billion years, again why is this special ? or important ? ). Apparently the Mayan calender ends exactly on december 21 2012. Great !! mayans were amazing astronomers, there is no doubting that but pray tell me how do you know when their calender began ? so you can so smugly predict that it will end on dec 21 2012 ? this is absolute nonsense. OF course mayans knew about the precession of equinoxes, that is the wobbling of the earth's axis so that the pole star changes after every 26000 years. but that does not mean that anything else is going to happen. Apparently Mr.Nostradamus was an accomplished astrologer who predicted all this nonsense 400 years ago and wrote cryptic poems. He ( or his son ) made 16 watercolour drawings to depict all of this. Now one Mr. Jim Wiener proudly says that these drawings depict the end of the world when the sun and the galactic centre align. I mean honestly if you see the drawing from which Mr.Weiner draws his conclusion you will say I want whatever drug this guy is on... It is a drawing of the upper half of a naked man with a bow and arrow ( presumably sagittarius) shooting and arrow at the drawing of an upper half of a naked woman. Mr.Weiner suggests that to him the woman represents the centre of the galaxy as it is going to be aligned with the arrow of sagitarius. All I see is one naked guy and his naked girlfriend doing kinky stuff.. How the hell does he relate that to the galaxy ? Another one is a sword around which a ribbon is wrapped. The ribbon is supposed to be the galaxy. He says it means the sun is going to rise in alignment with the center of the galaxy and that the Milky way looks S shaped from earth. Mr.Weiner please go outside and look to the skies. The galaxy looks NOTHING like an S. Maybe a horizontal I or the bottom part of L. But S ? man this guy is on a roll...
Now let us again consider why would the sun rising with galactic centre cause on whit of a difference on the earth. Again gravity or electromagnetism are the only two avenues available for this interaction to have any effect. The centre of the galaxy is ALWAYS on any one side of the earth since it is a point. So whatever is effect on earth.. it is going to be unidirectional and we have been perfectly safe till now. So who knows why the sun aligning with a MASSIVE amount of matter in the sky would make a difference. It is like saying an elephant is trying to break down a door and not succeeding and an electron comes along to help it and suddenly the door breaks !!
Apparently every culture on the planet has this as prediction in their calendars, says one lady and provides a long list of cultures. O lady of the infinite wisdom you did not count India or China as any culture in your long list. These two places on earth were the greatest civilisations the planet has ever seen, NOT just in amount of sheer number of people living there !! but whatever they had achieved in science and astronomy and maths and medicine. Westerners were still burning people at stakes when we were building universities. The chinese and Indian calendars never end btw. Sure we have a creation and destruction myth and that it is cyclic but it never bloody mentions a calender in conjunction with heavenly events.
This alignment is supposed to trigger a shift in the earth's magnetic field and this is coinciding with an increase in solar activity. Well if the earths magnetic field swtiches overnight.. that would be one hell of a party. A molten mass of a few hunderd million million tonnes suddenly starts to spin in the opposite direction inside the centre of the earth would really cause a stir. I am assuming that these fools know that the magnetic field is caused by the molten metal spinning inside the centre of the earth, and that the direction of the spinning is the reason for the polarity of the magnetic field.
This is bordering on foolishness, there are many many other things that really irritated me and I cannot react to them without foul language. See the problem with this nonsense is that people will actually believe this shit and stop living their lives. This causes a down everywhere, economy, production everything. Religous nuts would use this date to do something catastrophic to prove that the god they believe in has ordained this and they are just helping to prove the theory correct ( man if I had assistants like that to prove my theories I would have gotten a nobel prize by now ). Therefore one must be very careful about propaganda about this kind. Especially to a population ready to believe such nonsense and willing to take drastic steps about it.
So when the world does not end on 21 st december 2012, I am going to find Jim Weiner and kick him in the ass till my foot bleeds and then switch to the other foot and continue ( hopefully on live TV ). The bastard has even written a book on this listing all these 'evidences'. I am going to make him eat every page of his book when it does not happen.
So this is the reason why horoscopy is good only for an evening's entertainment and is really the road to moronic marraiges and crappy catastrophies.
Thank you all for sticking with this till the end... The next series in a few days would be on creationism vs evolution. But I bet you know who is going to win that fight :D

4 comments:

Scarecrow said...

Holy crap!! Jim Weiner is sure in for loads of trouble.... He might as well pray for the world to end so that he doesn't have to face you! heheheh

Ashwin Kelkar said...

you bet !!!... and the funny part is even though he prays for it to end .. it is not going to hehehe.. so he his dead either way :D

pooja said...

Loved the elephant-electron analogy:) and i completely agree on the propaganda bit too. We as a population are so ready to believe such stuff as a solution, we really need to be wary of propaganda.

Unknown said...

the man is named weiner....maybe he's just looking for revenge...

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just your regular guy who dreams too much. i read a lot don't remember it all though.. swim, trek, yoga.. think and read more.. that about sums it up..