Woke or stay awake has been in use since the late 19th century as an invocation to stand against racial prejudice and discrimination. Over time, woke came to be used to refer to a broader awareness of social inequalities such as sexism and denial of LGBTQ rights and became the shorthand for the US Left approach to identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery.
In the backlash the political right and some centrists use the term pejoratively to disparage leftist and progressive movements as superficial and insincere performative activism. The terms woke-washing and woke capitalism later emerged to criticize businesses and brands who use politically progressive messaging for financial gain.
‘The Trump administration’s “war on woke” has pushed a lot of large companies and institutes to retreat from the diversity, equity and inclusion policies they used to pretend to be proud of.’
There is not much astrology in this except that two early examples of the use of ‘woke’ fell on Saturn Pluto squares which are repressive in nature – Pluto = power and Saturn = social ruling classes. So ‘woke’ was a way of standing up and not submitting.
The recent Neptune in Pisces during both of Trump’s terms did not bring clarity, quite the opposite as it muddied the waters. And did it in both directions as the victim-culture emerged.
One problem with the identity politics of marginalized groups is that they assume the manifest unfairness of their situation should be prioritised by the wider population. The problem being that the ‘ordinary’ person does not have the bandwidth to cope with multiple groups demanding rightful attention, so they switch off.
There is an extension to this in the results of a psychological study done years ago which showed that where people can help another with problems they will. Where circumstances are too overwhelming and the situation is such that they can’t help, they treat the ‘victim’ with hostility, maybe since it arouses guilt or a sense of impotence.
On a personal note, it irritated me immensely in the 1990s when I ran a campaign about child abuse and could not understand why everyone was not as enraged as me about inaction to root out cruelty and worse. Or even interested. They just tuned out. Not their thing and what could they do anyway? Getting realistic is a hard lesson but it helps.
One other problem about social attitudes is the pendulum swing – victims of all shades used to be swept under the carpet and now they are everywhere. Neptune in Pisces may be part of the reason for the snowflake effect, with minor infractions to social niceties being blown out of all proportion.
Trevor Phillips also had an interesting set of observations recently in The Times: “Too much political time is spent trying to protect our youngsters, we could take a lot from immigrant family values. It has been apparent for some years that poor immigrants display a mental and emotional resilience that seems to be rapidly disappearing in the historically native population.”
In England, 15.9 per cent of white children needed Send (special educational needs) support last year. The equivalent for black Africans was 10.3 per cent, for Indians 6.7 per cent and for Chinese-heritage children 5.6 per cent. ‘Immigrant parents, themselves typically the products of hard, unforgiving circumstances, raise their children to expect the world to be unkind, holding that no amount of coddling by the state will ever protect them from its hard knocks.’
My own pet theory (being old) is that my UK generation were brought up by no nonsense parents who had lived through WW11 and their parents WW1 before that.
Saturn in Aries until 2028 (leaving Neptune out of the equation) may knock some of the more fragile over-reactions out of the picture. It tends to produce circumstances that demand self-reliance and will attempt to put a curb on an overly dependent mindset.
I realise none of the above is of much help to those who are discriminated against. Maybe (??) Pluto in Aquarius will bring a tolerance of difference and help to iron out some injustices. Saturn Neptune will also do its bit for women and workers.
The post Woke – Saturn in Aries and self-reliance first appeared on Astroinform with Marjorie Orr – Star4cast.
