When Is A Conspiracy Not a Conspiracy?

A Paradigm View for Everyday Living

Since there’s been a long tradition of philosophers writing letters to friends to express their ideas, I thought I’d try to do the same. Recently I had occasion to write to a friend about the history of philosophy, and I thought it came out okay—not perfect, but pretty good stuff. So, I thought I’d share it with you (and if you don’t like it, please don’t tell me—I’m very sensitive):

Dear Friend,

During the long history of philosophy and spirituality, there have been roughly two ways of looking at the world. In the West, most scholars identify them with (1) Plato and (2) Aristotle—though many thinkers and teachers are included under these headings, and Aristotle is not as bad as the ideas under “Aristotle” will sound (though I always found him offensive personally—too sneaky, a bad sense of humor, and too interested in poisons for me to feel comfortable having a meal with him).

I'm going to take these two in reverse order. The (2) Aristotelian worldview conceives of the world as atoms floating in the void (though, again, Aristotle himself was a bit better than this—but that’s the last time I say something nice about him). All of us, according to this view, are just isolated things drifting in a meaningless, empty universe with no purpose and no destiny.

Nor are there any intrinsic relationships between the atoms or between any of us, so there's no interconnectedness. We're all separate and isolated. If we think we can get together, it’s pretty much an illusion—just two atoms (or two people, if you prefer) haphazardly bumping into each other, as in a game of billiards where the two opponents can’t play very well. (This reminds me of my college days—not because of atomism, but because I was so terrible at billiards.)

The atomistic you’re-all-alone-in-a random-universe view is favored by dictators, because they figure that if people take this worldview seriously, they (the dictators, I mean) can come in and claim to create order—to help people overcome their meaninglessness and isolation. Of course, meaninglessness and isolation make people afraid—especially when something goes wrong—so the dictators claim to deliver security. That way, they take over. Their “order” becomes everyone else’s order, and before you know it, the conquest is complete.

You see, this worldview then is really a prelude to an invasion, though almost no one who holds it will admit this.

Now, I’m going to add some subtlety here, both because the subject needs it and because I intend to impress you with my philosophical acumen. (What are friends for, if not to tell you how good at something you are?) If you look at the previous paragraph—no, not the one-sentence one, the one before it—you see the phrase “when something goes wrong.” In fact, things don’t just go wrong. Someone makes them go wrong. So, let’s now look at the atomistic worldview playing itself out one more time. This, in other words, is a replay with a twist.

The real way atomism works is that control freaks enter a galaxy and introduce this perfectly silly worldview (atomism) precisely to make people feel as if their lives are meaningless. The controllers then set themselves up with a special status—they're the rich and powerful in the society or the landed aristocracy or bluebloods or something like that. The rest of the people are peasants. Though there is no meaning to the universe (that’s a tenet of this worldview, you recall) the wealth and the power at least give some meaning, and the wealthy and powerful have that meaning, so the peasants are supposed to look up to them.

So the peasants are led to believe that the rich and powerful could (if anything happened) help the average folks. You’ll recognize this as medieval feudalism, of course, but it’s pretty much a description of every government in the history of the planet—with a few notable exceptions. Granted, the control freaks will hide—they’ll rule through a Senate or a corporation or mind control—but they’ll always be doing the feudalism dance.

Are these controllers going to sit around and wait for something to go wrong? Do you think that’s how they got to be expert control freaks? Not a chance. They’re going to create chaos and suffering—blaming it on some faceless force (the economic forces of history or greed or racism or the belligerence of human nature—some piece of sophistry that sounds good on the evening news).

Now, on top of meaninglessness, chaos is more than the peasants can take, so they go screaming to the rich and powerful for help. The rich and powerful (really the control freaks in disguise, remember) “benevolently” step in to create “security” and “order”—and in no time at all, a dictatorship exists.

And it all started from a harmless-looking worldview. So why am I a philosopher and not a politician? (Let’s pass over the annoying fact that no one would elect me to anything.) I’m a social philosopher because, if you nip the atomistic worldview in the bud, the controllers can’t get to first base (did you ever notice how often men slip into sports images—I’m sorry about that).

So, what's the alternative? I thought you’d never ask.

(1) The Platonic worldview conceives of the world as a meaningful place, in which human beings live their lives according to a higher purpose and in line with a higher principle, which Westerners like to call the One or the Whole or “God” (which is not always a clear term, but what the heck—it will do for now).

The general idea—similar to Eastern spiritual traditions—is that all of us are originally embedded in the One or the Whole or God (again, whatever term you prefer—I'll use “the One” because I just had it over to dinner the other night and I feel that I’ve got a handle on it). In the original state, all beings are implicit in the One (“implicate,” as both Nicholas of Cusa and the late David Bohm called it). Then the One begins to reflect on itself, and voila! beings begin to appear (that’s us).

We flow out from the One (our ultimate source), have a multitude of experiences, and then return to the One, bringing our enriched consciousnesses (enriched from all our experiences) with us, adding to the One’s reflection on itself.

This is the BIG PICTURE view of how we get billions of galaxies and uncountable beings. The One always reflects on itself infinitely—because its nature is infinite—so it’s always “creating” infinite beings: universes, planets, people, animals, plants, and those men in Congress (proving that even God can’t get everything right).

Now, in this worldview, there are no special-status “rich and powerful” types. Everyone has a meaningful life. Everyone has a destiny. So there’s no need to create an elite class and a peasant class. All governments under this worldview are egalitarian by definition: a society of creative individuals leading meaningful lives.

In fact, the society flows from that creativity, and social institutions grow from or adapt to individual creativity—exactly the opposite of the way atomistically-informed societies work: social institutions are forced onto individuals, who must conform.

All of the meaningful lives within these collectively creative societies are interconnected from their source in the One. There is no separateness. All of us, in other words, are naturally connected to all beings (which is what we celebrate when we fall in love, for instance—each great love match symbolizes the interconnectedness of all beings in the One). So, there’s no fear of chaos and suffering, because we don’t fear ourselves.

In this worldview, therefore, when there is suffering, we don’t label and fear someone or some group. Rather, we try to find out what caused the suffering and heal it. The other worldview (the Aristotelian-atomistic one) creates dictatorial order to make people feel safe. This worldview (the Platonic one) uses healing to help people experience the true security of a dynamic oneness.

How is this relevant to astrology? Good question! If we were to draw a line across the point at which the One becomes the many—that is, at which the One expresses itself as all these beings (even lawyers and Senators and talk-show hosts), the One as a potential to be expressed would be on one side of the line, and the many (all of us) would be on the other side. Astrology is the language the two sides use to talk to each other.

That is, the One expresses itself in all kinds of meaningful forms, beings, and lives. But how are we to figure out what the meaning of (let’s say) our lives is? Ultimately, we have to LIVE the life to get that meaning, but wouldn’t a map to help us live it be nice too? Astrology is that map—at least, one of the best maps around.

Astrology gives us a way to talk about the meaning of life and the meaning of individual lives. It helps us see the meaning, so that we keep seeing the One in action. Meaning is the One in action in our lives—so a meaningful event or person is a “divine” being in that sense. And that’s why we think of meaningful people or meaningful happenings as our links to the divine. (By the way, historians with this worldview tend to look for meaningful events and people to write about, while atomistically-oriented historians are obsessed with wars and power plays).

As a result, we don’t fall into the meaninglessness of the other worldview. So, in this sense, astrology can help save humanity from being invaded by the Aristotelian-atomistic worldview and the dictatorships it brings with it. By giving us a clearer sense of meaning—linking the meaning of life (from the One) with the meaning of our lives (the many)—astrology helps us see the divine, or the spiritual, at work in our lives AS our lives.

So, that’s my overview of worldviews, and I welcome your comments—the positive ones, that is. And I wish you all the best in coming up with a view of the universe that makes sense to you.

Your wordy friend,

Chris