America In Transition

Debauchery and Rehab

Astrological symbols can come in very handy in times of deep cultural malaise. The opposition upon us now is reminding us that Neptune’s intention is to undermine whatever a given society’s definitions of realness happen to be. That’s the planet’s job. It messes around with our sense of clarity in order to tempt us beyond “reality” into something greater. But we must not confuse the transit’s true purpose with the ways it gets distorted through clouded consciousness.

It is all but inevitable that group expressions of this opposition will be askew in a culture that is out of touch with the spiritual meaning at Neptune’s core. Modern secular societies have precious few healthy mechanisms to model this planet’s key teaching: that every living thing in the world is connected; We Are All One. Without this central idea to guide us, we are at the mercy of the troubling emotions that slosh around just below the surface of the mass mind.

In its confusion over the Saturn-Neptune dynamic, American society has pressed into service a well-oiled escapism industry—among whose central players are television, electronic gadgets, alcohol and Big Pharma. But the enthusiasm with which the USA embraces escapism masks an acute ambivalence. It is one of the stock incongruities of American culture that conventional opinion heartily condones some drugs (Neptune), prescribing them as fast as they can be cooked up in the lab and promoting them with multi-million-dollar advertising campaigns; while other drugs—including far-less-pernicious ones—are righteously criminalized and stigmatized (Saturn).

Another expression of this societal confusion is the current Revolving-Door Rehab phenomenon. In a reaction to the Saturn/ Neptune contradiction, pop culture breathlessly extols its partying celebrities, sending paparazzi to the nightclubs to keep us informed about what they’re wearing and drinking as they make the scene—yet condemns them the minute they are perceived as crossing some fine line between high jinks and debauchery.

The trouble with all this bouncing back and forth between the transcendant cravings of Neptune and the punitive impulses of Saturn is that it is not a response to the opposition; it is a reaction. The only way to resolve the opposition is to find some sort of equilibrium between them.