Best Practices
I have long joked that "People like me probably invented religion." I tend to see motive in things that happen in life, like "The universe PLANNED that and did that to me intentionally."
I'm the kind of person who cusses at a videogame when I lose and loudly complains that "The videogame doesn't like me! It's being MEAN to me!"
No, I'm not being serious. I'm not actually insane -- at least not THAT insane. I realize that's not why I lost at a videogame.
I tend to surround myself with people who are NOT like me in that regard. I know this can go weird and bad places if it gets amplified instead of having checks and balances applied.
I'm not a big fan of religion. I think it was probably useful at one time, but with 8 billion people on the planet, it seems to have also jumped the shark at some point.
People who are religious seem to want to amplify such tendencies in me in a way that I don't like and don't confuse them with the facts. Me and most religious types tend to not get along all that well.
Religion is kind of an attempt to codify human wisdom. So is astrology. So is psychology.
Hundreds of years ago, astrology was useful to kings and the like probably largely because astrologers were learned men, there was less going on in the world so it was possible to keep up with ALL the important stuff and not have to pick and choose which subjects to follow.
I think saying "The stars tell me this" was a means to get both kings and astrologers off the hook over this uncomfortable, inconvenient reality that some decisions were de facto being made by an educated commoner and there wasn't necessarily a clear, bright line between what the king wanted or decided and what the astrologer did.
And then sometimes this went weird and bad places when the people with the power pressured the astrologer to tell them things the astrologer really couldn't tell them. Unable to decline to assure kings and nobility "You have a bright future and a wonderful life ahead of you" they did what was expected of them "at gunpoint."
Most of the time, I do NOT like giving advice and I do NOT want to be paid to give advice. This is one of the reasons I decided I did not wish to become an astrologer.
The big money in astrology seems to be found in two places.
I found astrology useful for casting my Natal Chart and READING a lot of BOOKS to try to sort out what some of this might mean so I could figure out how to cope more effectively with being me.
Canned astrology is currently NOT serious astrology, though perhaps that can be remedied to some degree, and personalized readings are the astrologer taking on a role similar to a therapist or couples counselor or life coach without having any formal credentials for ANY of those roles.
I decided that if I WANTED to make a career of giving advice on a personalized basis like that, I could go be a therapist or couples counselor and get the credentials for that instead of casting charts. I also decided I didn't want to be in the business of being paid to give personal advice of that sort at all under ANY professional title.
I did about 3.5 years of therapy total, a year in my teens and about 2.5 years in my twenties. Therapy is a process like peeling an onion and I dug down pretty deep.
So I tend to see things others are not comfortable with me seeing about them. When I give my analysis of the issue and give my advice based on that analysis, it's often something like "You were molested as a child and you need to do x, y and z to deal with your sexuality" or "You are a closeted gay person and you need to get out of your current dysfunctional hetero relationship and get a same sex lover."
This tends to NOT be music to their ears.
People don't want to hear stuff like that. People who have spent a lifetime arranging their life a particular way because of growing up going to church or because of messaging from their parents or whatever want answers that fit within a certain framework and that tends to not actually solve the problem.
Or they think I am very, very smart at certain things and -- like uneducated but powerful kings of old wanting educated but powerless astrologers to assure them the king has a glorious future ahead of him -- they want me to magic up some OTHER answer that is BOTH brilliant and ALSO fits within the constraints of the mental models that got them into this mess.
This fundamentally does not work.
And, no, such people tend to NOT want to hear "If you don't like MY advice, go ask SOMEONE ELSE for HELP. I've ALREADY given you my BEST answer. It does NOT get betterer if I keep at it."
People who really do have serious issues often have seriously bad habits as well and are prone to hanging their crap on other people, having unrealistic expectations for what someone else can do for them, etc. If people who had deep, dark secrets ruining their own lives were EASY to deal with by simply TELLING them what their deep, dark secret is and how to fix it, I would probably long ago have gone into some profession that pays well for providing "advice."
Alas, this is simply NOT how things work.
Rest assured, I didn't sort my problems out of a masochistic desire to spend the rest of my life being tortured by nutters who are incapable of just following instructions for how to fix their problem once it is identified. No, I would like to have a few NICE years before I check out of this world.
The other reason I don't like giving personal advice is because I was a full-time mother for a long time and even when my children were very little I didn't like MAKING them do things most of the time. I learned early that even small children know things about their lives and their bodies that mom does not know and their inability to articulate it does not mean it works well to ignore that info.
So I learned to check my ego at the door and when I tell people "You already have MY best advice. If you do NOT like it, look elsewhere for answers." I'm not simply blowing them off. I'm telling them "So get a second opinion. Maybe someone else will see something I don't see."
People who are convinced I'm the best there is don't want to hear that EITHER.
So I'm not real enthused about doing astrological readings for potentially hundreds of dollars per reading for wealthy people and THEN dealing with wealthy people REJECTING that advice and being UGLY to me and INSISTING I find some OTHER ANSWER, one they LIKE. I would much rather BLOG to put out useful info and TRY to include enough provisos that readers have some hope of sorting out whether or not this genuinely applies to them.
If they just aren't ready for that insight, they can potentially come back LATER and reread my writing and rethink how they feel (or whatever). If there is some detail of their life that means some particular conclusion isn't really relevant to their life, cool. No need to try to argue with ME about it.
I would like to see canned astrology improved upon so it's more useful to the masses. I fundamentally dislike the idea that only very wealthy people can afford good feedback from a professional astrologer and everyone else has to put up with this watered down GARBAGE that is so bad that a lot of intelligent people are like "EW! Only NUTTERS would believe this CRAP."
If more astrologers would treat "predictive" astrology more like weather prediction and less like divination, then putting out information about upcoming influences would stop being so "Ew!" and become a more rational process of taking this into account, much like we take into account weather predictions.
With the exception of extreme weather events, people don't let the weather run their lives. They go out in the rain to run their errands or get to work, they just try to take an umbrella or wear a rain coat.
The fact that even canned astrology tends to default to trying to give advice rather than inform is part of why astrology currently has such a terrible reputation. Astrological advice from someone who has never cast your birth chart is useless nonsense.
I'm the kind of person who cusses at a videogame when I lose and loudly complains that "The videogame doesn't like me! It's being MEAN to me!"
No, I'm not being serious. I'm not actually insane -- at least not THAT insane. I realize that's not why I lost at a videogame.
I tend to surround myself with people who are NOT like me in that regard. I know this can go weird and bad places if it gets amplified instead of having checks and balances applied.
I'm not a big fan of religion. I think it was probably useful at one time, but with 8 billion people on the planet, it seems to have also jumped the shark at some point.
People who are religious seem to want to amplify such tendencies in me in a way that I don't like and don't confuse them with the facts. Me and most religious types tend to not get along all that well.
Religion is kind of an attempt to codify human wisdom. So is astrology. So is psychology.
Hundreds of years ago, astrology was useful to kings and the like probably largely because astrologers were learned men, there was less going on in the world so it was possible to keep up with ALL the important stuff and not have to pick and choose which subjects to follow.
I think saying "The stars tell me this" was a means to get both kings and astrologers off the hook over this uncomfortable, inconvenient reality that some decisions were de facto being made by an educated commoner and there wasn't necessarily a clear, bright line between what the king wanted or decided and what the astrologer did.
And then sometimes this went weird and bad places when the people with the power pressured the astrologer to tell them things the astrologer really couldn't tell them. Unable to decline to assure kings and nobility "You have a bright future and a wonderful life ahead of you" they did what was expected of them "at gunpoint."
Most of the time, I do NOT like giving advice and I do NOT want to be paid to give advice. This is one of the reasons I decided I did not wish to become an astrologer.
The big money in astrology seems to be found in two places.
- Canned Astrology
- Personal readings, which can get pretty pricey.
I found astrology useful for casting my Natal Chart and READING a lot of BOOKS to try to sort out what some of this might mean so I could figure out how to cope more effectively with being me.
Canned astrology is currently NOT serious astrology, though perhaps that can be remedied to some degree, and personalized readings are the astrologer taking on a role similar to a therapist or couples counselor or life coach without having any formal credentials for ANY of those roles.
I decided that if I WANTED to make a career of giving advice on a personalized basis like that, I could go be a therapist or couples counselor and get the credentials for that instead of casting charts. I also decided I didn't want to be in the business of being paid to give personal advice of that sort at all under ANY professional title.
I did about 3.5 years of therapy total, a year in my teens and about 2.5 years in my twenties. Therapy is a process like peeling an onion and I dug down pretty deep.
So I tend to see things others are not comfortable with me seeing about them. When I give my analysis of the issue and give my advice based on that analysis, it's often something like "You were molested as a child and you need to do x, y and z to deal with your sexuality" or "You are a closeted gay person and you need to get out of your current dysfunctional hetero relationship and get a same sex lover."
This tends to NOT be music to their ears.
People don't want to hear stuff like that. People who have spent a lifetime arranging their life a particular way because of growing up going to church or because of messaging from their parents or whatever want answers that fit within a certain framework and that tends to not actually solve the problem.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. -- Albert EinsteinThis then tends to become problematic for ME. They are angry at hearing it and want me to walk it back and say this painful truth is not true, which I am unwilling to do if I think it is an accurate statement.
Or they think I am very, very smart at certain things and -- like uneducated but powerful kings of old wanting educated but powerless astrologers to assure them the king has a glorious future ahead of him -- they want me to magic up some OTHER answer that is BOTH brilliant and ALSO fits within the constraints of the mental models that got them into this mess.
This fundamentally does not work.
And, no, such people tend to NOT want to hear "If you don't like MY advice, go ask SOMEONE ELSE for HELP. I've ALREADY given you my BEST answer. It does NOT get betterer if I keep at it."
People who really do have serious issues often have seriously bad habits as well and are prone to hanging their crap on other people, having unrealistic expectations for what someone else can do for them, etc. If people who had deep, dark secrets ruining their own lives were EASY to deal with by simply TELLING them what their deep, dark secret is and how to fix it, I would probably long ago have gone into some profession that pays well for providing "advice."
Alas, this is simply NOT how things work.
Rest assured, I didn't sort my problems out of a masochistic desire to spend the rest of my life being tortured by nutters who are incapable of just following instructions for how to fix their problem once it is identified. No, I would like to have a few NICE years before I check out of this world.
The other reason I don't like giving personal advice is because I was a full-time mother for a long time and even when my children were very little I didn't like MAKING them do things most of the time. I learned early that even small children know things about their lives and their bodies that mom does not know and their inability to articulate it does not mean it works well to ignore that info.
So I learned to check my ego at the door and when I tell people "You already have MY best advice. If you do NOT like it, look elsewhere for answers." I'm not simply blowing them off. I'm telling them "So get a second opinion. Maybe someone else will see something I don't see."
People who are convinced I'm the best there is don't want to hear that EITHER.
So I'm not real enthused about doing astrological readings for potentially hundreds of dollars per reading for wealthy people and THEN dealing with wealthy people REJECTING that advice and being UGLY to me and INSISTING I find some OTHER ANSWER, one they LIKE. I would much rather BLOG to put out useful info and TRY to include enough provisos that readers have some hope of sorting out whether or not this genuinely applies to them.
If they just aren't ready for that insight, they can potentially come back LATER and reread my writing and rethink how they feel (or whatever). If there is some detail of their life that means some particular conclusion isn't really relevant to their life, cool. No need to try to argue with ME about it.
I would like to see canned astrology improved upon so it's more useful to the masses. I fundamentally dislike the idea that only very wealthy people can afford good feedback from a professional astrologer and everyone else has to put up with this watered down GARBAGE that is so bad that a lot of intelligent people are like "EW! Only NUTTERS would believe this CRAP."
If more astrologers would treat "predictive" astrology more like weather prediction and less like divination, then putting out information about upcoming influences would stop being so "Ew!" and become a more rational process of taking this into account, much like we take into account weather predictions.
With the exception of extreme weather events, people don't let the weather run their lives. They go out in the rain to run their errands or get to work, they just try to take an umbrella or wear a rain coat.
The fact that even canned astrology tends to default to trying to give advice rather than inform is part of why astrology currently has such a terrible reputation. Astrological advice from someone who has never cast your birth chart is useless nonsense.
