Historian Benson Bobrick writes about astrology in his book, “The Fated Sky” and explains the field of it in rather compelling words, “The idea at the heart of astrology is that the pattern of a person’s life—or character, or nature—corresponds to the planetary pattern at the moment of his birth,”. Such an idea is as old as the world is old—that all things bear the imprint of the moment they are born.” Western astrology had its origins in ancient Mesopotamia and spread throughout Egypt, Greece, the Roman Empire, and the Islamic world. Astrology helped people decide when to plant crops and go to war and was used to predict a person’s fate and interpret his character. Would he have good luck with money? Would he ascend the throne?”
Astrology is a pseudoscience; there is a popular debate on the previous statement because many people tend to believe that it has a scientific ground. Often, the evidence that they present for their argument is that “it has been around for hundreds of years hence it is true” but does that matter? Towards the end of the 19th century, when scientists took it upon themselves to check the claim, they found that astrology does not have any scientific validity. Why is it so that even in this modern era, thousands of people are bent on believing that astrology and all that entails is believe-worthy?
According to a Pew Research Center report done in 2018, 29% of Americans believe in astrology. American Federation of Astrologers claims that around 70 million Americans tend to read daily horoscopes. General Social survey in 2012 reported that around 34% of Americans viewed astrology to be completely scientific or somewhat scientific.
Pakistani people are no different; they tend to gulp up astrological predictions as their lives depend on it. The belief in astrology is so rampant that in March 2020, an astrologer in Daily Times talked about “Pakistan’s Political Horoscope” where he predicts the astrological prediction for the politics of the nation. Many newspapers print out daily horoscopes for their avid readers, including Dawn where a writer wrote an interesting piece on sun signs of the Pakistani political leaders.
Human beings’ fascination with the movements of celestial bodies in regards to their own lives has been around for thousands of years but astrology has seen a steady rise in popularity in the last few decades and many owe it to the widespread use of the internet. The fact of the matter is that astrological predictions that are done based on zodiac signs for consumers are tailored to be perfectly happy content that goes viral immediately. It is easy, inviting, and thrilling. It is not hard to grasp, targets a person’s personal life up close, caters to women, and plays on people’s fears, hopes, and memories.
There are other takes on why astrology is suddenly so popular these days. Talking about the tracks and cultural trends of today, Lucie Greene, the worldwide director of J. Walter Thompson’s innovation group said, “Over the past two years, we’ve really seen a reframing of New Age practices, very much geared toward a Millennial and young Gen X quotient,”.
It has been found that a major reason that so many people turn to astrology is that they utilize it as their coping mechanism and Graham Tyson, a psychologist wrote in his study, “Under conditions of high stress, the individual is prepared to use astrology as a coping device even though under low-stress conditions he does not believe in it.”
Since millennials are the generation that is facing tremendous stress of climate change, political infighting, global crises, the threat of nuclear war, global pandemic, and more, it is not surprising that they are turning to astrology rapidly and firmly.
It could be that people tend to use astrology so that they have something to relate to or that they could express their true selves. “Let me state first that I consider astrology a cultural or psychological phenomenon,” said Bertram Malle, a social cognitive scientist at Brown University. Talking about the vast field of astrology, the scientist commented, “provides a powerful vocabulary to capture not only personality and temperament but also life’s challenges and opportunities. To the extent that one simply learns this vocabulary, it may be appealing as a rich way of representing (not explaining or predicting) human experiences and life events, and identifying some possible paths of coping.”
Roy Gillett, the president of the Astrological Association of Great Britain has a slightly different take on why so many young adults are turning to astrology, “I think what’s happened to people in their late teens and 20s, and younger people even more so, is a sense of betrayal by conventional knowledge.”
If we were to expand the horizons a bit, it could also be debated that astrology allows people to venture and explore something that is not bound by the hard and fast rules of this world. It allows them to venture into the realm of mystery. J. Walter Thompson’s intelligence group released a report in 2016 called “Unreality” that read, “We are increasingly turning to unreality as a form of escape and a way to search for other kinds of freedom, truth, and meaning,” it reads. “What emerges is an appreciation for magic and spirituality, the knowingly unreal, and the intangible aspects of our lives that defy big data and the ultra-transparency of the web.”
Even if astrology does not have scientific footing, people have such a firm belief in it that they have made it their reality. Many people experience something called the Barnum Effect when they believe in the predictions for their zodiac signs; Barnum Effect says that people tend to believe any information if it seemingly applies to them. They would believe it to be truly personal and would forget that the information is vague and vast enough that it can be applied to a huge population and not just them. Whatever the case is, people often turn their zodiac signs’ predictions into reality by inadvertently acting on them so for them, astrological knowledge and predictions have never been false.
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