Editor’s note: This letter is in response to “Mercury’s retrograde forebodes national ills,” published in Friday’s Daily Lobo. The column discussed recent astrological phenomena in relation to the current political climate.
Editor,
First we had the appearance of horoscopes spewing their sympathetic mumbo jumbo in the Daily Lobo, and now credence is being lent to astrology by no less than your opinion editor. And you wonder why so many UNM students do so poorly on science, statistics and the fact-based predictive power that goes with aligning with it instead of some distant pattern of stars and planets.
If there is anything retrograde, it is these nonsensical beliefs developed at a time when science, especially psychology, had not yet developed. Folklore and superstition abounded. Astrology was put into place by the likes of the priesthood in India, claiming esoteric knowledge. Their smoke screen was spun from attractively geometric charts and computations based improbably on birth dates.
This was part of a grand design by the Brahmins to ossify the caste system where said birth was seen in the context of being born into a certain caste and being forced to remain in it for the rest of your life. This is what leads to fatalism, so you gave these charlatans money to at least make a little sense of your powerless life.
The danger at UNM is that this quackery dovetails with similar hogwash perpetrated by religious fundamentalism.
The larger danger is impressionable young students being seduced by the grand, romantic phraseology of astrology and planning their lives accordingly, using their horoscope as an excuse for any failure. Better to recognize the rights and responsibilities that go with choice at every moment in our lives, so that we can change bad things for the better.
Arun Anand Ahuja
UNM student
