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The Generational Clash
by DICK MINNERLY
After Barack Obama mentioned that our generations differ in their judgment, several articles and discussions appeared in our media comparing the so-called ‘baby-boom generation’ with his generation, the so-called ‘Gen X’ generation. We accept such reasoning because we all see that successive generations differ in some significant way, but no one has yet told us just what that difference is or even how to define a generation objectively. Instead, speakers on this issue have only offered their subjective opinions on it. And their sole attempt to be objective, by defining the ‘baby-boom generation’ as the people born during the population explosion from the 1940s to the early 1960s, fails completely, because there is no causative connection between our population changes and our congenital characters. I have solved the main problems on this issue in my book Human Nature: Rethinking Psychology and Astrology, but since that book is not yet published and we must elect a new president in 2008, I am summarizing its conclusions on the subject here. In that work I define our character as our congenital nature and our personality as our postnatal nature, and most of it is devoted to explaining how to understand individual character, which requires us to use some form of natal astrology. I prove there, contrary to the belief of most academics in the West, that genethlialogy, or natal astrology, is a valid science, and that we cannot define our generations or our basic psychologic characteristics without it. But here I can’t present that proof or explain my new psychologic theory fully; I can only state my theory’s conclusions on how to define our generations objectively and how they cause us to differ psychologically, and then trust that my examples suffice to support my reasoning. Those examples are three periods in our history that we know, from history and character analyses, produced people with bad judgment who acted immorally as adults. I refer to these periods, which I define below, as the constitutional, the fascist, and the baby-boom generations. The Psychologic Premises. My psychologic theory proposes that what I call the process of
human consideration, or the Consideration Cycle for short, consists of five consciously constructed psychologic systems and the subconscious phases that link them. Those systems, in the invariable logical order that we consider them, are our Will, Thought, Feeling, Judgment, and Power systems. Each system is a polarity of two opposed cognitions which we reconcile to reach the tangible conclusions that we store in memory and use in our subsequent reasoning. Every event that we consider to its conclusion follows the natural logic of the Cycle through these five systems, but we differ in how we handle their polar cognitions, mainly because they can have either a positive (+) or a negative (–) impulse, or charge. This charge is simply the direction in which we are impelled to reason to achieve one of those ten ideas, and that direction can only be to project (+) it from inside our self or to assimilate (–) it from outside our self. Moreover, for each cognition only one of these two directions is the logical, or realistic, impulse. Taking both of its poles into account, then, each of our psychologic systems has one of four reasoning permutations: (+–), (–+), (++), or (– –). Depending on the system, one of the mixed permutations (+– or –+), is balanced, or logical at both poles, and the other is reversed, or illogical at both poles. The projective (++) and assimilative (– –) impulses are oppositely logical at only one pole. Here are my loosely descriptive, or nontechnical, names for these twenty congenital psychologic differences among us, listing the balanced impulse first and then the projective, assimilative, and reversed impulses. In will, one is a planner, a creator, a follower, or a denier. In thought, one is a reasoner, a speaker, a listener, or a skeptic. In feeling, one is a harmonist, an emotionalist, a sybarite, or a spectator. In judgment one is a moralist, an egoist, an altruist, or a nihilist. And in power one is a progressive, a radical, a liberal, or a conservative. I created my psychologic theory with no thought of astrology, but later I found that it could be verified with natal astrology, and I did this with thousands of natal charts, mostly those of prominent intellectual and political figures. So my theory now holds that our innate dispositions in our five systems are fixed by the position in our natal chart of the ten astrological (geocentric) planets in the signs of the tropical zodiac, and that because those signs are alternately projective and assimilative, or traditionally ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’, they impart to any planets that occupy them, and hence to us, a positive (+) or a negative (–) impulse respectively. But the entire Cycle is not our concern here, for, as Obama insightfully observed, the chief difference in our generations lies in our judgment, or our fourth psychologic system. That system begins at the first pole with our consideration of a personal need and concludes at the second pole with our consideration of the consequences of acting in some way to gratify that need. A need is logical (realistic) only if we subjectively project (+) it from inside our self, and a consequence is logical only if we objectively assimilate (–) it from outside our self. But we may be born to do the opposite, and if so, then our judgment system will function illogically at one or both poles. The charge of the first judgment pole is determined by the sign of Mars, and that of the second pole by the sign of Pluto. But Mars has no generational effect because it moves through a sign in about two months, whereas Pluto stays in the same sign for an average period of 20.6 years. Actually, due to the high ellipticity of its orbit, it is in one sign anywhere from 12 to over 30 years. Since this is a reasonable range for the purpose, I use Pluto’s sign transits to define our generations in general, which are better defined in this objective way than by any hypothetical average age of child bearing or irrelevant statistics on population. Still, these periods are only ‘generations’ as regards our judgment and those judgmental evaluations that we call our ‘morals’ or ‘moral reasoning’. Our feeling systems also differ by a generation of sorts; namely, by Neptune’s regular transit through a sign every 13.7 years, which causes people to actively project (+) or passively assimilate (–) their passions. The Four Judgment Types. I refer to people whose natal Pluto is assimilative (–) as
unselfish because when they consider the consequences of their potential acts at the second judgment pole, they are receptive to others' needs and judgments, and hence compassionate. Conversely, people with a projective (+) Pluto are selfish, because this impulse makes them unreceptive to others’ needs and judgments, which they block out in their rush to project the consequences that they hope or imagine will result from a contemplated act. So, depending on Mars’ charge at the first pole, unselfish people are logical moralists (+–) or half-logical altruists (– –), and selfish people are half-logical egoists (++) or totally illogical nihilists (–+). These are the four, and only four, innate judgmental dispositions of humans, and they are objectively defined by the position of two planets at someone’s birth. It is therefore a simple matter to verify this new psychologic thesis empirically, for we need only compare the natal charts of real people to their stated judgmental attitudes and actual moral behavior. Since our modern-era terms egoist and altruist are close enough in meaning to my definitions, I use them to name the half-logical projective (++) and assimilative (– –) impulses in judgment. But we have no conventional terms for the judgmental dispositions caused by the logically balanced (+–) or reversed (–+) impulses, so I chose moralist and nihilist for these. Moralists form logical, if often too conventional, beliefs and value and moral systems. They don’t have the half-illogic of egoists, who ignore the consequences of their acts on others, or of altruists, who don’t assert their own needs when they should. And they differ from nihilists because they are not negativists and don’t try to divide us; instead, they try to heal breeches by putting chaotic things into order, which is one of their natural talents—as we have seen with the moralists Jefferson, Lincoln, Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt. Though the term ‘nihilist’ is only vaguely described in our dictionaries, it fits the totally illogical judgment reversal, and thus defined it means one who is innately impelled to deny logical beliefs or moral conclusions. Egoists rationalize their bad judgment by saying that selfishness is a virtue, but nihilists do this by denying judgmental and moral reasoning altogether. A classic case is the nihilist Nietzsche, who asked us to deny judgment and morality by going “beyond good and evil.” These four judgmental attitudes are politically significant because the moral code that we form psychologically determines the kind of legal or ethical code that we propose for everyone. The Judgmental Generations. I use Pluto’s whole cycle of 247.7 years, which I claim
starts at 0° Capricorn, to define our psychologic eras. And my research going back as far back as the sixth century BCE shows that each such era is characterized throughout by the new conceptions achieved in its first quadrant (that is, in its first three signs, or generations). I refer to the period from 1762 to 2008 as the modern era and to the era from 2008 to 2254 as the new era. Each psychologic era consists of twelve signs, or generations, and to distinguish their two types here let us say that unselfish people (moralists or altruists) are born in a humanist, or H, generation, and that selfish people (egoists or nihilists) are born in a selfist, or S, generation. Here are Pluto’s sign transits from 1725 to 2043, rounded to the nearest January 1st. The destructive, compassionless, and warlike S generations are 1725-37, 1749-62, 1777-97, 1822-51, 1883-1913, 1938-57, 1972-84, 1995-2008, and 2023-43. And the constructive, compassionate, and peace-loving H generations are 1737-49, 1762-77, 1797-1822, 1851-83, 1913-38, 1957-72, 1984-95, and 2008-23. The new era began on January 25, 2008. All the events of those periods, including the people born in them, have the character of the time. Thus everyone has a selfist or humanist bias in their judgment, and yet traditionalists in our human sciences have no idea why this is so. But now we know that the continual struggle between the most and least selfish people in the world is at root a generational conflict. This explains why, in judgment at least, children are more often like their grandparents than their parents. For example, most people born in the H generation of 1913–38 had parents who, because they were born in the S generation of 1883–1913, were egoists or nihilists with no compassion. They may have been otherwise good people with a cultural sense of duty to their children, but in judgment they seldom put their children’s interests first and often tried to use them for their own ends. This caused these children to disdain, dislike, or even hate their parents and to flee the home scene whenever possible; perhaps to visit their grandparents, who were probably compassionate people born in the H generation of 1851–83. Their own children, however, were probably born in the next S generation, the baby-boom generation of 1938–57, so they may have been disappointed to see in them the same self-centeredness they saw in their parents. But Pluto’s sign periods were shortening then, so people born in the last decade of that H generation may have had unselfish children born after the baby-boomers (after mid-1957) who liked their parents but perhaps not their grandparents. Psychologic and social analysts should need little help in drawing the implications of this generational fact, which brings into question not only our traditional assumptions about families, such as the foolish expectation that all children must love and honor their parents or vice versa, but also every study of siblings and every biography that discusses someone’s family history. There are always exceptions to the rule, of course, since people are not governed solely by their judgment and they may have other innate characteristics or acquired personality traits that minimize their selfishness. Even so, this fact puts a whole new light on all family relationships. But it is just as important in considering political relationships and world events, since everyone is negatively affected while an S generation controls their society. Selfist politicians and judges are plainly a danger to us, but so are the selfist professionals, bureaucrats, teachers, employers, clerics, merchants, and service people in society that we must deal with routinely. Life is far more difficult for everyone when compassionless egoists and nihilists constitute the majority of adults. It is especially hard to be a child or an elderly or infirmed person then. Even if you were born after the sixties, you probably know from the media that the young egoists and nihilists of the baby-boom generation (born 1938-57), in spite of the good advice of their unselfish parents and teachers (born 1913-38), made many bad judgments then. Well, they are still doing so today as the rulers of our governments and corporations across the world. And we are suffering not only from their bad judgment as our rulers, but also from the lingering effects of the harmful events of the Pluto-in-Leo period (1938-57) in which they were born— such as World War II, genocide across the world, the Cold War, the Republicans’ McCarthyism, the Korean War, extreme overpopulation, and the herpes, aids, and narcotics epidemics. The general point to note here is that we must attribute all human events to two periods, not one. In this case, the Pluto-in-Gemini transit of 1883-1913 helped to shape the fascist generation that was ruling the world when the Pluto-in-Leo transit of 1938-57 helped to provoke the events just listed. Earlier, the fascist generation also helped cause the Roaring Twenties, financial swindles, organized crime, the Great Depression, and fascism as a formal theory. So it is that, in being selfish with no compassion or logic in judgment, the nihilist Bush II of the baby-boom generation is like the nihilist Hitler of the fascist generation. Hitler flouted his intolerance as an anti-Semite and Bush his intolerance as a Christian religionist, and both lied, opposed individual rights, and invaded other nations just because they wanted to do so. Though the Nazi party was ruled by evil people, Germans born before 1883 or after 1912 were not such beasts. They can no more be blamed for being ruled by the majority in their state than older and younger people today can be blamed for being ruled by an immoral majority in theirs. Rulers born in a selfist generation have never produced a sane and moral government or tried to preserve life and maintain peace and prosperity. This is an astounding historical fact, but it has been totally ignored by our political and intellectual leaders, and by voters too. In 2004, nine candidates for the Democratic nomination for US President were baby- boomers, and hence egoists or nihilists. But it was impractical for the Democratic Party to offer a humanist candidate against the nihilist Bush II, since the majority of voters then were also baby-boomers. Egoists or nihilists won’t tolerate the sane and compassionate message of moralist or altruist candidates because as selfists they actually want an immoral government that will empower the rich, oppress the poor, rape our environment, suppress dissent, wage wars, or impose the fictions and political agenda of religious corporations on everyone. And even though their plurality has diminished since Reagan was elected president, those voters are still in the Of the fifteen presidential candidates at the end of 2007, twelve are baby-boomers who we must reject for their bad judgment. This leaves the moralist John McCain and the altruist Ron Paul from the pre-boomers, and the altruist Barack Obama from the post-boomers. But we must reject Paul for embracing the egoistic elements of libertarianism, McCain for the contradictory political notions that make him a confused maverick and (absurdly) a ‘militaristic moralist’, and both for supporting the Republican Party, which has been antidemocratic since Lincoln was assassinated. Some of the rejected Democrats have strong will systems that give them good intentions, but their judgment is self-centered. So, psychologically speaking, Obama is the best choice available in this election, even though (like all the others) he has no plan to change the elitist US Constitution that imposed corrupt federal and state governments on the people and legalized an inequitable distribution of wealth, resources, and essential human services. Even so, he is an altruist, a progressive, and the only candidate in this election who has perceived that, for some reason, we have entered a new psychologic era that demands new political conceptions. But he must contend with the fact that most baby-boomers (ages 51 to 70) prefer Clinton or a Republican. And since Clinton is, by our objective definitions, an egoist in judgment and a conservative in politics, she is not as much at odds with the nihilist conservative Bush II as she pretends. Though they support opposed power cliques, both are elitists who conspire against the people for their obscenely wealthy cliques. And neither one of them can see the new era. Of the nineteen tables of individuals in my book, one in particular strikingly confirms my claims on this generational clash. That table, which is based on timed birth data, lists the psychologic impulses of seventy-one leading Nazis of World War II, and it shows that 93% of them were egoists or nihilists. Only the five eldest were not of the fascist generation of 1883– 1913, and they were far from being the worst members of that party. The moralists Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt were also born before the fascist generation, but most other Allied leaders were born during it. This includes the nihilists Eisenhower and Patton and the egoist Truman, who needlessly dropped atomic bombs on Japanese civilians—not to end the already-won war with Japan, but solely to terrorize the world with US power. (Japan would have surrendered just as quickly if he had demonstrated that bomb in an unpopulated part of that nation.) A table of world leaders today, most of whom are baby-boomers, would yield much the same results as that Nazi table. The main difference between these generations is that the baby- boom generation spanned 19 years while the more-deadly fascist generation spanned 30 years. Needless to say, Jews of the fascist generation had the same judgmental impairments the Nazis had. This explains the elements of truth in the charges by some, such as Ben Hecht in his book Perfidy, that Zionist leaders betrayed all the Jews in Nazi Europe in their private bargains with Eichmann and other Nazi leaders that secured the release of many wealthy Jews. But there were exceptions then, such as the egoist Oskar Schindler whose story was told in the movie Schindler’s List, and the nihilist Chiune Sugimara, a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania who was sent home in disgrace because he defied orders and issued visas that allowed 6,000 Jews to escape the Nazis. Both had strong will and thought systems—innate characteristics that incline even selfists to be governed more by universal principles than by the fads or insanities of their time. So all that we can fairly conclude is that most people born in an S generation are selfish, destructive, and militaristic; many are not because they have other innate characteristics or acquired traits that allow them to control those impulses. These truths hold across all the generations that historians can describe accurately, as we see with the three short (twelve- to fourteen-year) generations that produced the US Constitution. The selfist generations of 1725-37 and 1749-62—which sandwiched the humanist generation of 1737-49 in which such people as Paine, Jefferson, and Hancock were born—gave us the majority of adults from 1787 to 1789, when the pseudodemocratic US Constitution was written and ratified, thanks mainly to the nihilists Madison and Washington and the egoist Hamilton. Here is an excerpt from a fuller description of the adults of the 1780s that one respected historian assembled from many sources of that time. But for their temporal color, these words apply also to any other selfist generation: By 1780 Patrick Henry “feared that our Body politic was dangerously sick.” The signs of disease spread everywhere. Merchants and farmers were seeking their own selfish ends; hucksters were engrossing products to raise prices. Even government officials, it was charged, were using public positions to fill their own pockets. The fluctuation in the value of money was making “every kind of commerce and trade precarious”…and was putting a premium on selfishness. Everyone was doing “what was right in his own eyes,” and “thus the whole of that care and attention which was given to the public weal is turned to private gain or self preservation.” That benevolence among the people had not grown as a result of the Revolution was measured in the frightening increase in litigation…. Vices now seemed more prevalent than before the war. Virtue was being debased by “the visible declension of religion,…the rapid progress of licentious manners, and open profanity.” Such symptoms of degeneracy threw the clergy especially into confusion. Instead of bringing about the moral reformation they had anticipated from victory, the Revolution had only aggravated America’s corruption and sin. The Americans, they said in sermon after sermon throughout the eighties, could only be an ill-tempered and unrighteous people, so soon forgetting the source of their deliverance from British tyranny.* Conclusions for the New Era. For two reasons, because every other generation is a selfist
one and because a majority in an electoral government is dictatorial, the only sane government that can be proposed is one in which no majority is permitted to impose its beliefs or rules on any person with reasonable grounds for not consenting to them—such as refusing to support an immoral war of aggression and the immoral people who choose to fight it. Also, we now have good reason to reject three political lies that few dispute. One is that we should support our political and military leaders and their troops even if they are engaged in immoral conflicts. The others are that majority rule is beneficial for the people, and that it is what defines a democracy. In truth, it is neither of those things, so in the new era we need to define democracy correctly. We are fools if we trust, obey, or support any majority that consists of people with bad judgment, a character flaw that makes most people immoral and some of Political theorists have long argued that a democracy can only work if the best people rule, but these were just empty words so long as no one understood human nature well enough to identify the best and the worst people among us. But now the theories and empirical evidence in my book prove that many people are born selfish, or innately disinclined to consider others, and this is sufficient reason to deny them a role in our governments, at least any supervisory role. That is not undemocratic, for democracy applies to the electors, not to the elected or to those they appoint or hire. It is just another wise criterion—like being citizens, of a certain age, apparently sane, and adequately educated—for allowing people to wield our great collective power. While these psychologic facts cannot be explained by traditionalists through experiential or genetic factors, they are explained by astrological factors. Suddenly, then, at the very dawn of the new era, the role of astrology has become more important to society than it ever was. We have seen here that the logic or illogic of our fundamental moral and political attitudes is determined by our congenital characters, and not by the form of the statements we make when we subjectively describe those attitudes ex post facto. In the main, then, nihilists are judgmentally and morally illogical and conservatives are socially and politically illogical not because of what * Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787, Chapel Hill 1969, pp.416-417. they think or were taught, but rather because of when they were born. Much more of value can be concluded if we also consider the four basic dispositions in our will, thought, feeling, and power systems. In our power system, for instance—using terms that are now objectively rather than subjectively defined—people are innately either individualists or collectivists; that is, self-reliant leftists or other-dependent rightists. The leftists are either totally logical progressives or half-logical radicals, and the rightists are either half-logical liberals or This raises the question of whether liberals are leftists as traditionalists contend or rightists as I contend, but that is a subject for another article. In any case, in speaking we should stop opposing ‘liberals’ to ‘conservatives’ when what we really mean is to oppose ‘leftists’ to ‘rightists’. Liberals are not leftists and conservatives are not our only rightists. In sum, we must be astonished by all those candidates, authors, media spokespersons, and other pontificators who claim that they understand our politics and know how to organize our societies properly when they haven’t the slightest idea of why and how we humans differ innately in our moral and political dispositions. Obviously our basic social problem is that people must find a way to live together sanely even though they are born with those and other psychologic differences, but they will never do so until someone has soundly explained those differences to them.

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