It's All About Cycles: the planet, politics, economics...

It's only arrogance that convinces humans to persevere with their endeavours, assuming linear, controllable factors, leading to perpetual prosperity, endless growth and enduring uninterrupted happiness. It's arrogance because it is a position removed from nature and the essence of nature, which is cycles of change.

Everything that exists is subject to cycles and the brevity of our personal lifespan means we witness only some smaller cycles, whilst learning through history of others, but even then there are cycles that exist way beyond human historical records.

Astrology is able to track a big range of these - Astrodienst provides an online ephemeris back to the year 1400, but our knowledge is always lacking in awareness of lessons from the past. Perhaps that is why humans learn so slowly.

Since 2008 we have seen Pluto, Uranus and now Neptune shift signs and their slow moving influences mean a changing era in humanity's collective experience. Typically things go down before they come up in that context: change involving disruption and despair, restructuring, revisioning and rebuilding are painful, stressful and threatening to most of us, but the promise of new, better, circumstances is our guiding intention, in a world where we know millions suffer injustice, inequality and impoverished conditions.
In 2011 with Uranus and Neptune both moving into new areas of influence, it is starting to become very apparent, even to those who don't have a template for cycle-watching, that a shift is upon us.

Astrology writer Adrian Ross Duncan posted a very useful analysis in September 2010 and some selected quotes first, sum up the territory ahead:

and the social unrest is as a result of..

the meltdown of capitalism - perfectly expressed, even before Japan in March 2011 faces the financial fallout from tsunami damaged nuclear facilities

and here Adrian references the humanitarian emphasis that will continue to demand attention, globally

Neptune entered Pisces in 1847 (coinciding with the release of the Communist Manifesto urging Workers of the World Unite!) and Neptune has just returned to Pisces on April 4 2011. In NZ we see the Maritime Union concerned about the state of foreign vessels and their worker conditions;

 in Christchurch, post-quake, worker rights, conditions and rescue packages are very much on the agenda of the Combined Trade Unions. Read Adrian's full article

London has just seen major rioting against government cuts and of course the pro-democracy movement is raging across the Middle East.  And these are just the social impacts of the era of change we are undergoing. Planetary upheaval, added into this mix is already responsible for humanitarian crises in ravaged Japan and completely unprepared Christchurch. 

We are witnessing cycles in action, in our lifetime