So, it’s been 4 weeks with the horoscope, to mixed reviews. The ManFAQ, mayitrestinpeace, was usually only a single question – not a bad gig if you’ve got a week to write it. This sucker, man – do you realize there are 12 of those things? Each week? What was I thinking?
But there are good sides. I’ve touched people’s lives. Amarina wrote in from Australia to say that her horoscope from 2 weeks ago was “spot on, mate!” Inga from Germany told me hers last week was “frighteningly to the pin” which I’m reliably informed means that I got it right. Several Canadians have mentioned that the forecasts seem too accurate to be just chance, and 90 percent of Americans polled indicted that they were considering taking out restraining orders because their horoscopes were not just forecasting their futures, but actually creating them.
However, this has only been the case when those horoscopes have been, well, not to put too fine a point on it, lousy. For those few times I’ve indicated a pleasant week ahead, smooth sailing, you’re rockin’ out this time – dead wrong.
What can we derive from this? Either (A) I’m a prescient genius, (B) everyone’s been having a really shitty month, (C) shitty prophecies are self-fulfilling, or (D) all of the above. Since I have yet to win the lottery, I can safely discount (A). I think we can probably safely chalk up (B) to the fact that it’s January. That leaves (C), which tells us that people generally expect things to go wrong and are usually unsurprised to find themselves once again ankle deep. Here’s where we pull out the Philosophers. Who can help us?
Thomas Hobbes, of course! Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Since we know the lives of men (and ladies) are mostly pretty bleak, we can simply quote Leviathan:
“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”
From now on, I can predict with pedagogical prescience that my astro-illogical dances with your destiny will be entirely accurate. From this Friday forth, may I present: The Hobbesian Horoscope.
Doomed, we are. Doomed.
