A Hybrid of Roots & Wings

From the technology lens, the speed of societal change is somewhat dizzying, familiarity becoming rare without a real effort to capture it. Effort itself is a bit outdated, but like a freshly-prepared meal compared to fast food, it’s the first ingredient for deliciousness and enjoyment. Slow cooking is one of those hands-off-the-screen activities that help my nervous system decompress while my overactive mind chops and simmers new ideas.

Progress is frequently viewed as a road constructed in uncharted territory, a pursuit of novel scientific solutions. Only recently, I’ve wondered, “what would we do without satellites and global internet” and “I hope there’s a backup plan”. As NASA gathers research on solar storms and flares, a part of me is anxious about Icarus-like tech giants.

Don’t worry- This isn’t a tech doomsday imagining, nor will I bore you with reminiscences of my dog-eared books, or tea stains and greasy prints on thousands of notebook pages. I simply wonder if some media not only feels secure as a hard copy in my possession, but also strikes something in my genetic memory, a chord of imaginings stretching and supporting me when I’m blocked or feel low. I can delete it from everywhere else and have a single vulnerable hard copy (shiver). I’m unsure if it’s riskier than a sudden outage or an unreliable auto-save feature.

Yesterday my 7-year-old grandson excitedly told me, “We were attacked!”, when I picked him up from school, then went on to reassure me, “but we don’t have to worry because they are far away in Russia or another country”. At least they aren’t sheltering under their desks, I told myself as I steered our conversation to pencils, paper worksheets, and white boards. He went on to tell me it wasn’t a big deal because “we don’t have any schoolwork left, just fun stuff”. Fortunately, an all-day walking field trip in their town including history lessons and ice cream was already scheduled for his class the next day. Real-time learning activities minimized the hacker’s damage and I hope gave administrators ideas for mitigating impacts of future digital outages.

I’m not suggesting we roll back tech and ai advances that continue to prove efficient, but I wonder if today’s news regarding militarized Russian satellites gives us one more reason to prepare for internet outages. The loss of the library at Alexandria comes to mind when I think of the intellectual property stored in the cloud. The decades upon decades of dystopic stories have trained my brain, I know, yet cannot help but follow the plot to old-timey solutions that somewhat save our sanity, if not our humanity.

Vinyl has made a resurgence for the same reason I am suggesting hard copies of stories and vital information, not as a sole source, but as an artistic product in multiple formats for security’s sake and for our mental health. Being a creative is challenging enough without worrying about losing work.

In the midst of a tech era, I’ve been studying Ptolemy, Manilius, & Vettius Valens, learning the history and theory of ancient astrology. A side-effect of studying Greek philosophy is sharpening observations of the world around me, especially noticing patterns of rise and fall. As we rise, we typically take some of the past with us, the known blending with unknowns. Perhaps, by reading real-life books, printing a few pages at the library and writing in notebooks we can find footing in a world increasingly constructed of air.

These are the thoughts and feelings informing my hybrid-model astrology practice in June, 2024. When the aliens arrive, I realize I may need to adapt, but stories will always be secure inside an exercised and flexible mind.