The Majority, Can It Be Good Enough?

The cream of the cream may be hard to find. Abraham Maslow used to track them down -

Abraham Maslow concluded that the majority of people do not represent the best health, best moral, and so on. The very best are rather deviants from the average or common, Maslow tells.

In order to be irreplaceable, it helps to be different.

No one should diminish his or her essential worth. Are we into the deviant side to humans thereby? That could be. Conformity is not much individual, and development of the inner sides of man requires freedom from ties, to be oneself, to evolve oneself somehow, often in unforeseen ways. That is in part what being a Maslowian plus deviant is to mean too.

Each one of us is unique in our own way.

At first we may manage to accept that the individuality of a person is something unique in the world. Unique means like no one else - or deviant from the 'maingang'. This may be understood in many ways. One of those ways is that eventually even good conformity needs to be superceded. Another: To seem different from others may be superceded too, by seeming conform like any other guy on the block - more or less so. There are many possibilities, and one is to deviate from others who deviate - more or less so. A conform enough facade can offer protection.

There is at any rate a need to estimate the cost of blooming after budding, or take the expenditures in strife.

Fitting in allows you to blend in, while being different allows you to be yourself. Combining the two may do the trick, if you differ all right in the privacy of your home, and not the other way around.

Also, embedded in our stratified and culturally contingent niches, we had better keep pace with the good neighbours, or they may stop talking with us, or backstab us, or persecute us, and that tends to bring on many harmful side-effects.

As long as we lack good data in a field, speculation may be controversial at first, and later become mainstream. For example, in cosmology the concepts of dark matter and dark energy were speculative only thirty years ago, and today they are mainstream. This is to say that speculation is not necessarily a faux pas, or false step, only that good evidence is largely lacking or missing.

Being yourself means being different. The fine thing is to differ for good -

Further, tranquillisers will not solve the demands for maturing or development in a good way. A stultified show thrives on the backs of stunted individuals.

Maybe it is time to have a fresh look at an old devise, the birth chart, or horoscope. In the scientific community in the West it may seem deviant enough to be of worth -

The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever seen before. - Albert Einstein

Contemplations differ

David's psalm 8:1-3 contains this:

You have set your glory

in the heavens.
When I consider your heavens,

the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,

which you have set in place . . .

The verses have led to much contemplation of the skies and mythic figures that the ancients assumed lived in the skies. The zodiac flourished in Greek mythology. (Snodgrass 1997, 64)

Since myth-based contemplations may be crowned with different results, though, what is the value of them? Which is correct? Which makes sense of the "mystery"?:

The Hindu rated Dschubba [Scorpio] a lucky sign and named it Anuradha (propitious) (Ibid. 162). . .

Scorpio is a dark unknown, a menacing factor that astrologers consider both devious and deadly. From early times, watchers have associated the constellation with evil. Arab astronomers called the figure Elakrab, the scorpion or war. Copts named it Isidis, the oppressor; Sumerians referred to it as the outlaw. Hebrews knew it as Lesath, the equivalent of Lesha, the perverse. Mayas also sensed danger in the constellation, which they called the death god's sign. In Egypt, star gazers associated Scorpio with Selek or Selket, the patron of herbal healing (Ibid. 164-5).

Astrologer lessons:

1. Think positively - look to the bright side of Scorpio. Luckily, Scorpio is associated with luck, propitiousness (India), and herbal healing (Egypt).

2. Ignoring extensive, negative thinking about the star sign Scorpio and about sex (or being naked in public), could it be wise enough?

3. May some or all of the Scorpio characteristics of old (and later astrologers) be combined well enough? In astrological textbooks, such description cavalcades are often attempted, sorting them into positive aspects and negative aspects.