Time Machine: High Fantasy Intellectualism
A big win for the daydreamers.
Happy election day, Virgo! You’ll be cosmically rewarded for voting early by waking with a migraine. Since there’s plenty going on today, I'm firing up the ol’ time machine to take a juicy little trip to the past. Feel free to internalize my wisdom from two years ago more permanently this time. It’s Yesterday’s Horoscope, today!
October 25th to November 7th, 2022.
As I understand it, the majority of human beings extend an immense amount of skepticism towards astrology. I could, perhaps, more readily forgive this popular reflex if those same human beings weren’t so open to believing (embracing!) pseudoscience. Providing it affirms a worldview that is comfortable for them, human beings love science. Remember when you all thought that the type of blood you had meant you couldn’t eat soy or whatever?
Perhaps due to my lack of corporeal form, I fail to see the intellectual superiority of a fad-diet. I suppose I’d be less quick to judge if my cosmic feelings weren’t so battered and bruised after millenia of raised eyebrows and snide remarks regarding the word of the skies. How many times have I heard a man say, There are only twelve astrological signs—how could that possibly account for all the personalities on earth? Well, that man, there are only eight blood types, and that didn’t stop you from claiming that the only thing preventing you from becoming a vegan was your prohibitive blood.
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Sadly, on earth it’s more ridiculous to seek wisdom from the infinite cosmos than spend $19.95 USD on a book that explains there are eight possible diets, because of—y’know—blood.
You are not immune from the delights of selective science, Virgo. That’s right, this is still about you. During this introduction, you may have felt a surge of hope—a buoyant feeling that suggested this horoscope might be about the collective, instead of just yourself. After all, with a whole population to blame, you’d certainly have less of the burden to bear.
Unfortunately, this is still very much only about you, Virgo. This week, you’ll hear a contextless tidbit of science that will go to your head with disturbing swiftness. According to this distorted, word-on-the-street science, daydreaming is a sign of intelligence.
Listen: I’m not accusing this fact of being false. I’m justly raising poignant concerns given that you won’t gather any context nor details that could help this piece of information become useful. Instead, you’ll hastily deputize this fact to justify many of your ill-advised behaviors.
No longer are the hours you’ve spent considering luxury real estate on Sotheby's Greece an indication of desperation or an aberration of every choice you’ve ever made. (College degree, profession, disdain for the beach, frequency of dining out, decision to be born in a famously challenging time to ascend into one imaginary home let alone two.)
If daydreaming is a sign of intelligence, you’ll think, then all your hours gazing out the window imagining what life would be like if you were someone who regularly got facials have solidified you as an elite mensa member.
Are your aspirations highly self-involved and mostly based on having a crush on the idea of luxury? Yes. But learning this key piece of science means you need not investigate the source of your shallow goals. Instead, you can take to patting yourself on the back for your immaculate imagination.
To you, the discovery that daydreaming indicates intelligence feels as promising as learning that French Onion Sun Chips are considered medicine now, or that plastic is helping the planet. It isn’t as though you thought daydreaming was inherently unhealthy, but the way you do it certainly couldn’t inspire praise in a free-association exercise.
As someone who has dipped many a toe into the oft-indulgent waters of self loathing, your virtuosity in the art of imagination is indisputable. At its core, your self loathing is an act of fantasy. Your self-loathing (SL) is often harnessed through comparison to a person who usually doesn’t exist. Thanks to your boundless mind, you invent the details—a cruel combination of lifestyle and personality that make the way you live feel ridiculous by comparison. This briskly morphs into fury (that you aren’t living up to the ideal that you invented mere minutes ago).
Thanks to this new fragment of science, you’ve categorized your mental downward spirals as being based in intellect, not insecurity.
Please don’t misunderstand. It isn’t that I don’t want you to believe in science, Virgo. In its current state, the planet simply cannot afford more societal disavowment of fact. However, I’m troubled that humans only seem comfortable with their behavior or worldview when given permission by overheard pseudoscience or Peter D’Adamo. With an outlook like this, science and information are ammunition to prove a point, not delicious morsels worthy of protracted consideration.
You, for example, struggle to celebrate your delusional cravings for luxury on your own, but hearing one positive “fact” about daydreaming convinces you to redefine the bottomless pit inside of you as a facet of your vast wisdom.
Instead of treating the root of self-loathing (an unwell mind), you treat the symptoms (feeling insecure that you will never be as successful or as monochromatic as Janessa, the powerful woman you just invented to make yourself feel terrible). How could you be mad at yourself for inventing Janessa, when you now know inventing Janessa is precisely what makes your mind a boundless scholastic paradise?
Perhaps the loathsome, imaginary gentleman I conjured at the beginning of this piece never planned on adopting a vegan diet at all, and used the blood diet as a shield against the criticisms he believed he would receive from disgruntled veg-friendly peers if he would have simply confessed, I earnestly have no plans to become a vegan.
As I’m sure was clear by the uncharacteristically biting way I began this horoscope, I don’t currently have the capacity to worry about your feelings to the degree that you usually require. All the same, I’d like to extend a bit of hope your way. Though it is deeply disturbing to watch human beings change their entire worldview because they encounter a flashy new sentence, this could also be viewed (by someone in a better mood than I) as a positive trait. Perhaps people need a few doses of pseudoscience on their way to self acceptance.
Thank you for reading! <3
Glad I'm not the only one who knows Janessa