Jupiter Uranus Square 2021 — Social Media and the Twilight of a 12-year Cycle

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Aquarius is the dawn of the year. We experience the pure whiteness of this sign in February, witnessing to the return of the light piercing through the heart of Winter. Aurora, the light of the new day, brings down on earth the ideals of the brightest stars. And with them the promises of a real revolution are announced. Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.

Jupiter is the god of the highest spiritual ideals. Usually, in this zodiac sign it releases all their potential, fueling the humanitarian impulses with trust, expansion and optimism. Science and progress become the heralds of a new world, where all peoples unite in the name of universal values.

But is this always the case? Are we really going this year to receive an impulse in that direction? In this article we are going to talk about the Jupiter Uranus cycle. We are also going to see where we are at in this regard, as well as the repercussions for 2021. In particular we are going to focus on the role of Social Networks in the last decade to better understand where our society is going.

The Jupiter Uranus Cycle

In Mundane Astrology planetary cycles are very important to understand earthly events. If we take the slowest planets—Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter—we have 10 possible couples of planets. Each couple forms a cycle, which represents the unfolding of specific living archetypes on Earth.

Let’s take Jupiter and Uranus to clarify this concept. Every roughly 14 years these planets are in conjunction (see picture below in 2010-11). Jupiter is way faster than Uranus, so we can imagine the latter standing still, and the former revolving around it. It is no different than the lunar phases, but instead of having the Sun and the Moon we have Uranus and Jupiter. All this is happening of course from our perspective on the Earth.

As you can see we have several stages in this cycle. Every stage has a specific meaning. We can start from 2008 (sextile, in light blue) when the former cycle was ending end the seed of the new cycle was in preparation.

In 2010-11 the actual cycle started (conjunction, in yellow) and a new impulse was given. This impulse received a push in 2012 (first sextile) and faced the first difficulties in 2013-14 (first square). Then we had the impetus overcoming them in 2014-15 (first trine, in green). The cycle reached the position of conscious awareness in 2016-17 (opposition, in orange).

Here we were in the middle of the cycle, which represents a moment of awareness to decide how to move on, treasuring the experience so far. Then we had in 2019 the actual continuation (second trine) that we decided to undertake during the opposition. And here we are in 2021, with che second square: a moment of crisis that’s going to be the main cause for the cycle to end.

So in order to understand where we are and what this means we need to look at two things:

1. The Meaning of this cycle;
2. The Meaning of the specific stage we are facing (second square).

The Jupiter Uranus Cycle Meaning

So what’s the meaning of the Jupiter Uranus Cycle? Jupiter and Uranus are both idealistic planets. Jupiter is the planet of spiritual ideals aimed specifically at community and social life. Uranus brings progressive ideals aimed at changing the world through technical and scientific progress.

Their conjunction represents a new seed in different fields. To name some: philosophy of science, social repercussions of scientific discoveries, changes in community life due to technical means, relationship between ethics and progress, the relationship between science and religion.

So, where are we at with this cycle? And among all these possible significations, which are we going to highlight? To answer to these questions we need to look back at the beginning of the cycle itself. So, what happened between 2008 and 2010?

During these years the seed of the current cycle was prepared. As we mentioned at the beginning of this post, we are now going to focus on the changes in community life due to technical means. In other words, we are going to talk about Social Networks.

The end of Social Networks as we know them

In 2007 the first iPhone was released. From 2008 to 2010 we witnessed what has been without any doubt the last and most important digital revolution of our time. Smartphones with an internet connection turned us into constantly connected people.

Do you remember how life was before it? The implications of this transition are so big that we can’t fully understand its extent yet. A plethora of issues exploded in the last decade, concerning privacy and the impact of social media on real life.

Some people say they’ve got nothing to hide. But it’s not only about protecting our private life and sensitive information. Mainly, it’s about the fact that’s increasingly difficult to perceive that we actually have a private life.

We find ourselves scrolling and posting on social media early in the morning as well as late in the evening. Always connected, our private and intimate boundaries become blurry and fundamentally not existent. But what are the social implications of this digital revolution?

This is definitely a Jupiter Uranus cycle kind of question.

The Illusory Truth Effect

The illusory truth effect (also known as the illusion of truth effect, validity effect, truth effect, or the reiteration effect) is the tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure.

— Wikipedia

The way technology changed social life is now there for all of us to see. Always connected people change their worldview, their perspective on things according to the group they belong. This is perfectly human, and it has to do with the natural process of building community. Simply put, we tend to hangout with people with similar perspectives on things.

But when we are always connected, something changes. We become so bombarded with the same set of information, hearing the same thing over and over again, that we fall prey of this Illusory Truth Effect.

Think about it. It’s 2021 and we have around us people believing the earth is flat. Yes, we can joke about it, but this is a worrying symptom that highlights all the fragility of the human condition. Where, in order to belong, we get to the point of believing to other people’s beliefs even if they are nonsense.

A part from earthflatters, let’s take the assault on the Congress. How could this happen? We need to be aware that we are surrounded by people who genuinely believe that the U.S. elections were a fraud. But the assailants live in a mental space where this assumption is just part of a bigger narrative that goes way beyond that.

Their perception of reality was slowly changed during years of exposure to the same type of information: media are corrupted, the deep state is against Trump, Trump is the only hope, and so on. They’ve been living in this bubble for years, and this is the result: an attack on the symbol of American democracy.

Jupiter Uranus Second Square

Jupiter second square with Uranus marks the beginning of the end of the cycle. The assault on the Congress has been literally a sort of revolution (Uranus) in a bad aspect with ideals (Jupiter). Attacking the symbol of democracy to save democracy itself? Confusing.

But on a major scale it also represents the concrete consequences of the way Social Networks are affecting society. For this reason they are going to be reconsidered and their power diminished. Here’s some effects about what’s happening:

• For security reasons, the ruling of the court of justice of the European Union imposed that firms like Facebook must restrict data sent from EU to US;
• With iOS 14 Apple introduced a feature to prevent applications from tracking your online behavior, enraging a war with Facebook;
• Tim Berners-Lee, one of the creators of the web as we know it, wants to change the internet paradigma to put people in control of their personal data.

This process takes time. From an astrological perspective the next steps of the cycle are going to be 2022 and 2024. In 2022 the seed of the new cycle is going to be prepared. This means that next year we should have a clearer idea on the solution to all this privacy and fake news drama. In 2024 instead this seed is going to take roots, so we should also be able to see the first manifestations of this new process.

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