Article February 8, 1975 Issue

"Not in our stars"

JACK EDWARD FOSS

While astrology may produce in its believers a feeling that they are in harmony with the universe, it also carries a heavier, fatalistic component—a feeling that certain events are "in the stars"—that, at best, we can adjust to them but not hope to change them. The view that certain human events are beyond human control tends to make one feel absolved from responsibility for his actions. Yet a clear-eyed acceptance of the fact that our own decisions determine the relative success or failure of our lives is basic to healthy, mature thinking.

Shakespeare comments on the human tendency to evade responsibility for one's decisions and actions in the words he gives to the ambitious and scheming Cassius in Julius Caesar: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/But in ourselves, that we are underlings."^{Julius Caesar, Act I, scene 2;}

Cassius rightly understands that he cannot blame the stars for his own position as underling to Caesar, yet when he asserts himself and tries to become master of his fate, he achieves only bloodshed and destruction because he is guided by the blindness of human will and personal ambition. He has apparently thought deeply enough to unhitch his wagon from a star, but he has not really found anything better.

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