Fuss over astrological signs makes me sick

Astrological sign for people born in March, who believe they're wont to prove themselves and their strengths. 

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The Pilgrim, November 18, 2022

There is a fascination with astrological signs - among my American friends - that I don’t seem to understand.

At first, it never really used to bother me. I constantly saw the zodiac dates and traits in Instagram bios as people described themselves as Gemini or Aries.

I took a personal interest and found out that I’m an Aries myself because I was born on March 21.

It didn’t really mean much to me other than serve as a feel-good discovery. A zodiac sign often makes you feel like you know yourself and in my case I learnt that Aries are passionate, dominant and ambitious. Who wouldn’t like that?

The astrology that underpins these signs can be very persuasive. It’s so popular in America that people blame their own personal blunders on their zodiac.

My problem with astrology started when I met a young Black American girl, who I liked, and I was bent on having a relationship with her.

Eventually she wanted to know when I was born, so that she could determine my own sign and use that to decide whether we could date or not. I beg your pardon!

So I remember joking that I was a Gemini and she was freaked out. She immediately told me she would reconsider our relationship because her last boyfriend was a Gemini and proved to be a source of trouble for her.

This type of thinking led me to interrogate this astrology further. As I’ve spent more time in the higher education system, I’ve increasingly started appreciating the value of science over any other method that claims to produce human knowledge.

As for astrology, it has no scientific validity because it is based on studying the positions of celestial bodies like stars and using this to account for human behaviour.

When I arrived at this understanding, I lost any real interest I had in the zodiac and I concluded that there is no way it could explain human destiny or even determine the fate of a relationship.

My own belief in science as the best source of knowledge led me to adopt a skeptical attitude when discussing zodiac signs.

But for most Americans, the science argument doesn't work. Like the girl I went out with, they believe that their personalities can be demystified by having a sophisticated understanding of stars and their positions.

Well, such fuss over divination is absurd. Personality traits to me have nothing to do with birthday dates or where the star or moon is on a particular day.

People behave the way they do because of particular life experiences and the way they were nurtured. All of us are born empty templates and we turn into either bitter or better persons based on what challenges we face and how we respond to them.

Sociology itself settles this debate in a more decisive way. Studies have shown, for example, that if a human being is denied total human interaction at birth they’ll grow up without personality or be able to speak any language.

People only become part of human society after passing through the usual rites of passage and having the full benefit of social exposure and engagement.

But life eventually weaves itself into patterns and these fascinate people. In a bid to understand ourselves, people, as spiritual beings, have developed systems to explain certain traits of human nature and this is why astrology retains its hold on human thinking.

For me, being a Gemini or Aries doesn’t count. I can befriend or date any person, as long as their values align with mine.

You see, such characteristics as being ambitious or domineering are not a preserve of a certain type of people as astrology would have anybody believe. Almost any person can take a risk. It all depends on individual aspirations and circumstances in life.

The same goes for personalities such as sigma, beta or alpha. Today we’ve young men who categorise themselves based on these fantasies. If they’re independent minded, they call themselves a sigma male, and if they are charismatic, they regard themselves as alpha.

This divination or pseudoscience is deceptive and tries to undermine truly scientific reasoning. The world has no default personality and no number of signs in the skies can explain why you do the things you do. My American friends, and people anywhere around the world, should embrace this truth.

*This column is published every Friday in Zambia's leading newspaper, the Zambia Daily Mail