The Fourth Monkey

The Fourth Monkey is the most dangerous monkey of them all – he is the one that humanity as a whole should fear, because he will drag everyone down with him through his apathy and his cognitive dissonance.   He combines all the qualities of the other three ‘wise’ monkeys – hear no evil, speak no evil and see no evil, but he embodies them in his own way.  He sees no one, hears no one and speaks to no one.  He has been conditioned by years of social media and sophisticated psychological mind influencing techniques and behavioural training via his smart phone.  He will generally be found bent over his phone, searching social media, anxiously scrolling for ‘likes’.  He has no spatial or conscious awareness; all critical thinking has been erased, and his beliefs cannot be challenged.  His mind is now totally ill-prepared for a world of reality, having been immersed for so long in virtual, fake scenarios; the whole idea of the exercise in the first place.  He is happy to be an avatar and to interact with ‘bots’, who have become his friends.  But he’s unhappy.   He is fearful and anxious and is always trying to make sure he stays safe.   He is ‘used’ to being part of a crowd where he fits in, where he is not ridiculed, but where he also doesn’t see that he is being steered closer and closer towards technological and technocratic control, with all that accompanies that type of life. 

The modern era of smartphones as we know them began with the release of the first Apple iPhone in June 2007.  It was revolutionary because it combined a phone, an iPod and an internet communicator in one device.   So convenient and so easy!!!!   So said everyone, as those two words – convenient and easy - became a mantra going forward.   Saturn was with Venus in Leo, both opposing Neptune, at the iPhone’s release.   The point when everything in the lives of many became public – thoughts, photos, outings, experiences, feelings.   It was also the birth of the now fashionable ‘pouty lip’.  Girls even decided to embrace the look on a permanent, falsely created basis – embodied in that Venus conjunct Saturn aspect, but with Neptune opposing they didn’t realise, or even care, that it was really all just an illusion of glitz, celebrity and glamour.   Privacy became a thing of the past and gradually people came to love their virtual world; their fantasy (Neptune) world where they were centre stage; a world that was governed by the number of likes they received, convenience and ease.  But the wheel has turned further now, and that Saturn/Neptune opposition is about to become a historic conjunction at 0 Aries.  What have we become and where are we being taken?

Back in 1909 E. M Forster, the author of classics such as A Room with a View, Howard’s End and A Passage to India, envisaged a time where a virtual world would take and destroy society.   In his short story, The Machine Stops, Forster imagined a future where people lived underground, isolated in underground cells, but ‘safe’.   Their needs of survival and entertainment were provided by an omnipotent giant machine that was quickly accorded God-like status.  There was little social connection, and people communicated only via audio/visual devices.  The art of ‘feeling’ had been lost, even as basic as a mother’s love for her child, as people became cut off from their souls and their soul purpose.   In this work, Forster had predicted the internet and messaging, with technology itself the ultimate controlling force.    

The main characters of the story are Vashti and her son Kuno, who both live underground in rooms/cells at opposite sides of the world.  Vashti has become content with her life, feeling safe and secure from outside threats, but Kuno is more of a rebel, longing to explore and be part of the forbidden, outside world.  Kuno forces Vashti to endure a long and uncomfortable journey to come and see him, a journey that she doesn’t really want to make, content not to have physical contact with her son and to just speak via the machine.  

Visits to the earth’s surface require a respirator, but Kuno longs to be free and to explore without the required permission.   He knew that other humans still lived on Earth despite the toxicity of the air.   Vashti considers her son’s desires to be ‘unthinkable’.    When Kuno does escape he is returned and threatened with the ultimate punishment, ‘Homelessness’.   Kuno does not believe in the infallibility of the Machine, unlike those such as Vashti who accord it a kind of divinity of its own, forgetting that it was built originally by humans.  Eventually, as Kuno predicted, the Machine collapses and brings civilisation down along with it.  Kuno had transferred to a room closer to Vashti, which allowed them to physically embrace for the first and last time since his childhood, just before they perished.

 “Beware of first-hand ideas!” people had been told; humanity has been overtaken by “the Machine,” which will provide all comforts and meet all needs.   Progress is indeed the price we pay for our evolution.   Sometimes it is for the good of mankind.  And most, I’m sure, would happily embrace more technology if they thought it improved their lives, and particularly if they were told their lives would become easier and more convenient.   But it was only when the Machine was breaking down that they realised the importance of the needs of the human soul and its connection to the natural world.    

The Machine Stops is an illustration that those who once had been ridiculed and probably dismissed as ‘conspiracy theorists’, would be the ones who remained on earth, adapting to its changing environments, and would ultimately be the ones who would somehow try to rebuild. Those who expected technology to meet all their needs preferred the convenience and the ease provided by the Machine, but still found it was missing something crucial for the survival of humanity.

We are currently being urged to allow our lives to be handed over to all that is digital, so generations from now, will this time be remembered as the point that everything began to change?   The body is not a machine, and we will be proved to be so wrong if we treat it as so.   For me, we can go back to the end of WW2, for clues.   We can indeed go back a lot further than that, but there’s nothing like a world war to focus the mind.    From 1945 right up to 2035 we will have had an astonishingly long dance between the two furthest outer plants – Pluto and Neptune.   It will be a 90-year historic dance of a sextile, which is supposed to be opportunistic and benevolent.   But when you are talking about two such ‘big cheeses’ as these guys, it can relate to actions that just blend easily and seamlessly, without resistance.    Ideologies (Neptune) have been ‘sold’ on the basis of ease and convenience, when in fact they were intended to have power (Pluto) over our thoughts and our minds.   Yes, these two working together could positively transform our conscious abilities and our spiritual depths.  But Pluto works by stealth and Neptune is illusory and deceptive.    What could possibly go wrong when both can work in a surreptitious manner? 

Pluto is our connection to destruction/death/crisis and Neptune to the waters of our emotions, the divine, transcendence, sacrifice, the psyche, the unconscious.   When these ‘big guys’ come together, you perhaps feel that only God can help you, even if you don’t consider yourself to be a believer in a God.   A Pluto transit is what my friend and colleague, William Stickevers, calls ‘your come to Jesus moment’.  And when your back is absolutely against the wall and you have no one else to call on, you will probably indeed find yourself calling for God’s help.

Depending on the orb of range we allow to this aspect between Pluto and Neptune, by 2035 it will have danced in and out of range many times.   The point is though that the effect on society will have been both long and subtle.   Outside forces will take over individual minds with this, and it certainly plays into the hands of a force such as the Fabian Society, that I have written about previously.    In fact, Pluto and Neptune are intrinsically interwoven within the fabric of this Society, having been born on a Neptune, Chiron, Pluto, Saturn conjunction.  Many current and past members of the Labour government are committed Fabians.   One of their emblems is the wolf in sheep’s clothing – very Pluto/Neptune in nature.   They believe in ‘slow and steady’, alongside smoke and mirror tactics, to achieve their Marxist/fascist aims, also very Pluto/Neptune.

The Machine Stops was a dystopian warning of what might happen if we lose our conscious abilities and allow a machine to be in charge of our lives.  Easy to see from the framework of astrology, but hard to warn against.   So it seems appropriate at this point to allow Steve Jobs, who brought us the very thing that will bring in some very dystopian changes, to have the last words:

Here’s to the crazy ones.  The misfits.  The rebels.  The troublemakers.  The round pegs in square holes.  The ones who see things differently ….. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

But not if those crazy ones become the embodiment of the Fourth Monkey!  Pluto could well signify the Plutocrats/Oligarchs who have increased their wealth so much over the last few years, as they have advanced their quest to create billions of ‘Fourth Monkeys’, all convinced that TikTok and the celebrities they have come to idolise have their interests at heart.