Many have been wondering, “What the heck is going on with the world?!?” And you’re not alone! I’m sure the riots in London caught almost everyone by surprise even if the S&P’s downgrade of the US’s credit rating from AAA to AA+ didn’t! And then there’s a repeat of the tragedy from 19 years ago with a horrible famine in Somalia. To top it off Mercury is Retrograde! It seems like everything is happening at once. While all of these issues have their own local sources, there is an intense T-square this whole week, with Mars (Action/War/Violence) in Cancer (Food/Home) opposing Pluto (Big Forces/Massive Change) in Capricorn (Political Systems/Government) while Squaring Uranus (Unexpected/Rebellion) in Aries (Personal Interest/Action).

This is not an easy combination of planets, and while the Uranus/Pluto Square has been going on for some time, when another planet transits the square, it highlights the challenges of the day. What I think is most important to look at is that right now Pluto is in Capricorn. It has been in Capricorn since late 2008 and will stay there until 2023. Usually there is some crisis associated with the transit of Pluto through each sign. Pluto was in Sagittarius for 15 years before this and I would sum up that transit as a “Globalization” crises as Sagittarius is the sign of the Traveler and Globetrotter. The internet paved the way for globalization and then we had to deal with the dark side of all of that: xenophobia and terrorism.

While these issues have not completely gone away, it seems the focal point of the crises has moved to the corporate, political and governmental structures for the entire globe. We have gridlock in Washington, the EU is running out of money to bail out European governments, and rioters have taken to the streets in England, apparently in the face of austerity measures, although it could just be general anarchist sympathies as well. Globally we’re facing political and social upheavals that will most likely take until 2023 to fully work out.

As Pluto works it’s way through Capricorn it will along the way hit other challenging aspects with other planets and there will be more big changes ahead! Luckily though, this intense and very volatile T-Square with Mars will subside by the end of the week. Hopefully the riots will be over by then, and at least some of the stock market volatility will subside. However, the important thing is not to be ruled by what I’d like to term the “Ministry of Fear.” I’ve been reading the book by Graham Green with the same name, and it seems fitting that a lot of our current challenges are due to fear. Fear that everything won’t work out, so there’s the need to control everything and pull back completely. Of course as economists tell us, this just leads to a negative feedback cycle. While it’s important to be realistic, and face challenges head on, our most important challenge of the decade will be to dispel group fear. Let’s not forget that nationalism partly rose out of the economic hard times of the 30’s. Let’s be real and practical in our own lives–open hearted and generous if we can be, or at least open to new ideas and not closed off to everything. Greater society begins with the individual, so if you can be kind to your neighbor and co-worker, not be click-ish, snobbish, and elite-ist, we’ll all be much closer to riding out the challenging decade ahead!