As documented in this piece today on CBS This Morning:
I can remember growing up on the Miami Herald and seeing the horoscope buried well past the front page. Now publications like Cosmopolitan put it front and centre.
That piece reminded me of a pithy observation by John McKenzie in his The Two-Edged Sword:
The more petty evils of the demons could be met by magical means and the tremendous mass of magical literature which Mesopotamia has left us is a pathetic witness to the superstition of one of the most intelligent, ingenious and charming peoples which the race has developed. Bouché-Leclerq concluded his researches into Greek astrology with the desperate remark that it is not a waste of time to study how other people have wasted their time.
I always took a dim view of my contemporaries who suddenly became “scientific” with climate change. Right or wrong, most of them have neither the aptitude nor the temperament to be really scientific about anything. Evidently that hasn’t changed down the line either.
Positive Infinity 