The Stars Down to Earth

Theodor Adorno

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780415270991
• eBook ISBN: 9781134488704
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The Stars Down to Earth shows us a stunningly prescient Adorno. Haunted by the ugly side of American culture industries he used the different angles provided by each of these three essays to showcase the dangers inherent in modern obsessions with consumption. He engages with some of his most enduring themes in this seminal collection, focussing on the irrational in mass culture - from astrology to new age cults, from anti-semitism to the power of neo-fascist propaganda. He points out that the modern state and market forces serve the interest of capital in its basic form. Stephan Crook's introduction grounds Adorno's arguments firmly in the present where extreme religious and political organizations are commonplace - so commonplace in fact that often we deem them unworthy of our attention. Half a century ago Theodore Adorno not only recognised the dangers, but proclaimed them loudly. We did not listen then. Maybe it is not too late to listen now.

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THE STARS DOWN TO EARTH:THE LOS ANGELES TIMES ASTROLOGY COLUMN

INTRODUCTION

The group of studies to which the content analysis of the Los Angeles Times astrology column belongs, sets as its aim the investigation of the nature and motivations of some large-scale social phenomena involving irrational elements in a peculiar way – fused with what may be dubbed pseudo-rationality. Various mass movements spread all over the world in which people seem to act against their own rational interests of self-preservation and the “pursuit of happiness” have been evident now for a considerable length of time. It would be a mistake, however, to call such mass phenomena entirely “irrational,” to regard them as completely disconnected from individual and collective ego aims. In fact, most of them are based on an exaggeration and distortion of such ego aims rather than on their neglect. They function as though rationality of the self-maintaining body politic had grown malignant and therewith threatened to destroy the organism. This malignancy, however, can be demonstrated only after the autopsy. Often enough the consequence of apparently rational considerations leads to ultimately fatal events – the most recent example being Hitler’s shrewd and temporarily highly successful policy of national expansion which by its own logic inexorably led to his doom and world catastrophe. In fact, even when whole nations assume the role of profiteers of Realpolitik, this rationality is only partial and dubious. While the calculations of self-interest are pushed to extremes, the view of the totality of factors, and in particular, of the effects of such a policy upon the whole seems to be strangely curtailed. Overly shrewd concentration on self-interest results in a crippling of the capacity to look beyond the limits of self-interest and this finally works against itself. Irrationality is not necessarily a force operating outside the range of rationality: it may result from the processes of rational self preservation “run amuck.”

It is the pattern of interacting rational and irrational forces in modern mass movements upon which our studies hope to throw some light. The danger is by no means, as some theories such as Brickner’s Is Germany Incurable?¹ would like to have it, a specific German illness, the collective paranoia of one particular nation, but seems to spring from more universal social and cultural conditions. One of the most important contributions psychiatry and psychoanalytically-oriented sociology can make in this respect is to reveal certain mechanisms which cannot be grasped adequately either in terms of being sensible or in terms of delusions. Their investigation points to a definite basis in certain subjective dispositions though they certainly cannot be explained altogether psychologically. Psychotic character structure may sometimes though by no means always, be involved. In view of the presupposition of psychological “susceptibility” it may be assumed that they do not manifest themselves only in the sphere of politics that is at least on the surface realistic, but can be studied in other social areas as well, or even better, although the reality factor is rarely absent even from fads which somehow pride themselves on their own irrationality. Such an approach might be less hampered by rationalizations which in the field of politics are hard to discount. It also might violate fewer taboos and deep-rooted canons of behavior. Above all, it should be possible to analyze the inner structure of such movements on a small test-tube scale, as it were, and at a time when they do not yet manifest themselves so directly and threateningly that there is no time left for objective and detached research. The danger of ex post facto theories might thus be partially avoided.

It is in this spirit that we take up the study of astrology, not because we overrate its importance as a social phenomenon per se, nefarious though it is in various respects. Accordingly, the specific nature of our study is not a direct psychoanalysis of the occult, of the type initiated by Freud’s famous essay “The Uncanny”² and followed up by numerous scientific ventures, now collected by Dr. Devereux in Psychoanalysis and the Occult.³ We do not want to examine occult experiences or individual superstitious beliefs of any kind as expressions of the unconscious. In fact, the occult as such plays only a marginal role in systems such as organized astrology. Its sphere has little enough in common with that of the spiritualist who sees or hears ghosts or with telepathy. In analogy with the sociological differentiation of primary or secondary groups,⁴ we may define our area of interest as one of “secondary superstition.” By this we mean that the individual’s own primary experience of the occult, whatever its psychological meaning and roots or its validity, rarely, if ever, enter the social phenomenon to which our studies are devoted. Here, the occult appears rather institutionalized, objectified and, to a large extent, socialized. Just as in secondary communities, people no longer “live together” and know each other directly, but are related to each other through intermediary objectified social processes (e.g., exchange of commodities), so people responding to the stimuli we are here investigating seem in a way “alien” to the experience on which they claim their decisions are based. They participate in them largely through the mediation of magazines and newspapers, the personal advice of professional astrologers being too expensive, and frequently accept such information as reliable sources of advice rather than pretend to have any personal basis for their belief. The type of people we are concerned with take astrology for granted, much like psychiatry, symphony concerts or political parties; they accept it because it exists, without much reflection, provided only that their own psychological demands somehow correspond to the offer. They are hardly interested in the justification of the system. In the newspaper column to which this monograph is mainly devoted the mechanics of the astrological system are never divulged and the readers are presented only with the alleged results of astrological reasoning in which the reader does not actively participate.

This alienation from experience, a certain abstractness enveloping the whole realm of the commercialized occult may well be concomitant with a substratum of disbelief and skepticism, the suspicion of phoniness so deeply associated with modern big time irrationality. This, of course, has historical reasons. The modern occultist movements, including astrology, are more or less artificial rehashes of old and by-gone superstitions, susceptibility for which is kept awake by certain social and psychological conditions while the resuscitated creeds remain basically discordant with today’s universal state of enlightenment. The absence of ultimate “seriousness” which, incidentally, makes such phenomena by no means less serious with regard to their social implications – is as significant of our time as the emergence of secondary occultism per se.

It may be objected that organized fortune telling has for time immemorial had the character of “secondary superstition.” It has been separated for thousands of years from whatever could be called primary experience through a division of labor that admitted only priests into the esoteric mystery and therefore always carried within itself the element of phoniness expressed in the old Latin adage that an augur laughs when he sees another. As always with arguments intended to discredit interest in the specific modernity of phenomena by stressing that there is nothing new under the sun, this objection is both true and false. It is true in as much as the institutionalization of superstition is by no means novel; it is false in so far as this institutionalization has reached, by means of mass production, a quantity which is likely to result in a new quality of attitudes and behavior and in that the gap between the systems of superstition and the general state of mind has been widened tremendously. We may here refer only to the aforementioned detachment of large groups of believers from the “working” of superstition, and to their interest in net results rather than in supposedly supranatural powers. They don’t even see the sorcerers at work any more nor are they allowed to listen to their abracadabra. They simply “get the dope.” In addition, it should be stressed that in former periods, superstition was an attempt, however awkward, to cope with problems for which no better or more rational means were available at least so far as the masses are concerned. The sharp division between alchemy and chemistry, between astrology and astronomy is a comparatively late achievement. Today, however, the incompatibility of the progress of natural sciences, such as astro-physics, with a belief in astrology is blatant. Those who combine both are forced to an intellectual retrogression which formerly was hardly required. In a world in which, through popular scientific literature and particularly science fiction, every schoolboy knows of the billions of galaxies, the cosmic insignificance of the earth and the mechanical laws governing the movements of stellar systems, the geocentric and anthropo-centric view concomitant with astrology is utterly anachronistic.

We thus may assume that only very strong instinctual demands make it possible for people still – or anew – to accept astrology. Under present conditions, the astrological system can function only as “secondary superstition,” largely exempt from the individual’s own critical control and offered authoritatively.

It is necessary to stress this character of “secondary superstition” since it provides the key for one of the strangest elements in the material we are investigating. This is just its pseudo-rationality, the very same traits that play such a conspicuous role in totalitarian social movements, its calculative though spurious adaptation to realistic needs. Again, this may have been germane to fortune telling since time immemorial. People always wanted to learn from occult signs what to expect and do; in fact, superstition is largely a residue of animistic magical practices by which ancient humanity tried to influence or control the course of events. But the sobriety, nay the overrealism, of our material at the expense of anything remotely reminiscent of the supra-natural seems to be one of its most paradoxical and challenging features. Overrealism in itself may be, in some directions, irrational, in the sense of that overdeveloped and self-destructive shrewdness of self interest, pointed out before. In addition it will be proved during the course of our study that astrological irrationality has largely been reduced to a purely formal characteristic: abstract authority.

Our interest in secondary superstition naturally entails a lesser concentration on the psychological explanations of individual occult leanings than in the total personality set-up of those who are susceptible to these rather ubiquitous stimuli. In order to approach the problem, psychiatric as well as socio-psychological categories will have to be utilized. In view of the interweaving of rational and irrational elements, we are mainly interested in the direct or indirect “messages” conveyed by the material to its consumers: such messages combine irrationality (in as much as they aim at blind acceptance and presuppose unconscious anger in the consumers) and rationality (in as much as they deal with more or less practical everyday problems for which they pretend to offer the most helpful answer). Very often it seems as though astrology were only an authoritarian cloak while the matter itself is strongly reminiscent of a mental health column written for the trade in limited self-awareness and paternal support. The column attempts to satisfy the longings of people who are thoroughly convinced that others (or some unknown agency) ought to know more about themselves and what they should do than they can decide for themselves. It is this “mundane” aspect of astrology which particularly invites social and psychological interpretation. In fact, many of the messages are of a directly social or psychological nature. However, they rarely if ever adequately express social or psychological reality, but manipulate the readers’ ideas of such matters in a definite direction. Therefore, they must not be taken at face value, but subjected to some deeper probing.

This study is in the nature of content analysis. About three months of the daily column “Astrological Forecasts” by Carroll Righter in the Los Angeles Times, November 1952–February 1953, are interpreted. As a corollary, some observations on a number of astrological magazines are presented. We want to give a picture of the specific stimuli operating on followers of astrology whom we hypothetically regard as representative of the whole group of those who go for ‘secondary occultism’ and of the presumptive effect of these stimuli. We assume that such publications mold some ways of their readers’ thinking; yet they pretend to adjust themselves to the readers’ needs, wants, wishes and demands in order to “sell.” We regard this content analysis as an inroad to the study of the mentality of larger groups of a similar frame of mind.

There are various reasons for choosing this material. Limitations of research facilities prevented real field work and forced us to concentrate on printed material rather than on primary reactions. Such material seemed to be most copious in astrology and was easily accessible. Also astrology probably has the largest following among the various occultist schools in the population. It is certainly not one of the extreme occultist trades, but puts up a facade of pseudo-rationality which makes it easier to embrace than, for example, spiritualism. No wraiths appear, and the forecasts pretend to be derived from astronomic facts. Thus astrology might not bring out so clearly psychotic mechanisms as those fashions indulged in by the real lunatic fringe of superstition. This may hamper our study as far as understanding of the deeper unconscious layers of neo-occultism is concerned. This potential disadvantage, however, is compensated by the fact that astrology has caught on in such large sections of the population that the findings in as much as they partly are confined to the ego level and to social determinants, may be generalized with greater confidence. Moreover, it is just “pseudo-rationality,” the twilight zone between reason and unconscious urges, in which we are specifically interested from the viewpoint of social psychology.

For the time being our study has to limit itself to the qualitative. It represents an attempt to understand what astrological publications mean in terms of reader reactions, on an overt level as well as on a deeper one. While this analysis is guided by psychoanalytic concepts, it should be pointed out from the very beginning that our approach as far as it largely involves social attitudes and actions must largely consider conscious or semiconscious phases. It would be inappropriate to think exclusively in terms of the unconscious where the stimuli themselves are consciously calculated an...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• THE STARS DOWN TO EARTH
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INTRODUCTION: ADORNO AND AUTHORITARIAN IRRATIONALISM
• 1: THE STARS DOWN TO EARTH: THE LOS ANGELES TIMES ASTROLOGY COLUMN
• 2: THESES AGAINST OCCULTISM
• 3: RESEARCH PROJECT ON ANTI-SEMITISM: IDEA OF THE PROJECT
• 4: ANTI-SEMITISM AND FASCIST PROPAGANDA