Lack of connection between action and reward for that action. Dysgradia and Saturn and the Outer Planets. I came across an interesting word the other day as I was doing some research–dysgradia. It describes a syndrome where there is a lack of connection between action and reward for that action. It used to be called a sense of entitlement. There are articles in psychological journals describing this syndrome in the children of celebrities–things just come to you, good tables in the hottest restaurants, comp tickets, travel, even secondhand celebrity itself. There are entire books about dysgradia in the children of the wealthy, or the powerful. But the interesting thing about dysgradia is that is occurs in children of the poor and the powerless, which tells me that it isn’t quite the sense of entitlement of old, but rather a lack of meaning. Why act, if my actions have no results? This is dysgradia’s other face.

The psychologists say that dysgradia may have to do with one generation not passing a meaningful structure to the next. It can be argued that society itself always seems on the brink of chaos–I am just old enough to remember the late sixites, and it seemed at the time that the world was truly coming apart at the seams. The younger generation always rejects parts of the societal structure it has inherited. This is, after all, what the outer planets are for as they form their generational positions and aspects. When we think of the sixties, now, what do we, as astrologer, see? Uranus and Pluto conjunct in Virgo. The idealism of Pisces gone amok, the violence toward those who try and serve, the rejection of the status quo with nothing solid to replace it, every stitch of our daily lives changed. And yet, this generation may have wandered into a generational dysgradia, as the utopia it evoked was ground and remade into the ‘me’ generation of the selfish seventies. Virgo wants to sort out the chaff from the grain–so instead of a perfect society, the Pluto in Leo generation reacted to the societal impulse by beginning with perfection of the Self.