This time of year the darkness literally oozes out from the corners of our house, slowly confining us to the brighter areas where we huddle, trying to keep life on track. You can practically set your calendar according to how deep the shadows are. We close the blinds earlier each day in an effort to keep the darkness out. But it does no good.

Darkness creeps into our home in many ways. I’m seriously considering dropping our daily newspaper subscription – I’ve grown weary of the unending bad news. I’ve been reading the paper first thing in the morning since I was a kid, but really, who wants to start their day with news of epidemics and decapitations?

Television is perhaps the worst source of darkness. Its bright screen belies its true nature. It infects us with darkness, not just through the news but in the programming it provides. TV shows are either banal or brutal, and often both. Declared a “vast wasteland” way back in 1961, programming has only gotten worse since then.

News, of course, has always been bad, even way back when I first started paying attention to it. I well remember the daily casualty reports from Vietnam, the race riots of the 60s, and a river catching on fire in Ohio.

But there were good things in the news back then, too. Despite the contention and sometimes violence that accompanied their struggle, black people were gaining basic civil rights. And women were forcing open the kitchen door, opening up a new world of possibilities that had once been hoarded by men the way our house hoards darkness. Despite the turmoils of the time, back then the future seemed to hold the promise of better days to come, days in which the American Dream of equality and opportunity would finally extend to all.

The dream of equality is an age-old dream, a dream known to people everywhere. It was what brought people here from the “old countries;” it was the hope of “liberty and justice for all.”

That hope too has dimmed. Voting rights are being taken away. Upward mobility is a distant memory; protections of our air and water are being challenged; privacy has become non-existent. The only vision for tomorrow seems to be coming from people who want to take this country back to the 1700s, to a time before the Revolution when wealthy autocrats ruled and everyone else lived in poverty.

In reflecting on visions of the past none stand out more than the goals of defeating the Soviets and of reaching the moon. These visions, these shared goals, drew our people together. But now we can’t launch a person into space and Russia is again threatening nuclear attack.

Without an inspiring vision of the future to pull us forward, our divisions will grow and our nation will stagnate. Contrary to what we’re told by those on the Right, returning to the way this country was governed by Great Britain isn’t the answer. But nobody much listens to the Left’s appeals for social, economic and environmental justice anymore. For whatever reason, few people care about keeping the American Dream alive.

We desperately need a vision of a better tomorrow that applies not just to the super-rich but to everyone. Without a strong pull from tomorrow, we will continue to languish in the oozing darkness of injustice and division. And darkness, unless overcome by the light of positive visions and dreams, only gets darker. With the nightfall of our nation seemingly upon us, where do we look for this much-needed light?

Perhaps it was written in the stars that Republicans would sweep the recent mid-term elections. At least that’s what some Democrats are apt to believe. According to the Chapman Survey on American Fears, which studies irrational beliefs, Democrats are more likely to embrace in astrology – the belief that the position of the stars influences events in our lives – while Republicans are more apt to believe bad things are the work of Satan.

It is tempting to see Satan’s hand in recent reports of cannibalism in Africa and the on-going depredations of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. And it isn’t that hard to see why some people believe in astrology. After all, the position of the sun in the sky determines whether it’s morning or evening, summer or winter, and our behavior and bodily rhythms can be affected by both. And it’s understandable that ancient people – who had nothing better to watch at night than the stars – would have reckoned the time of the year according to which constellation the sun rose in.

The moon, too, has an effect on the terrestrial world. Nowhere is this more obvious than with the tides, but many inlanders plant crops, butcher livestock and even get their hair cut according to the phases of the moon.

Over time people came to believe that, like the sun and moon, the other moving heavenly bodies also influenced conditions on earth. These additional moving bodies were the five visible planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Just as the position of the sun in the sky determines the hours of the day and months of the year, the positions of the other moving bodies were thought to exert an influence as well.

Indeed, our seven day week derives from this, though since we’ve mixed planetary names from Roman and Teutonic cultures many people no longer realize it. Sunday is the day of the Sun, Monday the day of the Moon, Tuesday the day of Mars, Wednesday the day of Mercury, Thursday the day of Jupiter, Friday the day of Venus and Saturday the day of Saturn. And each day was once felt to embody characteristics of the heavenly “god” it was named for.

Researchers in Hungary recently demonstrated that the season a person is born in affects everything from intelligence to a tendency towards mental illness. They speculate that the weather during pregnancy affects a mother’s activities and health and this in turn influences a baby’s development. But right now that’s just a guess.

And though scientists are quick to point out that this has nothing to do with astrology, it seems a moot point. Since the time of year does impact our temperament, what difference does it make if we say that people born in the Spring are more intelligent or if we say people born when the sun is in a winter sign are more prone to depression?

Still, no matter how tempting it is to blame things on the stars or the devil, the truth is that it’s people who ultimately bear responsibility for the decisions they make and the actions they take. After all, it’s an ancient aphorism that while the stars may impel us, they do not compel us – we are the masters of our own fate and need to behave accordingly.