Pluto in Sagittarius

Once, in front of everyone, you changed your mind about something that mattered, and said so plainly.

The planet that was voted out

In August 2006, at a meeting in Prague, the world’s astronomers voted on what a planet is, and Pluto no longer qualified. After seventy-six years as the ninth planet, it became a dwarf planet overnight, and schoolbooks had to be rewritten. A certainty everyone had been taught simply changed. Sagittarius, the fire sign Jupiter rules, holds belief, knowledge and the distant view, and there Pluto transforms what people accept as fact. This generation grew up in exactly that climate.

Truth, contested

Its cohort grew up with the internet in their pockets, with every belief challenged online, and with information and misinformation arriving side by side. They learned to question everything: religion, politics, science, news. For them, truth is something you have to fight for.

Global by default

They are the most international generation yet. They study, travel and form friendships across borders, and they see their own country as one voice among many. Their group chats run in three languages, and they learned more about the world from their friends than from their schools. Big causes, from climate to justice, move them intensely, and they expect their beliefs to lead to action.

True believers

Fanaticism is the danger: belief held so hard that it becomes a weapon, or doubt so total that nothing can be trusted.

What they bring

What they bring is a readiness to rethink anything, including what they were told was settled, and to change their minds in public when the evidence changes.

Checking for yourself

Deciding for yourself what is true has fallen to you more times than any generation before you. You check the source, argue with strangers across continents, and hold your relatives’ favourite stories up to the light, which older people find unsettling and you find simply honest.

The planet that was demoted the year many of them were born is still out there, still turning, still exactly what it always was, and they understand better than anyone that the name was never the point.