Wetiko: A (Magical) Idea Whose Time Has Come

The one thing the greatest tyrants in all of history were afraid of was a new idea. This is just as true today in our increasingly interconnected digital age, as the powers that be continually attempt to censor liberating ideas that are not in line with the mainstream, agreed-upon narrative and its underlying agenda. As the great doctor of the soul C. G. Jung pointed out, when it is a question of mass psychosis, nothing but “new symbolic ideas” which embrace, express and help us re-contextualize—and see—the emerging chaos and disorder in a new way can save us from our self-created collective nightmare. What can be thought of as a saving idea—i.e., a novel, creative, redemptive and archetypal conception—can protect a people from succumbing to the encroaching darkness in today’s world. In light of our current world crisis, a creative breakthrough, a new way of looking at things—a saving idea—illuminating fundamentally new insights into the nature of our universe and our place in it is imperative, an absolute necessity for our survival. Wetiko and all that it stands for is just such an idea, as if it has been secreted by the universe into the world—and into our minds—at this time in our history as the very medicine humanity needs to heal what ails our species. Wetiko is more than just an idea, however, for it has a living reality all its own that can not only change the way we think about things—it can change the way we think in general—as well as transform how our experience of the world manifests. In contrast to being abstract, immaterial vaporous nothings which carry no weight and have no substance, new ideas such as wetiko have real power, as a new idea can change our conception of ourselves and our sense of what’s happening in the world, transforming our very state of being at its core in the process.