Superstitions are quite common among human beings. More often than not, we tend to believe in things that cannot be logically explained. Native Americans believe selfishness is a virus that can affect us. They believe it to be a pathogen that forces the victim to feed their incessant need to be selfish. This allows humanity to become its worst enemy. This unrealistic view comes from a piece of literature called “Dispelling Wetiko”. Carl Jung wrote this literary piece to explain the concept of humans getting infected by wetiko. He pointed out that we live in an era where psychosocial phenomena prove the existence of a “virus” of selfishness.
“Wetiko” is a term used by Native Americans to designate an evil person who doesn’t care about the well being of others or a person who engages in selfish acts despite the cost. This book is not negative or reproachful. It has merely explained how every virus tends to seek a host to invade and feed off but we all have our immunity system or defensive barriers to protect ourselves. It is possible to strengthen our “psychological immune system” to keep ourselves protected from the selfishness virus.
Wetiko is believed to be a psychic form of blindness. Psychiatrist Carl Jung refers to wetiko by the name Antimimos that is described as the “imitator and evil principle”. Antimimos is a kind of deception that can be thought of as counter mimicry. Antimimos is an evil force that attempts to lead humans astray and transforms truth to falsehood and falsehood to the truth, which ultimately leads us to forgetfulness. It is believed that potentially anyone can fall into the shadow and unwillingly become an instrument of the virus attempting to act its will through us....<<<Read More>>>...
