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In reply to the discussion: What is wrong with it. [View all]

MiHale

(11,506 posts)
2. Wetiko...the virus of selfishness...
Mon Mar 31, 2025, 10:07 AM
Mar 31
https://exploringyourmind.com/wetiko-virus-selfishness-native-americans/#google_vignette

According to Native Americans, Wetiko is an evil spirit that invades human minds. It’s a “virus” of selfishness. A physic pathogen forcing the victim to feed their insatiable needs as if they were starving. It makes humanity become its own worst enemy…

***snip

Jack Forbes is a historian who explained something very interesting in his book Colombus and Other Cannibals. When indigenous communities came into contact with the first European pilgrims, the Native Americans said they were infected by Wetiko. It was a tribe of the Cree in Canada who used this concept for the first time. However the Ojiwa, for example, already were using the well-known term “windigo”.
Whatever the case, the mental concept they had of the white or “civilized” man was that of an individual affected by the “virus” of selfishness. The virus led them to desire the force of nature and its resources as their own. In turn, Paul Levy explains that this idea is the very same one Carl Jung used to explain the concept of Shadow. Shadow is the archetype of the unconscious that we all share.
Thus, common things like jealousy, greed, thirst for power, and selfishness are actually products of our collective unconscious. Our darkest shadows and a “self” which has become dissociated from the conscience. A being that lets itself get carried away by despicable acts.

….More at link …
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