We Need to Learn about Wetiko Now. PT 1
Narcissistic "infection" from the personal to the collective.
Narcissism has been a growing buzzword for quite some time
Whereas it is important to talk about this insidious aspect of human psychology, it is also not to be used as a catchall for qualifying an ex’s character that you simply don’t like. And though pattern detection is of utter importance in our development it is not our “job” to clinically diagnose others with significant mental and personality disorders. There is no need to pathologize. We do so much better when we seek to recognize and understand.
Besides, narcissism occurs on a spectrum: strong, weak, toxic, and even healthy elements go into our egoic construction. We all contain seeds of narcissism just as we all contain the seeds of Wetiko which, before we go any further, we are going to attempt to define.
Wetiko is a psychospiritual parasite, an infection of the human mind and spirit that is nonlocal. In other words, it is a “field” effect. This means that it resides within the human psyche and can travel at the speed of projection—faster than the speed of light—to be transferred between two or more hosts.
The temptation for all of us to point the finger and say “It’s you, not me,” is one of the ways that Wetiko spreads, for the second we have dislocated it from ourselves and given fully over to our projections onto another it has successfully gotten “its hooks” into us. This is not to say that everything we “see” in another is a reflection of some truth about us—and it is exactly that. The distinction is this: if we see abuse in another that does not mean that we ourselves are an abuser. What it does mean is that we carry a compatible patterning which drives us to engage with or makes us susceptible to abusive situations and dynamics. A classic example of this is the enmeshment between a so-called “empath” and a narcissist.
In this classic pairing both parties are infected by the Wetiko virus and both parties have suffered and are perpetuating narcissistic “wounding”. Both parties are dislocating their own “shadow” and seeking resolution for past trauma through the dynamics of the relationship. Both parties are disowning their “wounds” and their power. The difference is that one person, the empath collapses inwardly having a porous or non existent psychic structure aka: no boundaries. Whereas the narcissist projects their energy outwardly while their disowned disdain for their own vulnerability leaks onto the empath who will repeatedly “take it in” until they either wind up ill or coming into a total state of chronic fatigue or collapse. This “wounding” can become such an identity that the empaths themselves wind up becoming a cover narcissist.
The difference between an over and covert narcissist is this: overt levies abuse through force, bombastic behavior, and aggrandized personality traits. Covert narcissists abuse through perpetual victimhood, blame-shifting, and manipulation.
There can of course be crossovers in the behavioral patterning, but one could think of the difference between them as metaphorically being a bull in a china shop (overt) or the snake in the grass (covert). Overt narcs cannot hide what they are—they are abusive bullies who wear their grandiosity on their puffed out faces for all to see. Whereas covert narcs survive by pretending to be other than what they are by waiting, hiding, undermining their “victims” and striking when the situation is opportune.
In both instances this pattern is held in place by the victim/perpetrator/martyr triad and it is through this pattern that Wetiko perpetuates itself.
Though this pattern and the parasite itself can cause great damage in our personal and intimate relationships, it does not hold itself only to that realm. Wetiko, narcissism, and psychopathy are systemic infections as well.
The example of overt narcissism from a worldwide view looks like dictatorship and violent colonization. An example of covert narcissism looks like (many) systemized religions, election processes, mainstream media news coverage, and our entire financial system which Paul Levy, author of “Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil” has termed “vampire squid economics”.
How do you take a species that is innately powerful and empathetic and get it to turn on itself and actively seek self-destruction? You convince it that its power resides “outside of itself” that power being a spiritual connection to life and each other. Then you enforce a system of beliefs and rules which reinforce an egocentric view on life: power over as opposed to power with. Now that the dominance miasma has been fully insinuated you create systems that reinforce this paradigm in every area of life: religion being a primary one, but also through education and commerce.
This is done. This system has been in place for thousands of years. This “virus” has been making its way through the human psyche for just as long. At this point many of us are pretty good at pointing out overt narcissism. However, it is the covert form that is truly insidious as it works its way into our psychoneuroimmunology, our bodies, our relationships, and even attaches itself to our value systems. How does it do this? This form of abuse is usually presented to us by someone in a position of authority and who we feel has our best interests at heart: parents, teacher, priests…politicians—and it is often packaged as being “for your own good”.
This is the very means by which former administrations and figureheads have gotten us to voluntarily surrender our privacy rights, our rights to our bodies, our rights to our lands, our rights to protect ourselves and even our rights to free speech—for our safety, for our “own good”.
It is the attacks upon and erosion of free speech that frankly frightens me the most. To "give up” free speech or, more accurately to have it wrested from us or so maligned as dangerous “misinformation" is to give up our agency. It is to be “cut off “from our ability to speak to what is happening within and around us. Freedom of speech was made the first amendment because it was considered “an inalienable right”. From a magical standpoint this is also the most damning. If we cannot “name a thing” we lose our power to address it.
To name “Wetiko” to know what it is, is to be able to begin to address it and contain it. And containment is what it requires from a compassionate yet ruthless position. How can we be ruthlessly compassionate? They seem to be diametrically opposing positions. That is exactly what we need to learn how to do: to hold the force of opposites as possibly true. To say: “What I see out there, in you is out there and it is in you—and the seeds of my responsibility for how I engage with that are in me.”
This is how we claim and tend our own woundedness as well as the poison, infection, and parasites that seek asylum within it. We can never fully eject this consciousness and to think that we have means it once again has “its hooks” in us. The moment we slip into arrogance, rigidity, and finger-pointing is the moment we need to return to our own tender heart and examine what is happening within us. From there we also begin to address what is happening out there.
How do we know when we have been hijacked by Wetiko?
We will feel it in our body. We will become agitated, frightened, or even self-righteous. But not only may we feel “aggrandized” we may also feel compromised by addictive behaviors, low self-worth, and intrusive thoughts. Without the accompanying awareness of our own internal “state” other indicators that we may also have fallen into a trauma-induced trance can be the repetition of information that has been psychically and socially “seeded” into us. Think back to things you heard at church, in school, or on the news. These are all methods of inducing information through trance and the ongoing existing trauma for all of us that we come to terms with over and over is our own disconnection—and sometimes violent severing from Source.
The soul rend is where Wetiko attaches to us and though we may never be fully “rid” of it, just as we carry certain “wounds” our whole lives, we can bring awareness and compassion and tend to it even as we learn to contain our own parasitic and viral outbreaks. It is said we are actually “evolutionary partners”—humans and Wetiko. We awaken and arise even as we claim our right and responsibility to address and contain it. And contain it we must and name it we must and be wise to it we must. Our lives and our civilization depend upon it.
Lotsa love,
~Justice
PS: I have been gathering thoughts and energy of this subject, Wetiko and narcissism, for a long time and I feel more so than ever “we” need to know what it is, how to spot it and contain it in ourselves and others. I will be developing this as a series as it comes to me. I will also be offering a class on it in the near future.
In the meantime: this is Paul Levy’s book that I mentioned above in the essay. I cannot recommend it enough. Its long and wordy and “loaded” but so worth it.
And here is a video I just came across.