By accidentally tapping into the collective unconscious…and you can, too.
After weeping over Xi Jinping’s speech yesterday, I posted a TikTok video that went viral for the first time in my life. It’s called “The Right Side of History” and got 172,000 views and rising. Here it is:
Why though? What’s the appeal over what I considered an unpolished and sappy post? I don’t get algorithm logic, but it must be based on human logic, which I do get. My guess is that viral posts tap into a collective unconscious, for instance, the private despair and anxiety we each suffer in having to choose sides in a looming World War III scenario.
The sigh of relief heard around the world
In declaring that I once wanted to be white but am now fiercely proud to call myself Chinese, my post broke the dark cloud of anxiety by announcing the side I chose. It made a space for others around the world to agree and land on a side, too. At least that’s how I interpret the landslide of comments.
Above the pale minority of haters telling me to “go back to where I came from,” I heard a huge sigh of relief from the global majority in multiple languages and felt the sun break through us all. It felt like connection, like relationship, and this mythical word, solidarity.
“This is beyond politics. It is social and it is personal.”
I suspect several things. That when something goes viral, it means that you have tapped into or named out loud a piece of the quietly brewing cultural zeitgeist. Like when the bubbling pasta of the collective unconscious suddenly boils over. Something in the air getting articulated and defined sends an electric shock across the nervous system of humanity. I see the cultural zeitgeist as an invisible nervous system that runs through all of humanity, connecting us with a wavelength, a frequency, a vibe.
Zeitgeist out loud
The sides we’ve been too afraid to choose?
- The right side or the wrong side of history
- Black and Brown people of the global south or colonizers of the global north
- A multipolar future heralded by China or the unipolar past of the American dream
- The new world order lead by China et all or a return to an old world order represented by America and its colonizer friends
- Harmony, cooperation, sovereignty or racism, xenophobia, capitalism, hierarchy
Each side represents opposing ethical stances that tear at the heart every time we open the news. Ultimately, I believe it’s about choosing between the future or the past. That we’ve been waiting with bated breath for a leader to believe in and save us, and voila, there he is, aura farming through a limousine moonroof as the world weeps with hope and relief. At 5,000 years in the making, President Xi’s timing is impeccable.
“It felt like connection, like relationship, and this mythical word, solidarity. “
I know the world not binary and maybe I’m being as naive as a little girl who just found a hero. But just let me enjoy it, even if I’m disappointed later. This is beyond politics. It is social and it is personal, something that reaches deep inside each person the way a decision does.
Who, me?
As a writer, I was astonished to touch people’s nervous systems so directly, without the filter of publishers or paper or global distance or even bodies. It helps me believe in humanity again, and myself. Something was on our collective mind, and then somebody said it. I’m shocked it was me.
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