I've always been fascinated in the predictive aspects of pop culture. Recently I watched the latest season of House of Cards and found that it eerily predicted some of what was happening in the current political climate. Even the actors of the show noticed those same parallels. Such predictive aspects aren't limited to the latest T.V. shows. Jules Verne wrote about submarines before the first one was invented. In various fiction books, games, and shows you end up finding that pop culture is predictive of something that shows up in our lives down the line.

I think that what pop culture really does is orient the consciousness of people toward manifesting what it shows. So it's not even so much of a predictive function so much as it plants a seed in your mind and if that seed is planted in many many minds than it makes an imprint on the superconsciousness of humanity and from there finds its way to someone who can create it.

Granted not everything comes true and for that we should be grateful, but nonetheless it's worth noting how much media influences us and how that in turn is translated into what we create. It's a reminder that we need to be careful about what we take in. For example, as fascinating as dystopic futures are, I doubt any of us really want such a future to manifest. Yet what pop culture also provides us is a way give expression to such possibilities and through that come to perhaps a better understanding of what lurks in our subconscious.

I want to make it clear I'm not trying to psychologize pop culture, but rather that the approach I'm taking is just looking at a particular layer of it and how that layer is reflective of the mass consciousness of people exposed to a particular pop culture. Of course it can be argued that we are exposed to a variety of pop culture everyday and that's true, but we also intentionally choose a lot of the pop culture we access, and in doing so we become a medium of sorts for the message of that pop culture to be expressed to the world at large. We take the message in and we amplify it, in one sense.

I'll admit I'm a fan of dystopic fiction. I love watching dystopic shows and reading dystopic fiction and plying dystopic games (thus my current obsession with Fallout 4), but I wouldn't want to live in a dystopic reality. So I sometimes ask myself if in enjoying dystopic fiction, am I also opening the door way for its manifestation? My answer to that is that I'm allowing myself to express my interest in the dystopia and enjoy it, but also reminding myself of why I don't want to manifest such a reality or help others manifest such a reality. Consequently it makes me look at my own actions carefully.

Dystopic fiction and similar expressions are an outlet for us, for the shadow within, and the truth is we can't and shouldn't deny the shadow, because when we do that's when it rears up and strikes out in force. By allowing ourselves to enjoy expressions of it, we also get a chance to examine it in relationship to our own lives and choices.

Yes pop culture is predictive in a way, but it can also serve as a reminder of what we don't want to manifest. What pop culture do you like and what has it taught you about what you don't want to manifest into the world?

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Taylor Ellwood is the mad scientist and magical experimenter of magical experiments. He is also the author of Pop Culture Magick and Pop Culture Magic 2.0. When he isn't experimenting with magic, he's helping eccentric entrepreneurs grow their business.