If we were all telepathic, how would the world be different?
Such is the incredibly boring, old-hat #ecotrain question of the week (QoTW)!
lol, j/k #ecotrain QoTWs never seem to be boring!
what do you think?
Before we begin, let us define telepathy:
Telepathy (from the Greek τῆλε, tele meaning "distant" and πάθος, pathos or -patheia meaning "feeling, perception, passion, affliction, experience") is the purported transmission of information from one person to another without using any of our known sensory channels or physical interaction.
First let me start off by saying that the concept of telepathy was coined in 1889 by psychologist Frederic Myers as literally feeling from afar.
Now, he looks like a rather
classical ordinary dude of
his time.
How did a person before the 1900's start gaining an interest in telepathy? How did the idea originate and why did he (and others) risk their lives and devote their careers and research to something as far-out, New Agey, and Skeptical as telepathy?
In fact, why are we writing on this pseudoscientific subject at all?
My Two Cents:
Telepathy remains a much-debated subject. I think this comes down to two things:
- It cannot be tested in a controlled manner because the skill is not provable nor definable.
- Those who experience telepathy become "believers", but cannot explain it or as posited in #1, they cannot demonstrate it on command.
This puts us in an interesting place and it is the reason many who claim to be able to read minds or intuit things are thought of as disreputable.
In our culture, we are too bent on "provable phenomena" and there is not yet an openminded enough stance regarding life itself to sit with the uncertainty and cognitive dissonance telepathic abilities bring up.
That being said, why would we be discussing this subject or I endeavor writing this article or would the millions of people claiming to have telepathic experiences throughout time go to the trouble to make it all up?
balance
In short, they're not, we're not, I'm not making anything up.
Telepathic experiences certainly take place.
As stated earlier, the problem is they don't "happen on demand" and still we cannot explain them so we don't necessarily trust them or quite know what to do with them at all!
In answering the #ecotrain QoTW, I want to take not a sci-fi orientation to this question, but a realistic one. The question asks, if we were all telepathic, how would the world be different?
Instead of assuming a world outside of our own in which everyone is telepathic all of the time, I want to answer this question from the here and now in the world I already inhabit in which telepathy happens often to many of us.
Frequency
If we were all telepathic, which I believe we are to varying degrees, we would not be so all of the time.
Telepathy defined as "distant feeling" is the not-quite-there download of some information. See how difficult this already is? If we can't quite put our finger on it nor define it, we're tempted to throw it out the window! But, what if that is the nature of this skill? What if telepathy isn't always reading people's minds, but the ability to at times receive information in the form of feelings, notions, knowings, intuitions, dreams, and more?
If we can get over the certainty principle of having to know something 100%, I believe we could use these hunches to inform our lives, to get closer to our friends/family/lovers/community and essentially to be more in tune with our lives.
golden
Being In-tune with our Lives or our Lies
This is truly the crux for me. In my understanding and experience of telepathy, this is how I utilize it. Basically it is an extra sensory understanding of our environment, of the information coming to us that helps us "read" and respond to what is happening. I believe we developed this skill in order to survive.
Is it really that surprising? Our bodies and minds are already basically these incredibly magical mysterious workings that we cannot fully understand and certainly cannot replicate. We are walking incredible beings of a magnitude of interplaying happenings! The fact that extrasensory knowings take place that give us information about another or a circumstance in our lives doesn't really surprise me.
We attribute these so-called instinctive skills to animals, after all. Are we truly so divorced from our instinctive nature?
We take it as a given that animals know the weather or can sense things. Just look at Lassie, the wonderdog or animals retreating before a storm or your favorite pet who "knows what you're thinking/feeling"! I believe that we as a species are so cut off the experience of being telepathic, which again just means distant feeling, perception, passion, affliction or experience, that we negate its occurrences in our lives.
If we stopped doing that, we'd see it as a skill or informant in our lives that could help us know what to do in given situations, know if people have good intentions toward us, feel whether to go to an event or not or when is the best time to go to a store, call a friend, write that email, etc. Telepathy doesn't directly relate to only reading another's thoughts, although this is where it gets the most press.
If we are afraid of others "reading our thoughts", what are we hiding? Obviously in some situations, we most definitely don't want people knowing what we're thinking. But why? Are we hiding our true feelings from them or ourselves?
This is a good question for me to ponder. By becoming more in tune with our (or other's) lives and lies, how would that change our (or another's) experience?
Connection or Pain?
Many of the #ecotrain passengers who have already written their post on telepathy focused on the exposure that telepathic abilities would result in.
Not being able to hide our thoughts or true feelings, our lives would necessarily change. While it is within our freedom to withhold information from others, I believe that in being honest or coming to the table with our true feelings, while it would certainly shake up our lives, is ultimately beneficial. I am guessing that many of us hold thoughts in about people we know that may actually help the person. Perhaps someone keeps repeating a pattern in life that you see is harmful (whether thought or deed), but you don't say anything. Someone else has a character trait that others find off-putting, but no one "breaks it to them" so they just keep distancing from their friends.
It can be difficult to communicate these things to each other and if we already "knew" them, it would give us an opportunity to skip the side-stepping bullshit and get on with actually be challenging to grow up as humans. I believe ultimately this would foster connection, deeper relationships and more honest living after the initial difficulties.
In a similar way, if we felt something positive toward another, but perhaps we don't know quite how to say it: this telepathic skill would help us get our appreciation or love across in a fluid way!
spiral
Honest Living
As other passengers have written on regarding this question as well, telepathy wouldn't allow us to be lied to by politicians as much. If we knew we were being duped, goodbye politics as usual! No more pretty lies covered up by the bipartisan political regimes.
This honest living would be more difficult to get used to, but what are we here for as humans anyway? To live lives of deceit, hiddenness, and fear? Waiting in the corners hoping no one knows our true feelings? Of course not! This isn't a dress rehearsal, but the main show!
I can think of no faster way toward evolution than if we all started telling the truth. First to ourselves, then each other!
In closing, telepathy can be perceived as a skill that when practiced, believed, indugled, however you want to look at it, grows and matures.
Changing the question a bit, it is not if we were all telepathic, but if we allow the telepathy that already occurs in daily hunches, knowings, stray thoughts, etc to most of us that the world would change. It doesn't have to be scary or negative to distantly feel or perceive what another is going through.
These are the basic skills we humans developed a long time ago to make it through the hunt, to know where members of our tribe are, to connect and empathize with another or to know mysteriously when to not go over the mountain pass, but to hang out in the valley for another week. These are life-enhancing, even life-saving skills, and I believe the world would be much different in a positive way if we paid attention!!
