If you’re looking for some unique entertainment for your sorority party that brings people together and gets people talking, you should seriously consider booking magician Jon Finch to make your guests howl with delight.The internet has shown us what mentalists have known since 1907—well-articulated thoughts are rare, even after the thinker has formulated his or her thought into a harmoniously-structured string of words (a sentence). Imagine how disorganized thoughts can be before this effort to organize cognition into a shared syntax.
Since 2001, Jon Finch has been making sorority parties fun! They’ll be talking about your party until the end of 2023!Intentional mind reading
Fortunately, the life of a mentalist is not at all like that. None of the proper mentalists I know are surrounded by a constant downpour of others’ thoughts. All of them need to
do
something—something intentional–to draw back the shudders to let in more rain. Some are skillful in persuading their participants to open their own shudders and draw back the curtains. Inside your mind, are your
curtains already drawn? Or are those curtains on the outside of the window for some outsider to open (this is more common than you’d think).
Could a mentalist gain admittance into another person’s unconscious thoughts of which even the thinker is unaware…as well as the superficial, top-of-mind awareness thoughts? Most people tend not to be capable of discerning their own thoughts and feelings. Is it easier for a mentalist to know what you are thinking and feeling than
you yourself
? I would emphatically say it is.
Mentalism is an activity
Party!
He doesn’t know everything, but he knows what you’re thinking before you thought it (and can prove it). Either way, it’s perfectly suitable for a sorority party.
If all people were born with this ability, one obvious drawback (to me) would be that “psychic entertainers” would be out of a job (how tragic). Many people occasionally find—without entertaining it–an unpleasant thought intrude into their mind (of course such uninvited thoughts don’t define a person…nearly all thoughts are uninvited, a fact worth pondering). Certainly the content of those unpleasant thoughts would not be suitable for an entertaining after-dinner show. Within the mentalist’s creativity, timing, humor, and showmanship lies his greatness–not within his methods. Any demonstration of mental powers requires a regimented framework of subtle convincers to appear entertaining, genuine…and genuinely interesting.
Another possible drawback would be the retardation of culture. But wouldn’t culture and education increase if communication were possible without written and spoken verbal transmission? Not necessarily.
Would we have invented language if communication didn’t necessitate it? And without a verbal (spoken) language, we probably wouldn’t have come up with a written system. We wouldn’t have records (books). If we didn’t have verbal communication, we probably wouldn’t have books. We wouldn’t be able to learn from the thoughts of our distant ancestors. We might not even have art in the form of etchings, paintings, and even music.
One more drawback would be the dissolution of personal boundaries. Not only are personal boundaries necessary for healthy human relationships, but also, even more secrets are necessary for magic shows. Say goodbye to magic shows when mindreading becomes as ubiquitous as walking.
Like pickpocketing, this can be used for sinister purposes, or for the benign purpose of entertainment. But it’s only relevant if a wallet in your pocket and a thought in your head are assumed to be safe in a private place.
As reality presents itself now, people tell us only part of what they really think. If every individual in the population had access to the full picture, we would either all hate one another—or we would all love one another because we would fully understand one another.
