You know...Telepathy

There's a great line in a Dan Bern Song (Talkin' Alien Abduction Blues) in which he's having a long discussion with some aliens and he says "They didn't actually speak, but I understood 'em....tel-e-pathy!"  He says it in a very funny way. 

But recently, I have been thinking seriously - or at least, with concentration and time, not necessarily actually being serious - about telepathy, and how many different kinds there are.  The Wikipedia definition is a "the induction of mental states from one mind to another," which leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

Basically, it means you can know what someone else is thinking - and there are LOTS of situations in which that happens.  Really, when you think about it, offhand I would say there's....the way you communicate with the bus driver (or other drivers) so you know how the two of you are going to collectively navigate a small, sloped San Franciscian car-lined street, or the waiter who catches your eye even when he doesn't really see you, or the husband who you are certain is going to say just what he actually said.  It's amazing.

Tonight, I was just watching a version of Romeo and Juliet from 1936, with Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard (aka Ashley from Gone With the Wind); it was all done rather old-fashionedly, with men in tights and genteel Renaissance dances and lots of things we'd now label as very gay. 

But I was most impressed, as I usually am when watching Shakespeare, with the *actors,* who seemed to have an almost telepathic ability to communicate clearly the meaning of the text.  We all know the language can be rough - I'm rather familiar with it, and even I find myself paying close attention; ye olde English.  But have you ever seen a really great Shakespearean actor?  They are incredibly good at illuminating the meaning with their gestures, inflections, etc.  You read it and it's clever but rather flat; you listen to it, and it's poetry.  That's how a great Shakespearean actor can make you feel.

And just what is he or she doing?  Emoting, inflecting, doing physical and mental things to make it more clear.  Body language is simply non-verbal communication, but when do you start to call it a form of telepathy?  Have you ever read someone's expression, even when it was subtle? Or seen a clear thought from an infant or a pet - just from what's in those eyes?  Sure you have.  The best humor is almost a form of telepathy - as is, some assert, great sex.  What about reading an opponent across the poker table?  Working on something creative with a partner when the two of you have the same radical idea simultaneously?  Or you and a friend say the exact same random thing at the same time?  My partner and I have been sleeping next to each other we share the same dreams on occasion.  The list goes on and on; think for even a few minutes and you will come up with your own examples.

These are all inductions of a mental state from one mind into another, are they not?  And yet, when you say you "believe in telepathy," people discount you as a kook.  It's unfortunate, because this narrowing of our ideas can result in...well...smaller thinking and smaller lives.  Yet it happens constantly, this weird politicizing and distortion of word meanings past of the point of their literal definitions.  It's like UFOs - all that means, literally, is "unidentified flying object," and those aren't all that rare.  My brother lobs a banana at me at dusk - chances are it was a UFO to me, even if only temporarily. 

Or an even more extremely example: 9/11.  It's a conspiracy, I said, when it happened.  "Oh, right away you jump to these wild conclusions!" everyone said.  "You people, you 'conspiracy theorists' with your wild Left Coast left wing radical liberalism" and on and on.  Of course, it WAS a conspiracy - by definition.  It was a group of people working together to commit a crime in the future; those planes did not accidentally nor by chance fly into the World Trade Center.  In fact, the entire POINT of the thing - the characteristic that supposedly made it heinous - was that it was a pre-meditated group act of (violent) organized crime.  It was technically and in fact very much a conspiracy.  But say that outloud, sans explanation, and you're a wild conspiracy theorist, to be shrugged off. 

You don't need to look for conspiracies everywhere, but I do suggest looking around for telepathy, if you like.  You will start to see it in the most delightful and unexpected places, and realize you are always doing a lot more than you think, and lots of that is under the surface of things. 

This is especially since we have such a hard time communicating with words.  I mean, I can still understand what someone means when they say "I literally was ticked to death."  They weren't literally tickled to death, because then they would be dead, and could not tell me about it.  But we have telepathy, this startling and unsung ability to understand our fellow human beings without words, or even when they use the wrong ones.

Go forth and read minds!  Let me know how it goes.