Mind-reading

I thank Stephen King for first hitting on this idea*. The existence of the concept of telepathy. I can’t necessarily read your mind, but you can mine.

How?

You are doing it now.

Reading these words, whether today, tomorrow, next year, is opening a little window into my consciousness; this is what I am thinking. You are reading my mind now.

There you go, as simple as that.

Sure, you don’t have access to everything; there is a filter, otherwise I and everyone writing would be stripped-naked, starkers before the reading public. (I suspect were this to happen, there would be fewer blogs, novels and screenplays, although some folk I imagine would likely be turned-on by the exposure.)

A year or so ago I was talking with a colleague; ‘I know more about you than you think,’ was his somewhat sinister comment, suggesting that he reads my blog and is happy to peer through the window. I don’t know if he is still reading, if so, you know who you are. Boo!

But sure, I only let you into a fragment of me, most is buried below the surface; or maybe not.

In an era of data mining – where it used to be that tabloid journalists would don rubber gloves and rifle through the rubbish bins of the rich and famous, this can now be done at scale via Twitter, Snapchat and Facebook.

Browsing adds for Nicorette… read smoker who wants to stop and all the psychological and emotional baggage that goes with it; Brown bread, prunes and All Bran – voila your bowel habits revealed to the backroom folk of multinationals. There is so much that is transparent, we often forget to see; my car, my clothes, shoes, hair or not; it all says something – understanding the code, knowing enough about enough and you can penetrate the mind of anybody.

‘Save the Whale’

‘Northern Soul’

‘Britain First’

It all says stuff about you and it all facilitates mind-reading.

Does this matter?

At the level of the individual probably not, or, at least there isn’t much you can do about it; fortunately, there aren’t that many people who can Cold Read – this is when the telepathy gets kooky; more sophisticated than ‘Think of a grey animal… elephant’, more like, putting thoughts into the minds of others; not, here is what you are thinking, but, here is what to think.

Immigrants are bad, global warming is fake, abortion is murder – politicians, the ones who are giving Facebook a hard time are the biggest culprits (along with the advertising industry) – join the two together and you don’t have telepathy, you have mind-control.

I didn’t intend things to turn so very dark; perhaps someone else is controlling me. No, that doesn’t make sense.

I am me, these are my words, I take responsibility for my actions – to a point.

Forgive me for my misdeeds, mea culpa. Move-on, over there… squirrel!

* ‘On Writing’

*Funny aside – not sure if anyone has ever, over the evening meal been involved in the confusion that arises when one person hears ‘Stephen King’ and the other ‘Stephen Hawking’ – if not, the effects are entertaining.