How to read the minds of others?
Everyone can develop that gift of mind-reading because it is first and foremost a question…of observation.
Recently published by Marabout, the latest installment of the excellent Roger-Pol Droit, Small Philosophy Experiences with Friends, is a blast which we recommend reading to “break the codes of everyday life.” Among its proposals to experience for yourself some key questions of philosophy, a small chapter that can not leave anyone indifferent is: “Know the secret to reading minds.” Curious? Keep reading.
“Everyone has always dreamed. Instead of assuming, to speculate, to beware, instead of having to trust or doubt when someone speaks – or even think, just think, in silence – if only we could read their most intimate intentions as clearly as you read this and know what he wants, feels, plans, hopes or fears.
For millennia, we tried everything to get there. Talismans, potions, and the like. Read minds that are as reliable as smart cards, high-speed scanners for the conscience, maps of our most faithful soul map and tender and implacable as those of Google Maps. This is hardly known that if we repeat unceasingly, after any MRI scans our minds will be read by every one of us. Your friends will know if you have betrayed, how you love, jealousy, hate, why you hold them apart, how you criticize, manipulate… Doesn’t it give you a second thought?
Don’t worry. It really is not for tomorrow. It’s even possible that it will never exist, and we tell these horrors just to scare you. But once you have put the coffee grounds in the trash with scanners, do not thrust yourself too far out of the woods.”
To find out what there is in someone’s head, it’s not inside that’ll look out, but outside to look in. Start in all traces that exist: letters, diaries, reports, studies, records, books, electronic walls, videos, pictures, messages… many pebbles, sometimes innumerable, are scattered but are explicit.
Instead of believing that everything is secret, opaque and locked in an enclosed skull as inaccessible interiority, we must rather find that all the thoughts of everyone are offered, spreading, visible – scattered, dispersed certainly, but not hidden. Just go look for them, to reconstruct the puzzle to fit each piece to get, usually, a landscape that is quite clear and precise.”
Stéphanie Torre and Nur Syazana H.
