It's Tuesday, so it's time
for
my weekly random question...
This is one of those I-really-need-a-what-if-this-week questions. But even after struggling to come up with something, I rather like it...
What if we were all telepathic? If we could sense each other's innermost thoughts and feelings, would we ever have developed language? How different would our sense of each other and understanding of our world be?
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
13 comments:
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*Exception: I do not respond to "what if?" comments, but I do read them all. Those questions are open to your interpretation, and I don't wish to limit your imagination by what I thought the question was supposed to be.
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The world would be a quieter place since conversation would be essentially a needless exercise. We'd also have probably gotten a reign on anger, jealousy, and other negative stimuli since everything would already be in the open and their could be no secrets. Not sure I'd like this kind of world. I think we'd also eliminate any need for literature--what kinds of stories could we tell that we'd find interesting? Fantasies about worlds where people had to communicate by other means than telepathy? What an odd world a non-telepathic society might seem to we who knew everything about what others where thinking--an ugly world perhaps and an evil one.
ReplyDeleteInteresting question to ponder. I guess I'm glad the world is not telepathic. Now if it were just me it might be a whole different ballgame. That could be interesting.
Lee
Tossing It Out
Oh boy-I would get so bitch-slapped if people could read what I was thinking-lol I would like to think it would be like Star Trek and we would have a higher sense of self but we are not that highly evolved yet. i think it is nicer to be able to say little white lies than know the truth-there would be alot of hurt feelings out there and mine would be one of them:)
ReplyDeleteIf we were all telepathic, we might not need spoken language to communicate with each other, but we would still need written language to record facts, thoughts, poems, fiction, and the like.
ReplyDeleteIf everyone were telepathic, we would have less friends and more enemies.
But if we didn't have spoken language, would we have developed a language to write things down?
DeleteGosh, I hope this never happens. I would be in real trouble if people could sense my thoughts and what I was thinking. I'm thinking in my particular situation it would get me into a lot of arguments that I avoid by thinking the thoughts instead of saying the words.
ReplyDeletebetty
I'm imagining an argument with my husband under these conditions. There'd be a lot of glaring, evil eyes and eye-rolling going on. I'd end up with a headache. It would be awful really. Imagine being able to read the mind of a teenage boy!
ReplyDeleteOh, the horror!
DeleteI deal in words every day, so it's hard to imagine a world without them. Maybe one of the reasons we're not telepathic is because as humans we're all too mean in many of our thoughts about others. We have the privilege to hide that by communicating in other ways.
ReplyDeleteThat's a thought. I hadn't considered it.
DeleteDuh. Forgot to say it was a pleasure to meet you at Marcy's blog :)
ReplyDeleteI'd be in trouble. Especially at work where I'm required to be friendly, helpful, tolerant, nonjudgmental, and all that other stuff. Especially readers advisory questions where the person wants more books just like something I consider crap.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't like this at all...I used to have a bit of a sharp tongue...now I keep it all to myself and like it that way! I'd hate it if my kids could hear what mommy is really thinking any time after 9:00pm when all my patience leaves me!
ReplyDeleteI wonder what mom's thoughts would look/feel/sound like this far into her Alzheimer's...wouldn't that be interesting???
I hadn't considered a situation such as yours. Yeah, it wouldn't work out so well, would it?
Delete