Question of the day (3rd December).

Would you rather speak/know every human language or be able to read minds of people who have the same first language as you? Why?

My answer:

Unsurprisingly, I’m definitely going for the languages! Because “every human language” includes my favourite languages, and I do want to know all of them, so this way I’d be spared all the learning process. Reading minds is an interesting idea, but I think it wouldn’t be fair on other people. I myself really value the fact that my brain is private and no one can pry into whatever I think, the idea of someone being able to do that is quite scary and would make me rage if it was actually a possibility and something that would be happening or going to happen, so I would feel very bad doing that to other people. I used to want to be able to read people’s minds as a kid, but if I were to really have such an ability, I think it would be super overwhelming for me. I once read a Polish fantasy children’s book “Mały Wielki Świat” (Little Big World) by Helena Saniewska, where two siblings – sister and brother – have an accident, and afterwards she is able to make all her wishes come true, the way that anything she’d think would become reality, and he can read minds. And it struck me how the whole mind reading thing was described, how it was very overwhelming for the boy to constantly hear the hum of other people’s thoughts in his brain and have to filter all that, one person’s thoughts from another, and then other people’s from his, etc. But it makes perfect sense that it could feel like this. Plus everyone thinks in a different way. Some people think in words, some in pictures, some in both, others in associations or maybe concepts or in multiple languages or I don’t know what else but I suppose there are many ways. So I would think reading minds is one thing, but interpreting what you read is another. What do you guys think? If telepathy is a real thing for some people, I suppose they experience it in some other way, not like an endless hum of thoughts, but still, after reading that book as a child I’m even less into reading minds than I was before.

What about you? 🙂