Squandering Telepathy

Tell them to keep their nasty chips

You don't need new hardware

You've had language all along

How can anyone find reading stories boring?

I am not talking about how exciting or boring particular narratives are

I am talking about how astonishing it is that we can create and understand them

If you are curious about what it is like to be other people

And artists exist who can represent what that's like beautifully

If they can capture some of the truth about it, rather than lie

If what they reveal is good--not just done excellently well, but a source of good advice with regard to an auspicious way of being

You cannot possibly be bored by a novel or a play or a film

Even if it is terrible, it is another mind's reading of what it is like to be

We should be eager to discover just how many ways of being there are

We should be rather impatient with, and insulted by, attempts to limit our options

If there is a better way of being, we should be free to check that out

Instead of being encouraged to be angry and afraid because the whole story sucks

We should be encouraged to change the story, and offered aid in that attempt

Or we are lying when we assert with conviction that we hold democracy sacred

A culture is a funny thing

It may be a happy accident that we have been obsessed with viruses for a while

Most seem not to be convinced that viruses deserve to be numbered among the living

But once they catch on, they steal the energy and tools of the host to do a pretty good impression of a living thing

And they don't just exist to copy themselves and spread

They continue to exist by copying themselves and spreading

Narratives are a lot like that, no?

They are just sets of symbols until they are animated by a mind

And if they are deftly formed and contain some truth, or beauty, or goodness

They get busy spreading with the aid of that mind

Some of the copies will be faulty

Lacking in fidelity to the original

An idiot's version of a great story will probably suck

We've all been trapped at that party

But some renditions will not only preserve the original

They will refine the original, such that it will become even more

Irresistible to other minds

Even if the old one vanishes entirely

The new one will abide, and spread rapidly

I have been talking with other humans about a mediocre work of science fiction

Its dramatis personae includes telepaths

It's one of those power suit, fancy guns, libertarian playgrounds for the sweaty, earnest adolescent imagination

So there's plenty of carnage and many things go boom

The humans are determined to kill the aliens and vice versa; you know the drill

But there are telepaths around

Don't kill

Read

Understand

Enjoy learning about what it is like to be

In a way that is only available to you

As a story

You can't be in that way

Your body is not like that alien body

But there is something that it is like to be that body

And you can find out what it is like

If there are aspects of its way of being that allow it to flourish in ways you cannot

You can adapt them

That goes for them too, as far as your style goes

You don't even have to lose sleep about the translation

When you can read the other mind

We have to settle for the story

But isn't it amazing that we have the story?

Isn't a story that includes telepaths

Who do not bother to commune with alien minds

Except to find out if they are afraid

And rejoice when they are

Sadism sells

Squandering valuable energy, and leaving useful tools untouched?

Is it suggesting that alien minds are not worth understanding?

If it is, there's a real fault in it

Our minds are to alien minds what alien minds are to our minds

We ought to set a good example

Just think about how easy it is with the other humans

If you give it a shot

Sure, you have to settle for the story

But you can get it

The other human's mind is familiar

We're accustomed to being human

Now we can get to the crucial details

We can create a story that allows humans to become themselves

In a blooming, buzzing bunch of ways

With no other aim

Than spreading the word

The good, beautiful, true

Perfectly transmissible

Story

We can change it

But it had better be good

There will be no debate about whether or not it's alive

If it can't get read, discussed and passed on

That's it

Taste will destroy it

Or it will change taste