Thought Picnic: Just another penny for your thoughts

You want a mind jackpot

A penny for your thoughts, I hear that so many times said to me, to others in conversation, or even on television. This probably emanates from some curious observation and the feeling that your visage presents an inscrutable smorgasbord of activity of the mind that needs enticing out by request.

Let’s just say that penny was put in a slot machine and the handle pulled like the old fruit machines with all the mechanical moving, rotating and revolving parts, does the player expect a jackpot of all critical and consequential thoughts, a small win of the lowest valued fruits lining up, or nothing at all?

Enter the mindful password

Then think of where your thoughts could be accessed by someone who has a security code or a biometric secret to your thoughts and what would they access in what order and to their understanding of the filing system of another person’s mind?

That has always intrigued me, you really cannot get the thoughts of another the way they are processing them except if they volunteer those thoughts and even under duress, you are still left with what they are willing to give up with reference to the level or threshold of enforcement they are willing to endure.

Gambling for an ordered mind

The idea that thoughts are arranged in some cataloguing system accessible by avowed librarians of the mind sometimes called mentalists, who by the power of suggestion and direction can influence and by so doing acquire a result that to the unschooled seems skilful, though is hardly so, must be interesting. Yet, let’s not assume I am a sceptic.

Then again, you might be able to read minds, you probably will not get the kind of information you expect. Maybe if you put in another penny, then another until you run out of pennies, you can try again for that is what gamblers do, they play for luck and hope they hit a jackpot before they run out of funds to keep in the game. The mind is too complex for a simple unrevealing of its secrets, you can keep trying, I won’t stand in your way.