I just came across a couple of articles–in Newsweek of all places–that seem to point toward an increased acceptance of psychics as legitimate business assets.
Now, I’m not going to get my hopes up too much just yet, but it does bode well for anyone hoping to earn a little extra money on the side by marketing their talents and abilities. That becomes much easier to do with a (slightly) decreased chance of immediately being laughed at. When you can cite the fact that Seagate Technology, Hollywood producers and other big-businesses tap into the metaphysical real and come out on top, people should be much more receptive to paying for your services.
At least that’s how I’m hoping it goes.
The first article talks about Patricia Day and others like her who offer their services to corporations and make a good living doing so.
It’s impossible to objectively judge psychic powers. Are psychics just good listeners who pick up enough clues from their clients to provide seemingly insightful answers? Are they making lucky guesses? “It’s kind of a dirty secret,” Day says of business people who use psychics like herself. She declines to identify most of her clients, and almost all who spoke to NEWSWEEK also requested anonymity out of concern for their reputations.
Day is one of a small but expanding cadre of corporate psychic consultants—the professionalized face of an occupation better known for hokey headscarves and crystal balls. Rebranded as “intuitionists” or “mentalists”—terms more palatable to mainstream America—psychic advisers in recent years have been crossing over into the world of legitimate business, where they are used by decision makers in law, finance and entertainment looking for an edge in a down economy. “I specialize in nonbelievers,” says Day, referring to her roster of “red-meat-eating, Barneys-shopping, Type A personalities.”
The second article is a little more snarky and less flattering, but equally interesting because it addresses the simple fact that no matter how much it doesn’t make sense, many people want to believe psychic abilities work.
Mayer’s quest took her into a world where the ordinary rules of time and space don’t apply—of dowsers like McCoy, who ordinarily searches for water underground but asserts he can find almost anything by tuning in to the “vibrations” that pervade the universe; of clairvoyants who claim to read minds over the telephone or to be able to see what someone else is looking at, hundreds of miles away; of laboratories where people stare at a pendulum, trying to slow it down with their minds. She compiled her research into a just-published book, “Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind,” that she finished just before her death in 2005, at the age of 57.
We do, indeed, live in interesting times. The world is, again, in flux with more possibilities being open and explored each day. Maybe soon we’ll be to a point where psychic phenomena can be better explained or quantified by actual science. (I’m not holding my breath for that, as it would require more serious scientific research into things many scientists just laugh at without thought.) More importantly, the people on the street and in the corner offices are starting to open up more to the possibilities around them. They do this out of necessity as their normal methods of coping and planning fail due to the chaos of the systems that surround us all.
Psychics thrive on the chaos. They are the ultimate pattern recognition systems, not being afraid to make those otherwise crazy jumps from point A to point B. They are the daredevils of cognitive process. And, even if what they do has no verifiable way of working, the simple fact is that it does work enough of the time for it to be useful.
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