What Are Stories With Telekinetics Really About?
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- Опубліковано 27 вер 2024
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Previously we’ve talked about what the horror and sci-fi movie baddies of some age SAY about that age. You know, like... whether zombies represent capitalism, or technology or both. Or how the sorts of lines grotesque film monsters cross can indicate what cultural, or political transgressions are thought particularly heinous. A man crossed with a fly? HAS SCIENCE GONE TOO FAR? In this episode we’re gonna do something different - instead of asking about the BAD GUYS, we’re gonna ask about what the GOOD GUYS may say about today. And we’re gonna ask about one particular type of film and TV protagonist ... that isn’t quite at zombie or sexy vampire ubiquity yet …. but seems increasingly common nonetheless: the telekinetic. Let us know what you think in the comments below!
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At no point does Professor X display Telekinesis. Only Telepethy
I'd cop to saying "everything he's in" may be hasty - but in Logan (without getting too spoilery) his loss of control over his abilities manifests as mental control over physical objects, and iirc this isn't exactly a first for him?
He only freezes people's minds. Cars, slot machines, and guns function perfectly fine when he's have an "incident".
In the comics he his ability to use telekinesis is dependent on the writer. It's not listed as one of his primary powers but he has used it on a few occasions. TBH I always though he made his hover chair hover with TK but that was when I was a kid.
I'm fairly certain early comics did write Professor X with telekinesis. Didn't last long, but it does break the "at no point" argument, haha. Plus, the Ultimate version had low-level tk.
It's a common misconception! I assume it's because he spends so much time with Jean Grey, who DOES have the telekinesis/telepathy combo, that people just assume he has the same power set. But nope, he only ("only") has telepathy, but extremely powerful telepathy.
I certainly read the scenes in Logan as him using telepathy to freeze other people in place. I remember noting that only people were actually affected by his seizures.
...not that any of this actually matters. It doesn't detract from the point in the episode at all. Sometimes internet pedantry is just fun for its own sake y'know?
Great video! I think there's also something that could be said about how telekinesis tends to find its way to people who could be seen as "weak," for lack of a better word. Luke is a farmer, Anakin is a slave, Eleven is a child, Professor X is in a wheelchair, we're introduced to David in Legion as a mentally ill patient with schizophrenia, Jean Grey was even viewed by Claremont and Cockrum as one of the weakest members of the X-Men which is why they started creating the Dark Phoenix Saga.
ALSO! Just wanted to throw out there for anyone saying that Professor X doesn't have telekinesis, that's largely true, but I'm fairly certain early comics did write him with that ability. Plus, the Ultimate version has low-level tk.
EDIT: One example of Prof. X using tk in the main 616 Universe can be found on the final page of Amazing Adventures #17 from 1970. It's on Marvel Unlimited if you have that and want to check it out for yourself! In context, it almost seems like he has technopathy as well. 🤔
NerdSync IdeaChannel, you guys should do a colab video
just make the video lol
NerdSync Only super briefly referenced in the video but Matilda is a very explicit example of a "powerless" telekinetic in that her ability is directly tied to the weak position she finds herself in. It's missing from the film (to its detriment IMO) but in the book once she is no longer in that weak position and her intellect is appreciated and nurtured she actually looses the telekinesis.
Note that in Game of Thrones and the adult version A Song of Ice and Fire, telepathy/skinchanging is associated with weak characters or developed by characters who find themselves in environments where they are limited. Possible spoilers:
-Bran Stark takes control of his wolf Summer during his coma, gains more control when they hide in the pitch-black dark Winterfell crypts
-Arya Stark reaches out through animals and can sense other people's emotions when she is chemically blinded in Braavos
-Varamyr Sixskins is a stunted man who grew up with the name Lump, but can command a wolfpack, a panther and a polar bear
-Bloodraven; doing this is the only reason he's still alive
-Speculation: Robert Arryn complains of hearing voices and suffers seizures, particularly near the weirwood throne; the castle maester (resident doctor/literate) treats him with the same drugs as Maester Luwin gives Bran
George R.R. Martin has created two House Vances in his story so I don't think this is too surprising.
Also consider older martyr/self-sacrifice stories: Odin makes a sacrifice of himself to himself to gain magic and plucks out his own eye to drink from Mimir's Well of Knowledge. Jesus' on the cross... need more be said.
5:48 "Why do demon names always have to lurk at the end of the alphabet?"
I think demon names generally contain letters not common in English to create a sense of the otherworldly, and several uncommon letters are strung together at the end of the alphabet.
I wonder if that's why Nethack uses various colours of & to represent major demons, given that that's a discontinued 27th letter of the english alphabet, actually named after its position in alphabetical order, right at the end. "And, on it's own, and" contracts and corrupts to ampersand if you say it quickly. "x, y, z, and on its own, and' being how the alphabet apparently ended while & was considered a letter - A character so uncommon in english that it fell out of the alphabet, lingering as an otherworldly Other in the sea of ASCII that is the Nethack monsters.
I mean, no, most likely because the & symbol vaguely resembles a humanoid figure with a pointed tail if you squint, and that d (dogs) and D (Dragons) were already taken, while minor demons are represented by the less uncommon letter of i (standing for imps, a common type of them in the game). And just to confuse matters, there are a few & creatures who aren't considered Major Demons (Djinn, the Mail Daemon - though that gets away with being an & despite not being a Demon because Nethack is a game built around two central pillars - godawful puns, and D&D references - sandestin, and the three riders of Death, Famine and Pestilence (What about war? I think there are points in the game that it's heavily implied that you are war)
Historically speaking most demon names are usually just the gods or mythological figures of various nearby nations, usually other Semitic nations, to Jewish groups around the time the old testament was being developed. They probably didn't sound quite as other-worldly to Hebrew speakers as they do to modern English. After all, they were linguistically a lot closer related to their immediate neighbours than they are to us. Instead their frightening aspect was fueled by the idea that their followers might invade you some day or try to convert you.
Linguistically they tend to look very other-worldly to English speakers because they are often from Abjad languages (which don't use vowels in their written system), include sounds not common in English or even sounds which don't exist fully in English. Ba'al for example where the apostrophe indicates a sound called a voiced pharyngeal fricative.
Although some modern authors, like HP Lovecraft, deliberately invent their own languages like R'lyehian for otherworldy entities and in those cases they are exactly as you describe just using uncommon language features to make something strange and off-putting.
Actually the ampersand is just a calligraphic writing of the word 'et' meaning 'and' in Latin, it's not actually a letter. Since for a long time writing was frequently in Latin, people got used to it as a symbol for "and" or alternatively "+" and it was common and convenient enough to be included in a lot of type-sets.
@Xidnaf
I think that the influx of telekinetics is based off of a long running theory of popular comic book heroes. The idea is that through the years, Super heroes in comic books (and TV) have been based off of what the populace is afraid of. For example: fear of nuclear weapons and the Hulk, Fear of Genetic modification and the X-Men, and fear of Aliens and countless characters (but probably not Superman). In that vein, I think the shift in telekinetcs getting their powers from within (rather than externally) shows that society is shifting towards being aware and afraid of what each person is capable of individually.
Patrick Daly Pretty sure xmen is about the fear of ethnic minorities and civil rights.
"Super heroes in comic books (and TV) have been based off of what the populace is afraid of"
In art history, this is a fact. No art, whether it be paintings, sculptures, digital arts, books, and etc., can be isolated from the sociocultural environment it came from. It's impossible to isolate Michelangelo's David from the Renaissance; the classical aesthetics comeback to medieval Europe in the Renaissance produced Michelangelo's David.
Telekinetcs, for me because I am a student of psychology, shows an interesting fear: how is it possible for a person to yield to antisocial behaviors. "Antisocial behavior can be broken down into two components: the presence of antisocial (i.e., angry, aggressive, or disobedient) behavior and the absence of prosocial (i.e., communicative, affirming, or cooperative) behavior" (psychology.jrank.org/pages/37/Antisocial-Behavior.html), and for such people with such power yielding to antisocial behaviors, we will wonder "What happen to this person?" The fear of losing control is to go from prosocial to antisocial.
As we become more interconnected I think many are learning that someone is only as strong as their weakest impulses allow them to be.
GenericKen000 yes, it is about that, but the source of their powers being from genetics came about at a time where DNA sequencing was revealing the mechanics of genetic disorders.
This is me using the power of my mind to alter the reality of the comments section.
Strategy your mind is weak!
Be careful not to lose control.
It's a constant struggle... at any time I could mix up "your" and "you're" and that would be catastrophic.
This is me saying no one is reading that shit
This is me reading that shit Jonas Rocha wrote
I actually always see telekinesis as an act of control over our environment rather then being about interconnectedness. I think the portrayal of it in media is playing our increasing desire to control our physical surroundings. Matilda can't control anything in her life which I think is why her ultimate solution is telekenetic powers. Characters with telekenetic powers often have such a fear or risk of losing control because that is their central theme of their ability. Really any power can be a big problem if you lose control of it, but telekenetics are more focused on that control to begin with.
For me, "the fear of losing control" is not the lose of their ability, though this is another way of interpreting it! The fear stems from transforming from a person who uses their power for prosocial behaviors to a person who use their powers for antisocial behaviors.
Prosocial behaviors are "social behavior that "benefit[s] other people or society as a whole such as helping, sharing, donating, co-operating, and volunteering" whereby antisocial behaviors are "actions that harm or lack consideration for the well-being of others. Many people also label behaviour which is deemed contrary to prevailing norms for social conduct as anti-social behaviour."
We, human beings and other animals, don't do violence without good reasons; in fact, violence is one way of controlling people and the environment like telekinesis. However, for characters with telekinesis, their psychological makeup will predispose them to do harm. Therefore, one of the allegorical themes of telekinesis is the exploration of how people turn from prosocial to antisocial.
The line about Matilda can't control anything in her life is a good one. I think you could apply that to most Telekinetics in fiction. Eleven, Luke, Carrie, the kid from Chronicle and David are all stuck in their restricted environment and feel powerless against authoritarian figures.
One aspect about book Matilda that's skipped in the movie is that once Matilda's promoted by several grades, she finds that she can't use telekinesis anymore. She and Ms. Honey speculate that her mind is sufficiently challenged and that telekinesis is her brain's second-most preferred method of brainpower.
I think there's also an interesting parallel to be found between telekinetic protagonists and the "Magical Girl" genre (primarily of anime). An outside force grants power to an otherwise disenfranchised or outcast teenage girl. But where telekinetic protagonists often fight against losing control, magical girls are often at their most powerful when they "lose control" and believe in themselves. So they branch in almost opposite directions.
And I think it's hard to fully decouple these differences from the idea of gender and how that relates to power. Not the gender of the characters, but the "intended gender" of the audiences (at least from a corporation point of view). Sort of where media "intended" for boys is cautionary about losing control, while media "intended" for girls cares a lot less about if control is lost or not.
I don't know if this is an under-estimation of girls in the "powers" zeitgeist, or if it maybe is entangled with cultural differences (Japanese vs American). Or maybe it even plays into our subconscious idea that an out of control man is more dangerous than an out of control woman.
Finally, I wonder if there is some amount of depth to be dredged from media like Madoka Magica which works to deconstruct the magical girl genre. I think control and power dynamics are at the heart of stories that grant abilities of any kind to its characters, and I feel like there's a lot about the intersection of that with gender to unpack.
Madoka Magica is a pretty solid example of magical girl anime where the girls lose control and it some real consequences along a Dark Phoenix line. I don't see where Natahlia is coming from about target audience, for example in MLP:Equestia Girls series "human world" Twilight Sparkle constantly worries about losing control in the same way Jean of Legion does. Both Charmed and Buffy had cross gender appeal and both express concern over keeping TK powers in check.
idk which "mainstream media" you've been watching but in media it's clearly the men with telekinetic powers that are most destructive.
+
Natahlia Zaring madoka magicka turns the magical girl genre on its head by breaking away from the usual cliches.But the ending and even the last episode name just shows you what the magical girl genre is really about. Friendship. Even when the show is about so much more it ends on a simple concept of the best friend. The genre is just a teen/childhood drama with a fantasy adventure aspect
I mean, I think ideas of gender in society aren't cut and dry or ever fully straightforward. So while the intended audience may pull one way (not warning girls about losing control), within media with an intended male audience (sidenote: while things are getting better, "neutral" aimed audience almost always translates to studios targeting male audiences) I think showing women losing control pulls in a different direction. There's probably enough here to write a paper on, but it's likely something in the realm of male fear of the "crazy women trope," or especially in the case of Carrie the male fear of menstruation and all the baggage that comes with that.
That's why I think that the intended audience is an easier signifier when looking at these tropes. The most iconic example of the magical girl genre is Sailor Moon, but American shows like Bee and Puppycat and Star versus the Forces of Evil also act as examples. Even American cartoons like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic or Steven Universe have *some* elements that might cast them into the genre (but are less specifically a part of it). Madoka Magica (as I mentioned above) and Kill La Kill are anime which deconstruct elements of the magical girl genre, and I've heard that the newish series Miraculous Ladybug also might fit into the genre (though I have not seen it myself).
And I certainly think that there is an evolution to the magical girl genre, where more recent examples may delve more into the "losing control" themes largely associated with telekinetic protagonists, but I still think that such things are highly gendered based on the intended audience, and that such things even relate to the gendered experience of the internet (the caution is that you don't want to be a woman posting on the internet...such caution is not extended to men).
I'm surprised that the 2012 film Chronicle wasn't mentioned. It manages to be both an external force (the kids get powers from an alien artifact or something) but also a story about losing control. It's also unique in that it's not just about one TK guy, but many, and the relationship between them (with empathic nosebleeds because of course there is).
I think there were a couple clips from Chronicle, but I could be wrong.
I posted on the comment above but, to expand the conversation, here it is :)
I would argue that Andrew never had control of any aspect of his life at any point of the movie and his lack of control over his powers are just a manifestation for a desire of control over those who opress him... so, it feels more like a case of what might a disenfranchised person do if they channel all of their frustations toward a newly received power than an actual struggle between having power and doing the right thing...
oh, btw, even though the guys who receive the powers are interconnected, I don't think any of them are empathic with other people in the way the video talks about... it is more like "I know when you are using your powers" instead of "I know non-telekinetic people have feelings and stuff but look at this cool trick I can do to them if I think about it just enough"...
honestly Telekinesis usually comes about during the teenage years. In film its likely an allegory for coming of age. About how you dont have control of yourself well. Weather that be your mouth or your body or your thoughts. Most of these are learned through age and experience.
There is also a possibility about being special. When i was growing up i can guarantee that I never felt special. All of the sudden waking up with some sort of telekinesis would make me , an ordinary idiot, feel special.
In developmental psychology, adolescents don't have a fully-myelinated prefrontal cortex with a fully-myelinated limbic system, meaning adolescents have the emotional capability of an adult (fully-myelinated limbic system) but not the cognitive capability of an adult (fully-myelinated prefrontal cortex). You can say that this is a biological coming of age.
The brain structures are not cooperating with each other as they should, so the adolescent in question will experience emotional highs and lows like never before. Controlling these is very hard; how can a human being control billions of neurons if the billions of neurons control the human being (neuroscience just got existential, sorry about that . . .)?
The feeling of being special is a narrative that an adolescent goes through. Many adolescents will hold a "personal fable", the belief that one’s own emotions, experiences, and destiny are unique, more wonderful or awful than anyone else’s. The personal fable makes the adolescent's narrative special, and this psychological phenomenon resonates with adolescents gaining telekinesis because they have become special.
Telekinesis coming about during teenage years I think is part of a broader common theme of superpowers as puberty metaphor - a scary confusing array of changes that's happening to you and which no-one's bothered to explain and you just have to... Stumble through... - rather than being specifically about telekinesis.
...Granted I'm not envisioning an almost inevitable combination of the two themes - 'telekinesis users are lazy millennials caring more about... Whatever it is people who bemoan people using devices that facilitate communication think teens and young adults do on their phones... without moving than the real world'
thancrus Matilda.
I agree - and it especially makes sense given that the X-Men series is often seen as an allegory for sexual minorities' struggle with life in a majority cis-hetero world. Being born different, having to hide your true self for fear of being labeled and mistreated, struggling to control your abilities could be the amplified metaphor for learning to cope as an adult in society - learning how awesome the power of your words and actions are in affecting the world around you, and being slightly scared of the consequences of those actions or in-actions.
"Telekinesis coming about during teenage years I think is part of a broader common theme of superpowers as puberty metaphor - a scary confusing array of changes that's happening to you and which no-one's bothered to explain and you just have to... Stumble through... - rather than being specifically about telekinesis.."
You have to be really careful with that comment. The quantifier "no-one" is false. Some characters with telekinesis have mentors to guide them on using their power in healthy and optimal ways, and some characters don't (which is very unfortunate). Likewise, some individuals experiencing puberty are fortunate to have sex education, a class that explores the (academic and semipractical) sexual nature of human beings, and some individuals don't have these classes.
The 21st century has a good working knowledge on puberty thanks to science, but not the bureaucratic power to educate all adolescents on human sexuality. Likewise, other characters with telekinesis has a working knowledge on telekinesis and are willing to help and teach main characters, though because of writing and conflicts in the story prevent such telekinesis education from happening.
No mention of the movie "Chronicle"? I feel like that was a very good movie that had an interesting take on Telekinesis.
hunterofmonsterss it definitely dealt with loss of control, thats for sure
I thought of that movie as well! It might just not be popular enough to be included. It's reasonable to want to use the examples that are most commonly known to make the discussion more accessible to the general audience.
maybe he didn't mention it because Chronicle uses an external source (the glowing rock) and the characters are anything but empathic, but I agree it is good pick to discuss control or lack there of...
I, however, would argue that Andrew never had control of any aspect of his life at any point of the movie and his lack of control over his powers are just a manifestation for a desire of control over those who opress him... so, it feels more like a case of what might a disenfranchised person do if they channel all of their frustations toward a newly received power than an actual struggle between having power and doing the right thing...
hunterofmonsterss yes, good point.
yeah chronicle, push and akira
I don't think it's specifically/just telekinesis, I think it's all super powers. Telekinesis is just rather popular because
A) It's so widespread the premise is generally understood
B) Visually it's one of the simplest superpowers to pull off in a tv show or movie.
I think all superpowers can be used to tell stories about the people afraid of what they may do to those around them on accident. Some good non-telekinetic examples of this are Clark Kent as a child in Man of Steel, Peter Petrelli from Heroes, Daisy from Agents of SHIELD, a large portion of X-Men stories, etc.
I'm also surprised there wasn't any mention of Chronicle.
Lol, editor good job on the floating thingy next to the lamp at @2:16
I feel like an opportunity to link tech to telekinesis was missed. remotes, smart phones connecting to smart devices from lights to drones, and even self driving cars.
To establish that telekinesis is an allegory for something in the real world, we have to establish what in the real world could be viewed as telekinesis. I don't feel that was effectively established but... then again these vids can't be an hour long😊
versasrev yeah, I was thinking that would come up the whole time, although it may have already been covered in another video. To me, that seems like an idea that's been talked about for a while, but I also listen to a lot of podcasts. Haha
this made me want to rewatch 'Akira' for the 37th time :/
The internet is often criticized as being a great interconnecting network that nevertheless fosters isolated personalities so if anything it becomes an even better fit for the telekinetic allegory. Great video, thanks again
One thing to add, with the surge of the internet of things, we're far beyond the days of the clapper. Unlike in the past where you would use a remote control as simply a tool, I think we're beginning to see a point where the devices we own such as our phone are more an extension of ourselves.
In fact, I've long argued that one of the biggest misunderstandings of older people who complain that younger people don't talk to each other and don't get cellphones/the internet is that they only see a phone as a means to an end. Many younger people don't see a screen when they talk to their friends online, they just see their friend. Similarly, I've noticed older people have no trouble moving past that barrier when it comes to talking on their phone.
We're not to the point where they're a literal attachment to our bodies, possibly why there is a lack of robocop/inspector gadget style of body alteration stories but rather, we're on a the precipice of a VR/AR revolution. It gives us the power to literally create an entire new world layered on top of our old one.This genre likely comes from the fear about whether these new worlds, even with greater connectivity, might become isolating. I'd say for some older individuals, they already feel isolated as there is this whole world hidden from them. One of the key characteristics of telekinetics are their ability to control their power more and more over time. Is that not a very similar pattern of our connectivity? We see greater and greater "online" time but eventually, it's fairly safe to assume we'll reach a point where that extension of ourselves is fully realized.
TETSUOOOOOOOO
KANEDAAAAAAAA!
RYUU GA WAGA TEKI WO KURAU
RYUKO MATOI!
KAGOME!
KIKYO!
I'm loving this channel! As an Argentinean, I notice that you usually mention Borges in your videos. So I wanted to ask: how do you discover him? What was your first approach to a Borges' work? That's a story that I'm really curious about.
Cheers from Argentina!
My introduction to Borges was actually his poetry! We had to memorize poems for a class in high school, and I wanted to pick a book no one else had. I went to the library and found his collected poetry. I think the one I memorized was Anticipation of Love? Maybe a little inappropriate now that I think back on it...
After that I made my way through most of his other works on my own time. Eventually I took a class in college where we spent a while on his work (I think it was a Weird Fiction class? that was a while ago). That cemented my love of his writing, definitely.
I was always of the impression that tk stories were power fantasies for the age of reason and that "the fear of loosing control" was about our decreased competency at managing emotions due to their falling statues in our worldview on that which yield value..
I'm likely just projecting here but these stories always read like counter-points to stoicism or, at least, allegories to it's potential shortcomings in, either, moments of high emotional stimulation or with "volatile emotional people".
In a way they could be interpreted as cautionary tails about balancing varying and conflicting intelligences". Succeeding at integrating the extremes or accepting them (think meditation practices and 3rd wave cognitive behavioral therapy) leads to power capable of good. Suppressing or, conversely, over indulging in urges causes the mind's power to be capable of evil. Seems pretty accurate and perhaps a great message for self-understanding.
Matthieu Rhéaume yeah, it's vary _fantastic beast and where to find them_.
In a nutshell, stories where people do stuff using telekinesis is basically about- doing stuff.
the story i'm writting basically showing people with the power worst suited for their personality/flaws is going to be named allegorical thinking now from watching this video =D
First: Mike your show is great I'm a big fan from Colombia, the ideas proposed in your videos are absolutely awesome.
Second: I think that the rise of the telekinetic power in sci fi is linked to the fact that we as human beings want to feel we have control and power over ours lives, because of that the appeal of this power comes from the fact that it proposes the idea that everyone can achieve this level of power by training your mind or via some greater and external force, even a inside force.
I don't know I think we all want to feel important, but as you can see in Mob Psycho 100, even if you have this great abilities it won't make you important or famous, only discipline and hard work will get you the power you seek.
pls...chronicles? did you ever?
I believe that telekinesis has surged, especially with the dressings of characters that feel alone and confused, has more to do with our desire to regain control in a world that feels more and more out of our control. We feel powerless to control the political landscape, the extreme weather events, economic depression, and resource driven wars and latch onto characters that can not only sympathize with that very real feeling, but can exert control and make changes to his or her world. With this comes a kind of fear of messing things up worse than they were before because we've lived with a feeling of powerlessness for so long. But that is just my opinion.
Peter Stanchek in Harbinger from Valiant comics is another prime example of this character that most people wouldn't know of.
Something else to consider to expand on the allegory - the initial loss of control for telekinetics is usually due to something outside of their control, which then triggers an emotional response, which triggers the loss of control. Those external pressures causing that initial loss of control is important to future actions, whether or not you are telekinetic.
Demon names have to sound inhuman and one of a kind the easiest creative short cut is to use uncommon letters.
See, I think Telekinesis from a hero is a power-fantasy. It's an example of the perfect superpower for modern anxieties: it's completely invisible so none of that x-men anti-mutant sentiment, it ensures that the protagonist will have control over their own destiny (a huge theme in modern media) and it means that the individual won't die from many of the fears of modern life (car crash, shootings, WWIII, etc.). However often the superpowered hero doesn't have complete control, rather it's a struggle for control, which mirrors the fears and anxieties present. They have the potential to have no fear but still have some, which is a comforting narrative for one struggling with fear, as it allows people to believe, even for a short amount of time, that they too could gain some control.
However, telekinesis from a villain is the opposite, it represents a force that is by all means unstoppable. The majority of human fears stem from the fear of helplessness, that one will find themselves in a situation they could do nothing to prevent and can do nothing to stop (note the common denominator in the fears I mentioned above). Telekinesis symbolizes a great invisible power and is largely unstoppable except by some miracle. Note how while heroes often struggle with control, villains often embody control, they can often crush people's throats or lift them off the ground as easily as thinking. They embody a primal human fear which is made worse in modern times. (I think the best example of this wasn't on the list actually, but note Damion Dark in Arrow)
I wish you still made these 😭 idea channel was the best
nice cameo for the magicians can't wait for 2018
That one bit where they go "Whoooshoom neeeoooowwmmmnnn".
Awesome
You should have also refrenced the movie “Chronical”. 3 teenagers with powers and the journey to understand them
Kinda surprised that Chronicle wasn't mentioned in an episode about Telekinetics. That whole movie was about the emotional and sociological impact that receiving telekinetic powers can have on a person.
"American Hero" is a movie that has a telekinetic who doesn't use his power for the greater good at all, fun times and relevant to the points made in this video !
The idea of doing things on the internet being like telekinesis ties in well with your recent episode on the speed of money. Not only can we move money faster now, we can do it from far away, and that's one way we use our minds (mediated by the internet) to affect people and events at a distance from us.
Here's something I haven't seen mentioned: people who are in full control of their telekinetic powers and use them for defense, not to hurt others. The example in my head is the Witch Mountain franchise, where at least one of the space kids has telekinesis and uses it to protect him/herself and his/her sibling from the bad guys. There are other stories with that as well but that's what came to me.
I think it may be worth highlighting the "doing things" part of the idea over the "via the Internet" part of the idea. As an ADHDer with severe depression and other issues, I've had to get therapy to put my life back together. (This is going very well, btw, which is why I don't mind being open about it.) One thing my therapist and I discuss somewhat frequently is the fear of doing things. For example, one of my learned behaviors was that it was easier to handle failing a test on purpose than to study hard and work hard and still fail it anyway because my wires got crossed in the process of taking it. It is easier to embrace loneliness than to be rejected by someone you try to make friends with. It is easier to fail at doing something because you didn't try than it is to fail at something because you did. And many people read this as being about laziness and vulnerability, but in actuality it is about control. Failure on purpose is something you control. Failure by accident, however, comes from the often unpredictable world outside yourself which you are completely unable to control with any certainty. And everyone has to deal with this, not just depressed people who have shut down. Even a "very functional," highly successful person has to contend with, in every decision they make, that it might not go the way they want and they can't do anything about that. For the large part this is subconscious - registered as brief nerves or a split second of hesitation - but it is there.
But this is where the second part of the idea - "via the Internet" - really comes into play, I think. Not simply because the Internet is the power to do, but because it makes the world outside ourselves so much bigger and thus inherently less predictable or controllable than it ever was before. Take what is colloquially called "Tumblr drama" for example - some teenager with good intentions does the wrong thing... Let's say makes a comment they didn't realize was racist because they were raised on that sort of thing. Now, that's not okay. People have every right to be mad about it. But because the Internet - and Tumblr - is a much larger world than say this teenager's high school class and family and local organizations they may take part in, the repercussions are MASSIVE. They aren't just deemed a jerk who said something awful, they're deemed a pariah. And being a teenager, this isn't handled well. Not understanding what they did wrong immediately, they'll probably make things worse in reaction. Maybe they leave, learn from their mistakes, and try again with a new identity. Maybe they continue being a person who says and does awful things because, hey, some people actually are awful. Maybe they get doxed and have to deal with harassment so severe it upends their life. Maybe they're too overwhelmed by guilt because they don't know how to handle this sort of thing, and they hurt themselves. All from a moment than in our private "real world" lives would have had much smaller repercussions.
And that makes "doing things" scary. It turns into a power that is as isolating as it is, well, empowering. You are Jean Grey using her power to change a really high lightbulb and having no idea if others will say "thanks dude" or "gee thanks for accidentally cutting off our electricity, jerkface" or "AAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!" You're not putting yourself out there among friends and family and humans in your immediate vicinity anymore; you're putting yourself out there among an entire planet of strangers you can't predict or control and which is becoming increasingly hard to escape without resorting to becoming a total hermit. "Doing this" is a much more vulnerable act these days than it has ever been before, and I think more and more people than every can identify with a character suddenly developing a power which is, at its most basic, simply "doing things" with little ability to stop or to control the effects all while having no idea if witnesses will embrace you or outcast you.
Having taken an Idea Channel break for about a year, and coming back to this episode, I am in awe!
(Granted, my version of 'awe' may be less awesome than others. But still, I appreciate your rather seamless fusion of high concept and pop culture-kudos!)
s k y r o n . o r g
I always found it funny that in most portrayals of telekinetics, unless they are in high tension or combat moments, they tend to use their telekinesis for novelty. You see Jean Grey move a test tube because she is too lazy to walk over and get it, Neo bends his spoons, Eleven moves a TV remote to herself. I would love to see a movie where a telekinetic person had a normal day job and actually make their powers useful. For example, I would love to see a telekinetic work at Home Depot, unload trucks in a quarter of the time, pull down steel bathtubs for customers with his mind. If you want more fulfilling, they could dig up wells for drought ridden and impoverished villages in no time flat.
I think having Magneto working in a steel mill was the closest I've seen to someone with powers actually making good use of them in everyday life.
The general theme of actions and consequence relating to telekinesis kind of reminds me of the Stranger. The Stranger I think explores among other things the implicit horror that you might take an extreme action that even you, the doer of that action, don't see coming and still have to live with the consequences. The stranger explores that idea in a realistic context by giving us a character who, despite narrating in the first person, is seemingly incapable of deep self reflection, (perhaps due to mental illness) and is therefore unknowable to the reader and himself. I imagine we all to some degree fear we have some unknowable side of our own selves capable of taking over at anytime and effecting the world. Telekinesis manifests that unknowable aspect into a supernatural force. Usually it can be tamed but doing so requires a process of mental and usually spiritual discipline similar to therapy or study with a guru. To master telepathy is to master oneself, and to know oneself entirely.
In a similar vein. SrarCraft has a great allegory about its telekinetic humans known as psionics in their lore children/people are constantly monitored by their government to verify their potential superpowers and are forcibly conscripted into the military if they are proven to have psionic potential. When these people start operating in the military things can easily get messy and dangerous with things like terrazine gas creating hyper-violent soldiers called Spectres and Kerrigan the most psionicly gifted soldier of the terrain army being captured and transformed into an alien being that eventually leads an entire alien race. It shows how that incredible superpower that is telekinetics fails to match with the indomitable forces of the masses and the state by leaving the poor souls who have these tendencies powerless to control their station. (with Kerrigan's state she manages to defy the state but only by giving up her humanity.)
2:05 Mike, that was amazing! It's like I was literally hearing your voice, in my head.
Are you an Avenger yet? You should be.
Other examples I think fit what was presented in the video: Peter from Heroes (he "learns" telekinesis through his power of "empathy" from Sylar) and whatever his name was from Push (good movie btw).
I think that:
- telekinesis is a symbolic way to assert a philosophical stance, a stance contrary to determinism and necessitarianism. The message is that human consciousness is able to break the chain of causality by sheer willpower.
- telepathy is a symbolic way to believe that our own consciousness is able to affect and influence other people's consciousness. It's pretty clear in the character od Apocalypse: in order to finally control the whole world he needs Xavier's telepathy. While Xavier is ideologically contrary to using his own power to annihilate other people's individual self, Apocalypse wouldn't think twice about it.
I think drawing a difference between telekinesis and interconnected technology is that telekinetics feel isolated and the internet is connected is a disservice. The two are actually very similar in regard to isolation. The internet may have the potential to connect and bring us closer, but often it can make one feel more isolated. In that regard the powerful telekinetic may be more like the home-dwelling computer geek than originally postured. They are both connected to "everything-ness" on some level, but that connection creates a feeling of disconnect between their more immediate fellows.
I think it's just that a lot of people that are now old enough to write these stories, screenplays, etc. watched/read Matilda growing up.
That Telek quote wouldn't seem out of place in Fullmetal Alchemist. Comprehension, Deconstruction, Reconstruction.
2:15 I like that little background touch ;)
I feel that describing poltergeist activity as "ghosts moving things around, sometimes blamed on humans" glosses over how connected it is to this subject. While many poltergeist films (for example, Poltergeist) present poltergeist activity as angry dead people moving things around. This makes sense in that the word literally means "noisy spirit". However, the word "geist" can also be translated as "spirit" or " emotion", as it is used in the word "zeitgeist", the spirit or feeling of an age. And this is relevant to a second explanation for poltergeist activity which I think you were almost getting at for a moment.
In the second model of poltergeist activity, the objects moving around and loud noises are subconscious telekinetic powers moving things around more or less at random. This is why poltergeist activity tends to centre around a single person, often but not always a young girl. The theory goes on suggest people feeling powerless can subconsciously be lashing out in the only way they are able, which is why it is most associated with children, people in early puberty, and girls, especially if they are being abused. This theory also brings in why poltergeist activity seems to happen more often at night, if the person creating it is asleep, more of their mind is able to focus on knocking things over and generally being a ruckus. If we accept both types as options then the second option is definitely pertinent to this conversation. I understand that this was not Fort's theory, which is what you were sharing, but I feel it is one that cannot be ignored if poltergeists are being brought up in conversations about telekinesis.
We need movie-bob/idea-channel crossover!
"This is the monster. His name is Anthony Fremont. He's six years old, with a cute little-boy face and blue, guileless eyes. But when those eyes look at you, you'd better start thinking happy thoughts, because the mind behind them is absolutely in charge. This is the Twilight Zone." - Very surprised this wasn't mentioned.
In the role playing game Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0 the Netrunner was a sort of a wizard that could access the net and enabling/disabling machines, open doors and such. This idea is shared in a lot of cyberpunk stories, as well as in The Matrix.
There is this concept of multiple planes of reality: in cyberpunk stories is the real world and the net, while in horror stories such as Stranger Things are the real world and the Upside Down.
This all idea reminds me of the third law of Clarke
You should check out the YA novel Zeroes by Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan, and Deborah Biancotti. None of the characters really have telekinesis, but all save one are built around interpersonal connections in some way. One character's power is to harness and direct attention, another one's power is to be ignored and even forgotten. There's a blind girl who can see through other people's eyes. Another character's power is channeling the energy of a crowd. It's all really interesting to see these powers that are very much based not around enhanced individual, physical action, but rather centered on social interactions between people.
There's another theme connected to telekinesis and other super-powers: The person who gets these powers, if they're the good guy, tends to get these powers before figuring out what to use them for, where-as the bad-guy often acquires the powers after already having a goal in mind for them. This follows the same patterns as the 'unwilling leader'. Those who have little need for power end up using it only to fight the person who did 'need' the power for something.
A lot of the x-men don't really want their condition. Magneto and co. however desire the powers they have, and even seek more of it. This causes those who have the power but don't want it to train themselves to use their unwanted powers against Magneto and co. The same pattern is seen in Fantastic 4, Chronicle, LotR, Harry Potter, and on and on...
To tie this back into the premise of the video, if telekinesis stands for connectedness to all things, then these protagonists are quite the conservatives. They are essentially fighting against change and growth, because they have no need for the additional freedoms and abilities that it would bring.
Ever see Professor X use his powers when it wasn't for the purpose of safely managing the powers of others? If he had been the only mutant in the world, I'd wager he'd stop using his power entirely because he had no reason to use it.
While not a western example, Mob Psycho 100 is an excellent modern series exploring the consequences of strong telekinetic powers linked to emotions. Especially the loss of control aspects as that is the primary fear the main character has about himself, and it's what has caused him to form an extremely emotionally repressed personality.
I've been wondering for weeks why telepathy and tekenicy were so often connected, great video!
The film Chronicle is one of the best modern examples of the extent of telekinesis in fiction. If you have telekinetic powers, and if there is no clear upper limit to those powers, as in the film the main characters' powers got stronger with ever increased resistance, as one would build muscle, then you really don't need any other superpower, as telekinesis could fill in for a lot of trope superpowers: flight, invulnerability, strength, or anything a Lantern could do, you just couldn't see it.
I just finished reading Sphere, which is, spoiler alert, exactly: people struggling to contain their awesome alien telekinetic powers when wielded by their subconscious.
Props on the Shadowrun shirt. I would love to see an episode entirely on your thoughts of the various philosophical conflicts explored within Shadowrun, but I fear it would be a very niche demographic. Still though, you did an amazing job with Welcome to Night Vale.
Meaby we are overthinking this...meaby it's just cool XD
Gotta mention Serial Experiments Lain...it's not specifically telekinesis, but it's more on the nose of this idea.
I think that telekinetics being people who are isolated still fits the bill. Taking your allegory of these people doing things online, It could represent a fear of people being too interconnected with the internet and their online communities meaning that they lose connection to things in real life.
Since, as you stated, most telekinetics are also empaths, able to feel the emotions of other beings or things around them. This could be like how some people feel real emotional connections to those they find online in internet communities. This could relate back to the isolation because stereotypically, people with online communities that they're attached to do not have a large social circle outside of the internet.
On a slightly different note, telekinetics might reflect the social ineptness of said people who do have those online connections. When telekinetics affect something in the real world, they usually do it in a round about, and more difficult way. They don't show their powers to most people, only to those they trust a lot.
The actions that these telekinetics take can reflect people who feel they're socially awkward. The things they do are normal people things, but it is more difficult for them to do. They feel inept and shut themselves out of society, thinking more about their feelings with other people that won't see their social flaws. When they finally do meet people that they can trust, they don't feel they have to hold back anymore.
Quick nitpick - Sylas' power wasn't really telekinesis! He had the ability to understand mechanisms, no matter how complex, by simply looking at them directly.
That's why he keeps opening up people's heads. He learns to use people's powers by learning how they do it.
... What? I think it's pretty cool. :C
Surprised you didn't mention Chronicle. It provides very pure examples of the "general traits" you ascribe to telekinetics, and even more it's a story strictly about that concept.
Though I guess I just want that movie to get some more love.
so we are sitting not standing this week
Dalton Riser Gotta save that energy to make things float
oh truuu
I-Is that a Homeboy Sandman sample in the background?! That's awesome!
An excellent video!
I think NerdSync's point about "weak" characters tending to have TK hits something deep about TK stories!
Namely, I would argue that the trope of "weak"characters acquiring telekinesis, underlines half of the core TK stories: the shattering of the balance of power between the characters. This is the essential theme in the development of Anakin to Darth Vader, Jean Grey's
and Eleven's character development as well.
The second half, the key insight of TK stories, is that this balance of power ultimately defines and is defined by the boundaries of the inside and outside of an individual. For example, I consider my physical surroundings are "external" to me, because my influence on it is contested by other people. But I perceive the state of my body and my mind as "internal'", because I'm convinced I can dominate other people's influence on it.
This is for example, why Logan's schizophrenia is a debilitating weakness. External influences "leak" in to the domain, which normally should be exclusive to him.
So, how do we get the standard formulas of TK-tales using the two ideas.
Let's examine a scenario where we begin with two non-TK characters.
Initially, we have a balance of power: Both characters are physically independent or "external" to one an other. When one of the characters develops TK, the relationship changes. It's no longer a symmetric relationship between equals, but closer to that of you and your limbs. And it doesn't have to stop there. Taken to the extreme, the non-TK becomes "internalized" by a TK character and we get the standard formula of horror
exploited by early TK: the viceral fear of being eaten alive.
I think that one can apply this logic to other, more subtle tropes as well but I'm not sure how to show it as clearly. Especially in non-dyadic scenarios.
Finally, I think the reason TK-tales strikes a chord in contemporary
societies, it's core defines the key antagonism to come of our generation. How asymmetries in inside/outside generate power (think gamergate or any other public shaming spectacle) or power induces the boundary of inside and outside (NSA, Google surveillance) are but the tip of the iceberg.
Or what do you guys think?
One of the causes for the common trope of people with mind powers losing control of their powers could also be the experience we all have of losing control of our mind.
It is a common experience to have horrible, destructive intrusive thoughts. For example, being in a high place and not being suicidal but having the thought of jumping off. We intuit how fragile our control of our mind is and so of course people with mental powers only have fragile control of those powers.
If you think about it, telepathy is really just a variant of telekinesis since what you're doing is changing the brain-state of another person or otherwise present them with a physical sensation.
The anime "From the new world" is interesting in that regard because it is about a society of telekinetic people (not simply individuals), dealing with this question of loss of control in a very direct way. If we see this as an alegory for technology, it could tell us a lot about how we might try to deal with technologies that we are worried about today like AI and man/machine interface.
I think that more explicitly, telekinesis is about being able to control external objects the same way we control our body. When we are little children, a great deal of our time and energy go into simply learning how to coordinate our bodies, which involves a lot of failure. Technology keeps giving us what feels like extensions of our bodies - cars, computers, smart phones, etc. I think it is very easy for us to imagine finding that other external objects suddenly coming under the domain of the same process that lets me control my fingers to type this out. At the same time, like when learning how to drive, we also come face to face with the fact that our margin for error while learning decreases tremendously when we learn to control objects with more power. I guess I see telekinesis as being more about an expansion of one's sense of their body than of their mind - which gets into cyborg issues as much as matrix issues.
Nice to find a reference to Jack Vance's Telek. One of Vance's best novellas for sure. The story ends with one of the best literary fight scenes I've ever read. Vance usually goes out of his way not to include "action" in his stories, but this one felt like a scene from Hirohiko Araki's Jojo's Bizarre Adventure manga. That is: it was bloody good.
I think part of the reason people with extraordinary powers of the mind are becoming more prevalent, is because more of our world depends on information and how we are able to leverage that information gives us power.
We are able to take information and impact the world directly with our votes, purchasing habits, and public policy. There are even stock market robots that are able to make monetary profit off of knowing who traded what stock at what price, microseconds before anyone else.
In the age of information, being able to manifest your thoughts into telekinetic power is the coolest super power because you could in essence do anything in our society as well as the world.
I enjoy the connection between art (stories, movies, poems, comics, paintings, etc.) and contemporary mindset, meaning that all art are created to reflect the time period it was made thereby making art allegorical in nature. Classical realism made a comeback to European painting and sculptures in Italy because of historical events, and themes of AI endangering humanity because of the developing science in AI. Telekinetics is no exception.
But really the allegorical nature of art, specifically telekinetics, can be boiled down to one thing: psychology.
Psychology can explain the hows and whys of (1) the characters, (2) the mindset of the creator / author, and (3) the mindset that the audience for which the art is made for. Carrie and Logan can trace their psychological elements of abnormality (or "mental illness", psychological disorders): stress, antisocial behaviors, toxic environment, cognitive deterioration, absent or little of social support, biological dysfunction, and etc. They can be diagnose with unipolar depression alongside with other disorders if necessary. The reason why characters with telekinetics might not able to control their emotions is because of their psychology; we might not be able to control our emotions because of psychological phenomenons, and such characters represent our fear of losing grasp with our emotions or even our mind. Makes you wonder why psychologists are not in stories to help these characters out.
As a student of psychology, I unconsciously use psychological theories to understand the art presented to me. In fact, all art are just case studies with biological, psychological, and sociocultural elements that are easy to see from the perspective of psychology. Therefore, the more an individual learns psychology and its complexities, the more that the allegorical nature of art is one way of expressing and sharing the human condition. Why not use the tool that help us understand humans for characters? After all, they are created by humans.
Sylarrrr!omg he's one of the most scary villains I've seen but I always forget his existence XD
Perhaps the persistence of telekenetic stories is due to an internal fear of actually possessing anything more than a superficial facade of power, especially if that power is beyond our control.
I'd venture that the lone nature of telekinetic heroes is still quite fitting; because while the connection is the source of the power, the risk may in part come from feeling like no-one else is real out there.
And further, we bear the responsibility for our own actions, on our own. We don't, strictly speaking, get to disappear into the rest of some group when our tweet blows up the universe, or our lives.
If we're gonna talk about villains and technology with regards to telekinesis, we gotta talk about Magneto. He can move things at a distance explicitly Because Science, since his powers manipulate electromagnetic fields.
A Shadowrun t-shirt? I'm envious!
I like the floating house in the background lol
Also loved the Hackers flash... Been a while since I've seen it!
Azazel (Denzel Washingthon's Fallen movie's demon) starts with A. You show us a clip of Matilda, but in the case of Matilda the explanation of her telekinesys comes from her intelligence and kind of a compensation for his horrible life, a little bit like Cinderella.
The floating SX-70 is great!
Another possible idea: it's potentially an easy special/practical effect. Green screen tech has become cheap (and good) enough that you can use it a lot more on the small screen. Thus, it's the go-to superpower to have if your budget isn't as big as it could be. (Secret Life of Alex Mack and My Secret Identity come to mind, for those of you willing to jump in the Wayback Machine.)
Also - 'telekinesis' is a convenient word to use to describe a LOT of different supernatural effects - as the underlying theme is "moving stuff with your mind", which depending on the scale can be anything from photons to neutrons to electrons to molecules to cells to organisms and up. As such, it's a convenient word to use when you want to have a general basket of powers, and don't want to go into greater detail on that side of things.
Surprised you didn't mention Raven from Teen Titans and other DC comics. She regularly talks about the source of her of magic being her ability to connect. She even calls herself an empath.
Here's a slow loaded, well seasoned food for thought: The idea of the telekinetics in "Chronicle" representing the Id, Ego and Super-Ego. Enjoy.
I see it as an extension of the way genius is often portrayed lately as well. Think about how TV shows, in particularly crime dramas depict the brainy character visualizing a murder with fancy special effects. It's not that far from telekinesis at that point either.
Maybe even anti-intellectualism a little too. For the genius the brain can be used for good, but there's a "fine line between genius and insanity" just like the risk of the telekinetics losing control over their powers.
Telekinetics takes the genius from being able to think big thoughts to being able to do big things by thinking.
You failed to mention "Forbidden Planet", it exactly matches your premise
Star Trek's "Where no Man has gone before" also is an example
I have a potential video idea, proposed by kindergarteners! Is the Earth alive?
great vid as always.
the shift from "telekinesis as other" to "telekinesis as self" could also be interpreted as "telekinesis in a Discipline society" to "telekinesis in a Control society".
in the old model of telekinesis, the supernatural outside force is responsible for the danger - in the new model, telekinesis's dangers are privatised, individualised - "human nature". reminds me of Mark Fisher on the depoliticisation of mentall illness.
I wonder if characters from Mr.Robot can be re-written to be telekinetics... I wonder if that's why that show has sci-fi undertones and hints
... huh
It's an interesting thing to think about, since the show is definitely building to something sci-fi related slowly. Telekinesis being an allegory for technology is an interesting concept that I never really thought about before.
CARRIE. CAAAAAARIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEE. Just say Carrie. I don't know any of these other shows. Even Matilda would have sufficed
Great video and great insight into telekinetic in modern media about how it shows an allegory that sense of self-control is required. As mentioned, regardless of one having such powers or not, uncontrolled emotions/ideas may results in hurting others. It's just seems more obvious when we have telekinetic to shows physical effects.
Funny thing I noticed, the house in the background just levitates randomly in this video (2:23)
Spent the whole video looking for stuff floating in the background
Thanks for sharing about the book, Telek. Also, I think Chronicle is by far the up in the ranks with Akria and Stranger Things.
As for allegories, current technology certainly gets us closer to telekinesis = via techno-telekinesis. Just look at advances in brain-computer interface, with paraplegic patients being able to control a mouse cursor on the screen or a robot arm.
I think one of the most realistic takes of telekinesis is the villain in Disney's "Big Hero 6."
I think of telekinesis (or the increasing frequency of it) as a way to fictionally cope with being "overwhelmed" by modern society. Never in any other time in history are we so connected with the news worldwide. You grow up as a decent human being with a healthy sense of empathy and when you see different world turmoils happening,you feel powerless as your actions are limited within the reach of your physical body. I see the connection between telekinesis and the internet as a way to expand your reach to do good (or neutral or evil) from your body to the computer screens on every corner of the globe. Telekinesis as a story prop or concept, I think, is a way to influence things normally out of reach.
Even in a more local perspective (just thinking about yourself), in the society of today's developed countries you feel like you never have enough time to do things. Telekinesis (at least the efficiency of its use in many series) seems like a great solution to improve multitasking. Feel like your only way to travel freely is to paradoxically be chained to your car on the road, along with its regular payments and insurance. Just fly on your on terms and override the traffic and tolls. Is your 9-5 work life in the big city suffocating you? With telekinesis, you can fly/float above the heights of the tallest buildings to escape the surrounding hustle and bustle and get a refreshing glimpse of sunset that was block by surrounding infrastructure.
As for losing control, or the fear of it, I'm going to need time for another post, but I think it was nicely explained in the vid.
I think the stories about telekinetics are about the power of mind over matter, and transcendence. Themes of interconnectedness is but a plothole plugger convenience to avoid fridge logic, but the main theme of telekinetics is that these users have the rare ability of transcending human limitations, but because transcendence has its risks, the authors cautions control over it, lest the user becomes a villain rather than a hero (as in Star Wars).
Why telekinetics are frequently also telepaths is also due to this transcendence, that humans would've progressed their minds to a point that they need not their crude sound-based mouths to communicate.
Take for instance the Protoss, of the Starcraft Franchise. They are mouthless beings who communicate via telepathy, and their telekinesis is based more on their biological processes, and their technology being able to interface with said biology to allow for leaps in technological levels. Their theme also in Starcraft 2, Legacy of the Void, is that they stray AWAY from the interconnected-allegory (the Khala), and instead learn to live without such interconnection (like the Dark Templar).
Your thoughts remind me a lot of some of the theories of Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan theorized that all technology extends some physical faculty (the car extends the foot, clothes the skin, television the eye, etc.) He dreamed of a world very much like our own where we were connected by electronic communication. He believed that this would be an extension of the mind, making us discarnated (bodiless) beings. I can see telekinesis (the literal extension of the mind) closely paralleling some of these theories.
I think also the conversation of AI influences the conversation of what we are. In particular, what makes our brains function the way they do and how that can be exploited
The mug at the end. I kept rewinding...
The differences Between asking a question and not getting an answer Because the person you asked didn't Know or because they didn't answer.
1.turn on closed captions
2. go to 11:36
3. giggle