Supersense

DISCUSSION TOPICS

HAVE YOU HAD ANY SUPERSENSE BELIEFS OR MOMENTS?

If the supersense is within all of us, there should be no embarrassment in talking about our individual supernatural beliefs and behaviours. Why not ask colleagues and friends if they have any interesting super-sense moments and how they came about? Start with the personal sentimental objects, as many of us are happy to describe what they mean to us. If not an object, then it may be a certain place or an event where one experiences a sense of the profound. Our lives are full of such moments of significance though we use different ways to interpret them.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAVE FROM A BURNING HOUSE?

In chapter 8, I described how personal possessions become very precious to the individual. Imagine that your house caught fire and you had to save just one item. What would it be and why would you risk your life to save it?

My student Katy Donnelly posed this question to 180 people in an online survey. The top three household items in order were: 1) photographs, 2) jewellery and, 3), their childhood toy. Women rated items they had been given by someone else as more valuable than did men, who valued objects that they had bought themselves as most important. Why do you think that might be the case?

HOW MUCH IS YOUR SUPERSENSE WORTH?

Consider the following tasks and answer honestly if you could do any of them and, if so, for how much: £1; £100; £1000; £100,000; £1,000,000; or never? You have to fully imagine doing it to get a true insight into your own supersense.

1)

Could you drop your most cherished sentimental object into the toilet bowl?

2)

Could you wear a murderer’s cardigan?

3)

Could you stab a copy of a photograph of a loved one through the eyes?

Now consider all three. What order would you rank them in from the least to the worst act? Try this list out with others (maybe as an after-dinner conversation) and see if you all agree. I bet you will not.

IS YOUR SUPERSENSE STRONG?

The ‘magical ideation’ scale that I talked about in chapter 9 is a measure of one’s tendency to the supersense. It was devised by Mark Eckblad and Loren Chapman from the University of Wisonsin-Madison in 1983 and has been used to look at magical (supernatural) thinking in the general public. How do you score on this? Read each item and tick the true or false box.