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levite · 01-08-2009, 03:34 PM

Obviously, it's a big universe, and anything is, theoretically, possible.

Still, I have never seen nor heard of anyone with Esper abilities potent enough or reliable enough and focused enough to warrant going superheroing with them. It seems to me that such abilities would either be rare to the point of occurring once in a generation in all the world, or they would be so common that someone would surely be unable to keep them secret. And if one was going to use the abilities for supervillaining, it seems like they would be even harder to keep secret.

In my experience, and from what research I have done on the subject, Esper abilities require years of deep-focus training (like yoga or Shao Lin training) to separate them from entanglement with emotional reactions (i.e., most people with abilities can only bring them forth with any kind of reliable repitition in crisis situations), and even when they can be summon in moments of calm, they are usually not particularly strong. The young man I knew with the telekinetic ability, for example, was only able to move small, light objects (I don't recall him ever moving anything that weighed more than a pound or so) for very short distances (the most I ever saw was a cloth napkin that he moved maybe five or six feet in one go), and that was with very intense concentration on his part. That is certainly a remarkable phenomenon, but it's not exactly Jean Grey saving the universe, either. And while I have read in the literature of those said to have telekinetic gifts more pronounced, little substantiation, as far as I know, has ever been accorded to PK gifts that are more than moderately more dramatic than the one I encountered.

As I understand it, precognition is an especially difficult gift to sort out, and is infinitely harder to focus and direct than something like telekinesis. I am, I confess, dubious about the claims of someone who purports sufficient clarity and control of their precog ability to use it for either effective superheroing or supervillaining.

01-08-2009, 03:34 PM	#11 (permalink)
levite Minion of Joss Location: The Windy City	Obviously, it's a big universe, and anything is, theoretically, possible. Still, I have never seen nor heard of anyone with Esper abilities potent enough or reliable enough and focused enough to warrant going superheroing with them. It seems to me that such abilities would either be rare to the point of occurring once in a generation in all the world, or they would be so common that someone would surely be unable to keep them secret. And if one was going to use the abilities for supervillaining, it seems like they would be even harder to keep secret. In my experience, and from what research I have done on the subject, Esper abilities require years of deep-focus training (like yoga or Shao Lin training) to separate them from entanglement with emotional reactions (i.e., most people with abilities can only bring them forth with any kind of reliable repitition in crisis situations), and even when they can be summon in moments of calm, they are usually not particularly strong. The young man I knew with the telekinetic ability, for example, was only able to move small, light objects (I don't recall him ever moving anything that weighed more than a pound or so) for very short distances (the most I ever saw was a cloth napkin that he moved maybe five or six feet in one go), and that was with very intense concentration on his part. That is certainly a remarkable phenomenon, but it's not exactly Jean Grey saving the universe, either. And while I have read in the literature of those said to have telekinetic gifts more pronounced, little substantiation, as far as I know, has ever been accorded to PK gifts that are more than moderately more dramatic than the one I encountered. As I understand it, precognition is an especially difficult gift to sort out, and is infinitely harder to focus and direct than something like telekinesis. I am, I confess, dubious about the claims of someone who purports sufficient clarity and control of their precog ability to use it for either effective superheroing or supervillaining. __________________ Dull sublunary lovers love, Whose soul is sense, cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove That thing which elemented it. (From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)