Posted by Steven Benjamin on June 27, 2009, 7:01 am, in reply to "A Sabbath Study"
(originally posted as a Sabbath Study on 2/29/08 on The Mt. Carmel Discussion Board)
(CONTD FROM LAST POST)
The following is an essay composed last semester to a group of Advertising students in NC who were in a group project I was chosen to lead, I was addressing the subject of public speaking and in the closing segment of such, addressed cold reading.
Cold Reading: or the art of forecasting the history of a complete stranger.
Let me translate cold reading for you. It is an acquired skill in which one makes an immediate assessment of another persons life in a mildly vague but applicable (though not necessarily correct ) fashion based on initial observations and visual clues which while obvious are often mundane and overlooked my the majority of common onlookers. This is a skill found in circus performers, gypsies, and in charlatans who would present themselves as mystics or psychics. This is not to say that true mystics and psychics don't exist, just that many would be "psychics" are indeed charlatans. The bible records that King Saul was cursed by God for consulting with a witch, who conjured up the spirit of a departed prophet of God in effort to appease Saul's quest for guidance. It also speaks of a sorcerer who approached the apostles to learn how they performed their "tricks" when they healed the sick, so that he may add to his arsenal of sorcery.
An example of this skill is understanding first, that certain things are regional. Then you have to broaden your definition of regional to include time as well as space. When we think of regional we usually think in terms of space, north, west, south, south west ect.
The most obvious of these is speech. A persons accent can often give away the land of their nativity. Others can be hairstyles, which can be used to determine a persons age at times.
When you regionalize time, you refer to seasons, decades, eras', generations, and you could get as extensive as centuries , dynasties, millennia, ages, and so on, in essence you are basing an assessment which is Likely to be correct. Archeologists do this all the time.
Websters dictionary defines
Era:1a A fixed point in time from which a series of years is reckoned b : a memorable or important date or event esp: one that begins a new period in the history of the person or event 2 : a system of chronological notation computed from a given date as a basis 3 a : a period set off or typified by some prominent figure or characteristic feature b : a stage in the development of a person or thing: esp one of the five major divisions of geologic time
In terms of cold reading people, that is the living human, you will probably deal in terms of decades, generations, and at most centuries(though not more than one) and eras' that falls within those guidelines. The goal of a cold reader is to reduce the margin of error to a minimal. A carnival worker who guesses peoples age, usually guarantees within a small margin of error i.e. " I will guess your age within 2-3 years, or your weight within 10 pounds." It is usually never a promise of accuracy, but when accuracy is achieved, the wise, in keeping quiet at their own astonishment may pass themselves off as "mystic."
Trendy things often follow in 20-30 year cycles, leather jackets which were popular in the 50's and lame in the early 70's started coming back in the late 70's, and were a big ticket item once again in the 80's. While the cuts were slightly different the bottom line was the same. The same is true of hairstyles, women can often conceal their age with hairstyles, but ultimately people adapt to a particular style and stay within variations of that style. This along with one or two other visual clues can give a person insight to an age bracket.
Look at the hairstyles of several preachers and politicians, see what you find.
Look at the hairstyles of women in the 80's and starlets and musicians from the same time frame. I remember as a child when Disco swept the nation, then died. For years I thought I would never hear anything of it again, but then a few years ago it had a resurgence. The same is true of the Mohawk, which was popular of the 80's punk regime, and now has found it's way to American idol in the poor attempt of Sangia, who certainly wasn't setting any current trends, but merely reflecting them. Just last summer I saw a young man walking down the road with 6-8 inch spiked cones all about his head, another hairstyle from the 80's.
Names often rise in trends, pointing to a specific era. People are more alike than they like to admit, and often will seek to be different even with names. This pursuit of individuality only serves many times to point back to our collective nature. Names like, Moon, River, Star and Stormy can all be traced to a particular cycle, perhaps your already thinking of the hippie movement of the late 60's and 70's. Do you know anyone out there whose name ends in "A" –Shaniqua, Laquita, Moniqua, Kisha, ect. already you may be stereotyping race, but I would wager you can do the same with age and birth, referencing such a person to the 80's and 90s'.
Go back to the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and find which soap operas had the highest ratings. Find the most beautiful character, and the most controversial characters, and you will likely find that a large number of white females born in those timeframes bear the same names. No woman wants to think of herself as ugly, and certainly does not want to think of their child in such terms. It is only natural to assign the most hope upon ones child, to name a girl after a siren or a boy after a king, is much more common than to say " let's call him---MUD DOBBER" but even then should such a case arise, I am sure you could envision a region in which Mud Dobber was born.
Names tell us about a persons ancestry, about their fathers, as well as their forefathers.
Are they Pagan? Are they Christian? Are they Muslim or Jew? Were Jacob and Joshua raised in a Christian environment and susceptible to certain viewpoints? Is Mr. Smith of European heritage or does Chief George Walking Eagle come from a reservation? Is Mr. Carver the descendant of slaves in North Carolina, or plantation owners of the same name?
Visual clues can tell us about a person's background, if they have money—are they wearing sneakers or loafers? -thrift store dress shoes or Patent leather? Are their shoes clean, shined, new or worn? Is their tie tied in a proper Windsor knot? Is their money in an orderly aligned fashion or haphazard when they pull it out of their wallet? Do they have a wallet or a billfold? Do they keep their money in their front pocket? Are they wearing dots or stripes? Vertical or Horizontal? Highwaters or capris'? Stonewashed jeans or hand-me-downs? Do they open the door for a lady? Do they open the door for a man? Do they use profanity? How profane are they? Do they cuss like a----sailor?
It is often wrongly considered politically correct to view stereotyping as a bad thing. The PC attitude arises to avoid possibly offending anyone who either bears the marks of a stereotype and has risen above the same, or in effort to avoid displaying ignorance of your audience by speaking in broad generalities;
This is a prudent tactic, but to say that stereotyping is bad is a fallicy, it is neither good nor bad, but ambiguous. Things are stereotypical for a reason, because usually, not always, but more often than not a thing stereotyped falls into a certain category. Snow on a cold January day is more stereotypical than snow in July… but it has snowed in July.
I doubt that a woman dressed in chaste Pentecostal attire would be spoken of as dressed like a prostitute. But as I used the term Pentecostal, did you picture a long dress, below the knee, perhaps even ankle length? To say that all Pentecostal women wear ankle length dresses is stereotypical. To say that a woman, wearing a long ankle length dress, is likely Pentecostal, when she is also wearing no make up, carries herself in a meek manner, and wears her long hair in a bun, is cold reading.
When Peter denied Christ for the third time, it was his speech that gave him away as a follower of Christ, and it was his speech he used to deliver himself from his would be tormentors.( Mark 14 verses 66-72.)
Stereotyping; we all do it on some level in our daily communications, especially in dealing with strangers. Some however, train themselves to be more adept at it and stereotyping transcends into an art form known as cold reading. While cold reading is not a guaranteed art, many make and have made successful careers on it, in front of both board rooms and Ouija boards.
BEWARE OF FALSE PROPHETS.
Message Thread:
« Back to thread