Doc

It is more like, "I AM"

I am what I am

(God, and Popeye)

I don't like spinach.

IMHO, this is the most succinct, intelligent response on the question of ethics in mentalism thus far. Make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, scare the s@%t out of 'em. Just don't bore 'em.

"Keep it interesting"
-Johnny Carson

Just don't make mentalism the new "watch steal."

The watch steal got to be so hackneyed during the 1980's that at the Newport Beach Magic Island, the waitresses were doing it to people as they seated them. Ricky Dunn had to specifically ask them to stop this in order to be able to present his pickpocketing act as something more than just a throwaway that any waitress could do.

It would seem that's just what a con artist would want to do. Any other way wouldn't be "ethical".

Wait wait wait wait wait... I said something right?

Time to go buy lottery tickets.

Not sure if anyone has posted this since I only read the first 2 pages, will go back, and read the rest.

Some seek to make a distinction between the Mentalists persona on stage, and off stage. That there is a dichotomy, and that once off stage the mentalist should disavow any claim to powers, even if he never bothered to make them onstage. The idea is, that if someone believes him or her to have powers during the presentation, that is ok...but if asked offstage, he should " come clean"

While I myself because of my religious views which I will not discuss here, may have my own ideas about this, I need to ask a question.

When a cardician is on stage, and performs and causes an illusion of having magical powers on stage, goes offstage, and someone, a friend, a fan, or whoever asks him to perform a fast magic trick with cards. Does he say.." Well, I have no real powers. That is all illusion, so since I am offstage, and I do not want you thinking that magic really exists, no...I will not do any magic because, I am offstage, and cannot do it, since I have no real powers."

Or....

" Do a quick Twisting the aces."

Why is it that the cardician that does not " fess up" to a fan offstage is not called to task for encouraging the belief in real magic powers. And the mentalist is?

Why the distinction?

There are unscrupulous people afoot in this world.

Some cheat and rob.

Others commit corporate crime, stealing from pension funds, defrauding shareholders or selling inferior products.

There are even those who will kill their own kind in order to steal from them.

Some use internet scams.

A few cheat at cards using some of the same tricks magicians utilise (though often better) to defraud folk of their money.

Yet others claim special powers and cheat the vulnerable and the gullible by taking money to provide lucky gambling numbers, to heal, to converse with the dearly departed etc.

So far I imagine we are all in agreement but from here we take separate paths.

Some believe that because the latter group of fraudsters utilise techniques in common with mentalists, that mentalists have a special and distinct moral responsibility to ensure that every person exposed to their work be totally aware that trickery is involved lest they take the mentalists skill as an indication that the fraudsters possess genuine ability.

I, and others, disagree.

Destiny

(Be gentle on those keyboards now folks)

It just seems to me that the card Magician, or the Stage Illusionist work hard, to convince the spectators they have seen the impossible. And the spec walks away with the impression that what they have seen IS Impossible according to their world view.

But By asking a mentalist to use a disclaimer either before or after the show, we are being asked to either... Destroy that illusion after the show, that we worked hard to establish during the show.... or...Undermine the illusions before we even start.

I understand there are many gullible people in the world that believe in communicating with the dead. Or believe that some people have real mental powers... telepathy, PK, etc... I just do not see why mentalists have to either destroy their illusions before the audience leaves or undermine it before the show even begins... to accommodate the fools that may fall pray to the medium scam artist.

There will always be fools... why should I have to accept that it is my responsibility to wisen them up...wasn't that their parent's job???

or does the Cardician have a responsibility to teach the spectator about Bottom and Second dealing, spread culling, Palming, and switching,....simply because these are things a card cheat can also do??

I didn't think so.

Clarissa35f,

I agree, but you will find that there are those who don't.

I believe the argument runs that we are a party to the fraud of the unscrupulous as we lie by ommission.

I must admit I am also guilty of failing to tell my audience not to try swimming with crocodiles.

Destiny

That's exactly right, Destiny. The average person in the western world is confronted daily with teachers, doctors, lawyers, reporters and others who tell them about cells and bacteria and laws and crocodile encounters. They're doing their jobs. They're not magicians.

Erlandish had it right a couple of pages ago: this is about your JOB as a magician, not about your beliefs or your ability to play a role in the preservation or destruction of the modern west's rationalist Weltanschauung.

Put on your teacher's hat, go and tell your students about the laws of physics. Then put on your magician's hat, and make them question them. They can take it. And even if you are a better magician than a teacher, the other teachers will make up for it unless the student has a predisposition to believe in the occult or supernatural and is willing to question the laws of physics.

I find--indeed, have always found--the presumptuousness of "wow, I can blow their minds to the point that they might question the physical reality that their senses and the entire educational and intellectual establishment has taught them to accept, so I better make a disclaimer to save them" to be exceptionally, even astonishingly arrogant. COME ON! The idea of the average rank and file magician going through an ethical crisis because some kiddie might really believe that sponge balls replicate magically...well, how is that so much different from a mentalist who makes some teenage girl at the mall think that he can reach into her mind and tell her her birthday? And how far can you go without threatening that rationalist Weltanshauung? Pretty darn far. Far as you want, as far as I'm concerned. As far as you want.

What is everyone so afraid of? Being the ruinous magician who replaces Einstein in world consciousness and thereby threatens civilization? Hey, if you can get that far, maybe you should, because maybe that rationalist Weltanschauung ain't all its cracked up to be.