"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.", Kurt Vonnegut

The idea that by the very strength of one's thoughts an object could be moved has lingered since almost the dawn of humanity. Yet through all of those years there has not been a single incident of this mental prowess. This, however, does not mean we should give up and disbelieve this theory but rather try harder to achieve it. Research shows that the average human uses only about ten percent of his brain which means that we have not even tapped our mind's potential. Vonnegut is asking too much when he demands the instantaneous display of telekinesis. We, as a race, are still ridiculously young when compared to the world around us. With all the technological advancement that has occurred this past century, I daresay even this past decade, we have no idea how far we can progress. Telekinesis may come tomorrow, maybe next year, maybe one hundred years from now. The fact of the matter still remains that we still have a lot of discovering to do.

Freedom or Fate?

In our existence is everything we do really based on our own decision or is everything, including our thoughts, completely influenced by outside stimuli, unchangeable? Are we fated to follow a predetermined path or are our decisions really our own to make? I personally believe in the concept of free will because there is always that aspect of the human mind that has a limitless number of ways of looking at any situation. One may argue that the way we think is completely dependent on past experiences, but at the end of the day we are the ones who decide what to do with our prior knowledge. Billy Pilgrim may have a firm belief that our fate is set in stone but if what he says about being unstuck in time is true at all then he is contradicting himself. If one can agree on the fact that once something HAS happened it then becomes unchangeable, then when Billy is looking around at his life he is looking at past unchangeable events.

Which begs the question: Is Billy Pilgrim dead?