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THE METAL-BENDERS” by JOHN B. HASTED

It is important to look with foresight on any social dangers that might come upon us as a result of our new-found knowledge of metal-bending, primitive as it is. Dangers might arise from a lack of control of the phenomenon. It is often maintained, but we do not yet know whether it is true, that there is a built-in safety-catch on psychokinetic phenomena, ensuring that we cannot bring about anything which will hurt ourselves or our friends. Such a concept, for which I have found no experimental evidence, is surely related to the idea of ‘white magic’. But I have come across very few reports of even so much as a skin abrasion by metal-bending in several hundreds of events. Some playful misdemeanours have come to my attention, for example, Graham P.’s bending of his granny’s knitting-needles when she was at a critical stage of purl and plain! However, the Japanese metal-bender Masuaki Kiyota is troubled by his ‘powers’ and affirms that he always takes care not to ‘think-ill’ of people, even when provoked, in case there should be dangerous events.

Nevertheless, anything not understood is uncontrollable, and should be investigated until it is understood. It would be dangerous if the increase in magnitude or frequency of occurrence of metal-bending events were to exceed the speed with which we come to understand them.

An obvious danger is that in the presence of a metal-bender ‘spontaneous’ faults or artefacts could happen in mechanical or electronic control equipment, thereby causing accidents. But if electronic equipment can be affected, and there is a case for taking such a claim seriously, then why do not the television sets of the metal-bending families break down when the children dislike the programmes? We just do not know enough to say, and on environmental grounds alone the sooner we get sufficient knowledge the better.