General Discussion

The Soviets were first with their program, and Americans were worried about a "psi-gap" so started one as well. Here in America it was kept alive by various lawmakers who had personal belief in ESP, etc. until Clinton, who killed it. It was resurrected again under W. Not sure about now. And who knows about Russia. James Randi did a NOVA episode in 1993 where in part of it he traveled to Russia to test various claimants, etc.

In a round-about way, this was one of the reasons I was looking forward to the 4th Indiana Jones movie. In the 30s and 40s, he was dealing with mystic things in the movies because Hitler and Germany had an interest in mysticism. Ultimate victory though was in the form of science - terrible though it was - which took us into the 50s with the cold war and a renewed interest math and science, and the "woo" changed to keep up - ESP, telekinetic powers, etc. The untapped power of the mind and so on. So while I don't believe in either, I thought they were being clever, taking beliefs of the time to a far-out conclusion and having Indy have to deal with them...

And then I saw it. Spielberg had to put his daddy issues into yet another movie; Lucas his damn aliens, and the whole pre-Colombian civilizations were created by aliens is another form of woo and a racist one at that.

TlalocW