Open Minded People Frequently Experience Self-Directed Inquiries

MV Conversation Continues
In Limbo

"Except for you, who experiences the self as being-what-is-not-while-not–being-what-is?” responded MV.

"Anybody who hangs close to the self," I said. "People who meditate
know this firsthand. Existentialists deal with this condition on a
theoretical basis, and liberal-minded humanists, although they might
not experience self-scrutiny first hand, struggle to keep this freedom
alive fore everyone else. If the issues of self-identity, for those
people who seek that knowledge, are not ambivalence generating, than I
don't know what is--and that's the approach I took when writing my
thesis. I investigated the question: Why do some people handle
ambivalence better than others? And I ended up hypothesizing: People
who frequently deal with self-directed inquiries are less likely to
exhibit prejudiced attitudes (they get used to dealing with
ambivalences) and, thus, the corollary becomes prejudiced attitudes
are more likely to be found in people who engage in infrequent
self-directed inquires."

"How the heck is something like that measured? said MV.

"Well, that was the problem," I replied. "But, while doing my
research, I stumbled upon a measure of private self-conscious
activity. After looking over the questions, which already had a high
reliability quotient built into them, I decided those questions would
work for me. My problem was half solved, but finding a scale to
measure ambivalence was not so easy. In the end, I created my own
questions. My committee had already signed off on my thesis, so this
new expanded area of inquiry did not alarm them. The thesis became
more difficult to write, but, in the end, it became a scientific
investigation of my own metaphysic--if only indirectly."

"I see," MV replied, "but I still don't understand what you're talking
about."

"Yeah, that was also a problem," I said. "The four professors on my
committee pretty much left me alone. I guess they figured that since I
was a good student I could handle the new material. Nobody questioned
what I was doing because measuring prejudice attitudes toward African
Americans and physically disabled persons (the level of significance
that connects prejudice to both groups) was a valued sociological
project all by itself. But, now that I think about it, Professor
Julian did require some clarification on what I was talking about."

"He thought you were crazy? replied MV.

"Not at all," I replied. "He was a big help. If it weren't for him my
thesis would never have made it past the conceptual stage. He guided
me through the statistical analysis and that was necessary because, for me,
mathematics has always been difficult. Anyway, my thesis was
a numbers thesis and I was so scared that before I even got started I
wanted to ditch the whole project and go to plan B, which, as a
requirement for graduation, substituted taking exams for writing a
thesis. But I went to Jim and asked for help. It wasn't hard to go to
him because I knew him from an earlier time. We met in the `60's when
we were both students at CMU. You could say we were old friends."

"So what didn't he like?" said MV.

"Jim was very sociological," I replied. "He didn't buy into the
`freedom issue,' especially when it came to personal identity and
volition concerns. At one point, he turned to me and said, `I don't
understand what the hell you're talking about. Draw me a picture why
don't you.' And that is exactly what I did."

"What picture? How did you draw a picture of the self?" said MV.

"I didn't," I replied, "but the cognitive boundaries that define the
self can be drawn. Once again, it's a holistic thing. It encompasses
all that we know, and a little more."