Tolerance And Open Mindedness—Searching For A Causal Relationship

My Conversation With MV Returns
Future Time
Somewhere In Limbo

"But you got married," said MV.

"No, that was later," I replied. "True, three years after my bicycle
trip I did get married, but it took another five years after that
before I finally stopped pushing my God idea. Once I rejoined the
student ranks, I was back at it."

"Oh, my mistake," MV responded. "It's hard to keep a time line
straight when you keep jumping around the way you do. How did you
combine sociology with your metaphysic anyway?"

"It wasn't easy," I said. "Actually, back in the classroom, I kept my
mouth shut most of the time. I needed to become employable, not
understood."

"But what about your thesis," replied MV, "you said the data supported
your ideas."

"I didn't write about my metaphysic," I said. "I wrote about the
implications contained in it. Remember, my first two thesis topics
were rejected, so when it was suggested that I do survey research on
prejudice my topic became prejudice. Actually, I was okay with that.
Prejudice always made my blood boil, so I thought getting to know more
about it was a good idea. In my literature search on the subject I
found a connection between prejudice and ambivalence. Ambivalence
played a major role in Adorno's study of the Authoritarian
Personality. In order to escape ambivalence, the child, in Adorno's
investigations, redirected hostilities toward out-groups and away from
his or her own authoritarian parents. In fact, the need to get rid of
ambivalence ended up in prejudiced attitudes in other studies too. I
found that curious."

"So what does all that have to do with your metaphysic?" responded MV.

"What could possibly be more ambivalence generating than the condition
of being-what-is-not-while-not–being-what-is?" I said. “Of course I
know most people don't experience the self in that way, but some do,
and among those that do, you do not find much prejudice, if any."