A test that serves as a CT scan of your soul

As regular readers of “Field Notes” in The Enterprise know, on occasion I have alluded to a personality test I was developing that I now call the Personality Assessment Inventory, the PAI.

It’s unique in that it includes questions about a person’s social life, his ongoing relationships within the community — his social environment — to find out about not only the work a person does but also about his involvement in groups like the food pantry, the local public library, or a community sports team — to see if he’s a coach interested in just one player.   

And part of such service — or more correctly the apex of it — is doing things for others without seeking anything in return — no ax to grind, no ulterior motive — just doing things, helping out, to make the community a better place — making it feel more like home (for everyone).  

Understandably there’s considerable complexity in such issues and, to help people unravel their neurons, if you will, the PAI’s questions are structured to encourage respondents to speak freely.

The first question of the PAI is: “Are you selfless?” That is: Are you someone people refer to as a “selfless person”?

Of course our research team starts jotting down notes right away because — sociologically-speaking — the answers are gold, never mind the gift they give to psychology.

Question 2 is: “Do you know anybody who is selfless: maybe personally; maybe someone you met along the way; maybe you worked with such a soul?”

And there are two sub-questions to that; the first is: “Have you ever read about anyone who was and/or is selfless?”

And the second is: “Can you recall a situation when someone treated you selflessly? That is, you were given something, or somebody did something for you without asking for anything in return so you never felt put in debt.”

And you saw that the person you mentioned treated other people the same way, so he seemed selfless to the core.

Which leads us to: “In your family growing up, was there anyone who was selfless? Is there anyone in your family now who is so?”

And all answers, at each stage of the way, require naming names.

And the obverse of such questioning must be posed as well, that is: “Was there anybody in your family growing up — or among those you live with now — you regard as ‘selfish,’ as in ‘ish’”?

Epexegetically-speaking, it’s the person who — after you’ve had a few beers — you start referring to as “the selfish pig.”

Remember, there’s a wide spectrum of values in the PAI so there are no wrong answers. We note everything.

And with respect to those you said were, or are, selfless: Rate their selflessness from one to ten: a zero being someone like Donald Trump and a ten Mother Teresa.

And you must say how you came to your scores, must delineate the measuring stick you use to assess another’s ethics.

The combined answers to all the PAI’s questions, of course, are essentially a CT scan of your soul, the value- and belief-system that’s determined how giving a person you are.

Which brings us back to question 1: “Are you a selfless person?” And those who say “No,” must also say: “What happened?” “What went wrong?” “Why did you give up on humanity?” “And on yourself?”

Questions like these of course are ideologically-loaded, but it’s a road that must be gone down today because so many Americans are jaundiced through and through, whining like Woody Allen in “Crimes and Misdemeanors”: “Life is dog eat dog; worse than that, the dogs don’t even return your phone calls.”

Years ago, when I was editor-in-chief of a progressive justice journal out of the UK called “Contemporary Justice Review,” I put out a call for papers for a special issue dealing with the kinds of issues just mentioned.

Potential respondents — in or outside the university, there was no education requirement — had to say how their ethical system came to be, what beliefs helped shape the code of conduct by which they lived, and where their sense of justice came from.

The special issue of my journal never came off; the academic community didn’t bite. I was more puzzled than displeased.

As editor of the journal, I had had good luck with calls for papers — the response at times was flooding — but the academics wanted no part of: “Are you selfish?” “Are you just?” “What rules do you live by?” “Have you given up on humanity?” “Are people better off after spending time with you?”

My error in thinking was that I labored under the illusion that every university person interested in “justice” would want to write his own “On the Genealogy of Morality” and out-Nietzsche Nietzsche.

One person who did do that — and at every stage of his life — was the great 20th Century British writer, George Orwell.

People who know him know him from “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Animal Farm,” two pieces of brilliant artistry that are ranked among the best stories ever told during the twentieth century, many folks having come upon the writer in their summer reading list in high school.

Orwell answers all the questions posed above in a 1946 essay called “Why I Write,” which appeared the year after “Animal Farm” came out.

He was trying to disentangle his neurons to see where next to go in life to be true to a sense of justice kindled in him in 1936.

Toward the end of that year, as an official reporter for “The New Leader,” the weekly paper of the Independent Labour Party in England, he was sent to Spain to survey what was going on in the “Spanish Civil War” and report back home.

As we know from history, the war began when Francisco Franco Bahamonde, aka “Franco,” the commander-in-chief of bands of fascist forces, crushed the democratic republic of Spain and declared himself dictator (king), a position he held onto from 1939 to 1975. He was known as “Caudillo” which some Spanish dictionaries translate as “Mussolini.”

After surveying the landscape of “the Spanish Civil War” for just a few days, Orwell the reporter, laid down his writing pad, picked up a gun, and headed to the front to join the democratic forces pushing against the fascist muscle of Franco.

Everything that happened day by day while he was there — for example, what it was like being a soldier in a “socialist” army — Orwell included in his brilliant memoir “Homage to Catalonia,” which is ranked one of the top three or four nonfiction books written during the 20th Century. 

But after only a short time at the front, Orwell got shot in the throat — the bullet went all the way through — and had to leave the war to heal, then later the country to escape with his life.

Historically, “Homage to Catalonia” has been disrespected by indifference even though the war story far surpasses in suspense and intrigue anything portrayed in M.A.S.H. on TV and even in Altman’s movie of the same name.

And because of how Orwell conducted himself in Spain and in his writing, there are many who still refer to him as a “secular saint.”

In “Why I Write,” Orwell explains that in his life the war in Spain “turned the scale and thereafter [every] line of serious work … I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism.”

It was a vow he never reneged on. He never gave up on humanity, or himself.

With a new kind of totalitarianism knocking on America’s door these days — and with so many Americans holding that door widely ajar — I can hear Mr. Orwell whisper with the hoarse throat he was shot in Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.