my Personality Test

The other day, as I was wandering about town, I happened to pass by the Church of Scientology of British Columbia, which had a prominently displayed sign offering a "free personality test!"

My curiosity got the better of me and I went inside. The test I was given is called the Oxford Capacity Analysis and consists of 200 questions which may be answered Yes, No, or Maybe.

I noticed that many of the questions, when posed in that fashion, did not appear to be particularily meaningful. For example, question 88. "If we were invading another country, would you feel sympathetic towards conscientious objectors in this country?" Without much more information, I could not possibly answer yes or no. Other questions simply did not seem to make any sense, for example, question 123, "Is your opinion influenced by looking at things from the standpoint of your experiences, occupation, or training?" What is being asked here?

I completed the test, answering Maybe to those questions that I could make no better answer to, and gave it back to the young man who had given me the test in the first place. He told me that he could not mark my test unless I filled out the section for my name, address, phone number, etc. Now, I am somewhat wary about giving such information to organizations that I am unfamiliar with, and was somewhat put off by his insistence. Rather than arguing the matter, I gave a pseudonym and a fictitious address. My test was then scored, and I was informed of the results.

Apparently, I am incredibly nervous and depressed, and become hysterical and violent in stressful situations. Furthermore, I am so judgemental and mean-spirited that no one can stand to be around me. This is all news to me.

My grievous faults of character and personality were explained to me for some time. I was then told that through Scientology and Dianetics, I could overcome these faults and become successful in life. In the course of our discussion, I was also told that, because I was treated for depression with Prozac several years ago, I had "lost the ability to think correctly," and that there was no hope for me save Dianetics. The entire experience seemed quite a lot like a transparent and manipulative sales pitch designed to play on my insecurities and self-doubts.

Furthermore, it wasn't particularily well done. In "interpreting my test scores," the fellow with whom I was speaking was reading paragraphs verbatim from some papers, which seemed kind of, well, clumsy. I asked various questions, which seemed to me to be of the obvious and elementary type (How are the test scores arrived at? What is the standard against which I am being compared? What do these terms mean?), but they seemed to make him uncomfortable and I didn't recieve any cogent answers.

Now, my question is, how dumb does the Church of Scientology think I am, if they think that I will be enthusiastically whip out my wallet after this? I'm sorry, but anyone who wants to sell me the secrets of the universe has got to have a much better line of patter than that. The entire experience was more or less an insult to my intelligence. Hmm.

eataTREE

\\welcome to the Chaos Farm\\ eataTREE tlipford@Direct.ca \\sowing in progress \\ prach@freenet.calgary.ab.ca