The Gross Common Sense Inventory

Why stay out of the limelight?
You can feel like royalty every day.

Ask your doctor about prescription Dianazine.

The Gross Common Sense Inventory
by Rev. David M. Gross, Church of Dianology

This psychological test is designed to help determine to what extent the subject has sense in common with Mr. Gross. Subjects should, for each of the numbered scenarios, choose which column holds the scenario that most matches his or her own viewpoint. Subjects should be told that both scenarios may appeal to them equally, but that one should be chosen in each case - that choosing one column as "best" representing the subject's views does not mean that the other column must be false or incorrect.

1a

1b

The United Nations should make global human rights a priority and should use sanctions, war crimes trials and even military intervention against those who continue to practice torture and Orwellian oppression. The U.N. is a fraternity of monsters for whom "human rights" is only a rhetorical bludgeon. Ultimately the organization is designed to more efficiently expand the tyranny of its members.

2a

2b

Homosexuality is not a disease or a chosen "lifestyle" - it's an attribute as inherent and inflexible as eye color or height. Homosexuality, and heterosexuality for that matter, are choices - both of which are often somewhat pathological and limiting in practice.

3a

3b

The pyramids were built on the backs of slaves; the cathedrals of Europe hid many a torture; the Moon was explored while children starved. The O.J. Trial is our age's monument to history; history will judge. The hype surrounding the O.J. Simpson trial was perhaps one of the most shameful things the world has ever seen. Atrocious murders and the humiliation of Justice became a spectacle closely akin to throwing Christians to Lions.

4a

4b

Drugs like marijuana, LSD, and such are not just unjustly banned, but are positively important, opening up new windows of possibility to the mind in a way analogous to, though even more dramatic than, the discovery of the microscope or of language itself. The vagueness with which some "astronauts of inner space" discuss their remarkable experiences leads me to believe that these drugs have merely evolved through a sort of natural selection to fool us into believing that they're good for us.

5a

5b

If I were invited to the White House to meet the President, I hope I'd have the courage to use the opportunity to confront him forcefully on some issue of importance rather than let him use me as scenery in a photo-op. If I were invited to the White House to meet the President, I hope I'd have the courage to piss on his leg in front of television cameras.

6a

6b

I suspect that the position of a person in the internet is likely to grow to resemble that of a brain cell in the brain - unconscious of the larger ramifications of its activity, but unable to defend a separate and autonomous existence. The internet has true culture-shattering possibilities; we are more and more coming to live inside of a world of our own creating, inhabited not with ghosts (like TV) but with other souls; is this Heaven on the horizon?

7a

7b

If gay couples want to gain the right to marry, they might as well just become straight. There's no reason why a gay couple that wants to marry should be prohibited by law from doing so.

8a

8b

Contradictions are illusionary, and only reflect a larger unity. Every opposition is subsumed by a whole. On the contrary, every thing itself mandates its own opposition and the nature of contradiction.

9a

9b

Capitalism under law is basically the rewarded enforcement by the non-rich of the sanctity of keeping generations of stolen property and wealth in the hands of their current controllers. Capitalism isn't a program or a system like "socialism," but a description of reality like "the Pythagorean theorem." Deal with it.

10a

10b

If more people read newspapers and news magazines instead of watching television, we would all benefit by having a better-informed citizenry less predisposed to hysteria. Newspapers are, if anything, worse than television. They distill real facts down into stereotypes and platitudes and interpolate a rung of writers and editors between readers and the facts.

11a

11b

People in our society suffer from an unbearable isolation; even among friends we remain hidden behind thick façades and social conventions. It is a personal and social service to break these bonds. Conviviality and social agility are favorable words that mask what really is a frantic, ant-like modern compulsion for constant superficial contact; a little more true solitude would do us all some good.

12a

12b

In the end, it is only the frivolous that separates us from the drain filters and meatballs. I think I would be wise to reduce my life to the simple and essential, eliminating seductive luxuries.

13a

13b

That we are mortal - that there will come a time in which our memory will mean nothing to nobody and in which we can play absolutely no part - is the fundamental truth and dilemma of our condition and must be answered before all else. Mortality is an illusion caused by mistakenly ascribing momentum to the ego in the opposite direction of memory. Our finite span in time no more kills us than does our finite length in space.

SCORING
There is no scoring; the test is designed to help determine to what extent the subject has sense in common with its author. It is hoped that the subject may determine that simply through the act of participating in the test.

1a	1b
The United Nations should make global human rights a priority and should use sanctions, war crimes trials and even military intervention against those who continue to practice torture and Orwellian oppression.	The U.N. is a fraternity of monsters for whom "human rights" is only a rhetorical bludgeon. Ultimately the organization is designed to more efficiently expand the tyranny of its members.
2a	2b
Homosexuality is not a disease or a chosen "lifestyle" - it's an attribute as inherent and inflexible as eye color or height.	Homosexuality, and heterosexuality for that matter, are choices - both of which are often somewhat pathological and limiting in practice.
3a	3b
The pyramids were built on the backs of slaves; the cathedrals of Europe hid many a torture; the Moon was explored while children starved. The O.J. Trial is our age's monument to history; history will judge.	The hype surrounding the O.J. Simpson trial was perhaps one of the most shameful things the world has ever seen. Atrocious murders and the humiliation of Justice became a spectacle closely akin to throwing Christians to Lions.
4a	4b
Drugs like marijuana, LSD, and such are not just unjustly banned, but are positively important, opening up new windows of possibility to the mind in a way analogous to, though even more dramatic than, the discovery of the microscope or of language itself.	The vagueness with which some "astronauts of inner space" discuss their remarkable experiences leads me to believe that these drugs have merely evolved through a sort of natural selection to fool us into believing that they're good for us.
5a	5b
If I were invited to the White House to meet the President, I hope I'd have the courage to use the opportunity to confront him forcefully on some issue of importance rather than let him use me as scenery in a photo-op.	If I were invited to the White House to meet the President, I hope I'd have the courage to piss on his leg in front of television cameras.
6a	6b
I suspect that the position of a person in the internet is likely to grow to resemble that of a brain cell in the brain - unconscious of the larger ramifications of its activity, but unable to defend a separate and autonomous existence.	The internet has true culture-shattering possibilities; we are more and more coming to live inside of a world of our own creating, inhabited not with ghosts (like TV) but with other souls; is this Heaven on the horizon?
7a	7b
If gay couples want to gain the right to marry, they might as well just become straight.	There's no reason why a gay couple that wants to marry should be prohibited by law from doing so.
8a	8b
Contradictions are illusionary, and only reflect a larger unity. Every opposition is subsumed by a whole.	On the contrary, every thing itself mandates its own opposition and the nature of contradiction.
9a	9b
Capitalism under law is basically the rewarded enforcement by the non-rich of the sanctity of keeping generations of stolen property and wealth in the hands of their current controllers.	Capitalism isn't a program or a system like "socialism," but a description of reality like "the Pythagorean theorem." Deal with it.
10a	10b
If more people read newspapers and news magazines instead of watching television, we would all benefit by having a better-informed citizenry less predisposed to hysteria.	Newspapers are, if anything, worse than television. They distill real facts down into stereotypes and platitudes and interpolate a rung of writers and editors between readers and the facts.
11a	11b
People in our society suffer from an unbearable isolation; even among friends we remain hidden behind thick façades and social conventions. It is a personal and social service to break these bonds.	Conviviality and social agility are favorable words that mask what really is a frantic, ant-like modern compulsion for constant superficial contact; a little more true solitude would do us all some good.
12a	12b
In the end, it is only the frivolous that separates us from the drain filters and meatballs.	I think I would be wise to reduce my life to the simple and essential, eliminating seductive luxuries.
13a	13b
That we are mortal - that there will come a time in which our memory will mean nothing to nobody and in which we can play absolutely no part - is the fundamental truth and dilemma of our condition and must be answered before all else.	Mortality is an illusion caused by mistakenly ascribing momentum to the ego in the opposite direction of memory. Our finite span in time no more kills us than does our finite length in space.