The MBTI Explains the Limits of Open-Mindedness

I have my doubts about the Meyers-Briggs Type Inventory, described in The Pastoral MBTI, but it has its uses. Admittedly I was using it for my own purposes and not its own, but it helped me explain the limits of open-mindedness in an essay I wrote for Touchstone years ago. Close Your Mind begins:

G. K. Chesterton once said of his friend H. G. Wells: “I think he thought that the object of opening the mind is simply opening the mind. Whereas I am incurably convinced that the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” (Though we think of him mainly as a science fiction writer, Wells was a great leader of the progressive movements of his day. He was, sexuality aside, the Gore Vidal of the early twentieth century.)

To be open-minded — now usually called “entering the dialogue” — is not necessarily a virtue. The virtue of open-mindedness depends on how far you open your mind and how long you keep it open, and whether you close it when you ought to.

An open hatch on top of a submarine lets in needed light and air — until the submarine dives. An open door in a country house is one thing, an open door in a prison is another. A man may open-mindedly weigh the merits of monarchy, but he may not, without branding himself a moral imbecile, open-mindedly weigh the merits of Hitler’s policies for the Jews.

Thus there is less to be said for open-mindedness than is usually said by modern mainline Christians. It is not at all virtuous to keep your mind continually open, because you are not using your mind as it is meant to be used. You are in fact taking very poor care of it. The mind continually propped open will only collect dust and cigarette butts.

It reflects my immersion in the battles in the Episcopal Church (my family entered the Church the next year), in which the innovating party would switch from dialogical relativism to absolutist dogmatism and back in the blink of an eye as suited their polemical and political needs at the moment, and I would draw the lines more broadly and softly now, but I think the argument still hold.