The Sixteen Planets: Part of the Jungian apologetics series.

I had had my moments of doubt about the validity of the Myers-Briggs Temperament Indicator, but it seems that this is one of those profound matters that cannot be marginalised either by skepticism or blind faith, at least not alone.

If one is to follow the MBTI blindly, one should have a superficial grasp of it. If one is to merely cast it aside as unscientific, it should be equally superficial.

My stance is simple:

1. That human beings live in at least sixteen different worlds of experience according to their personality type, which in turn shape their civilisation. These are, as it were, such markedly profound differences that it is as though we lived on sixteen different planets.

2. That to presume that there are no such distinctions (such as the dichotomies between feeling and thought, introversion and extraversion, et cetera) is akin to being skeptical about the existence of other planets. If one presumes that the MBTI is "hogwash", one is bound to continue seeing things through his or her own personal lens, presuming that all "decent" (by his or her own standards) people are "this way".

To clarify:

An INFP will presume that all people are motivated by goodwill and will, offhand, bet that everyone has markedly "poetic" and "mystical" moments in his or her life, and that the operations of people are motivated by a greater understanding of this, or are otherwise motivated by a selfish perpetuation of one's ignorance.

An ISTJ, on the other hand, will presume that all "decent", "intelligent" people are motivated by logic and simple, incontrovertible facts and practicality, dismissing others as superstitious when he or she lacks insight into their psychology. This may be a shortcoming or weakness on the ISTJ's part, but it is not tragic because it is appropriate to the ISTJ's value system: The way that ISTJ interfaces with the world does not leave much space for the clarity of the "revelation", and should ISTJ become too intent upon his or her causes he/she should dismiss this phenomenon as wishy-washy bull.

The INFP, of course, is not without his or her weaknesses. Logical matters involving "brute facts" may be disregarded where feelings are challenged, putting the INFP into difficult situations.

If the MBTI is bull, either individual's shortcomings should be a tragic scenario. If the world followed strictly the logical, immediate accessible principles that the ISTJ is aware of, then all fallacious and unscientific nonsense should be totally unpardonable. If, conversely, people lived only on the INFP planet, anyone with a lack of Wonder in his or her life should be deprived and his or her life would have little meaning.

Presuming the MBTI is bull and the ISTJ is Right, this sense of Wonder should be merely on par with a drug-induced hallucination. Being illogical, it is pointless recreation and offers no insight. The "reality" of the world is Work and the enjoyment of friends and pleasures within reason.

Presuming the MBTI is bull and the INFP is right, the world has no consistent, observable patterns that can be mapped by the logical mind, and all people who fail to recognise Beauty and Glory suffer from the same problem. If this problem is not easily curable, it is entirely incurable.

Thankfully, this is not the case if the MBTI is true.


Reconsider the two men I had illustrated previously.
Now, these two individuals may agree with one another in polite matters and strike an uneasy and unspoken truce, keeping quiet about their qualms with the other. This would be a superficial peace; I can attest from personal experience that longstanding friendships can be very problematic, although worthwhile, between these types. Problems are good, though, if addressed appropriately.

Let's suppose that my relationship with an ISTJ remains on the superficial level. In this case, we develop no longstanding friendship; this is more akin to the respect that conservatives and liberals show one another whilst sober at a cocktail party.

At the end of my day, I'll go back to my books, to my friends who are like me, usually intuitives, predominantly feelers, for they perpetuate my comfort zone. He, conversely, would gravitate towards people who share his view, SJs.

Presuming that the MBTI is bull, which is, effectively, equal to an ignorance of its existence entirely, we should never acknowledge this division as being significant. His group is his group; mine is mine. We are equal, but we feel justified in hating each other. The in-group, out-group dynamic, defying reason, works under our very noses, needing no further justification to our eyes.

Now consider that as an allegory and not just a probable situation. If I go on a date with an ISTJ girl, what'll happen? I can think of two scenarios: I will try to involve her in Deep matters, sharing my internal psychology with her, or I can gravitate towards Superficial matters which I Know Will Fly (usually).

Most will take the general advice and choose option two, because it makes the other more comfortable, across the table. Presuming either that the MBTI is bull or that I am ignorant of it, I should have little but my own past experience to go off by virtue of which I may "guess" what she is feeling and thinking here, what she may feel and think throughout the day, et cetera. If, however, I can note that she is an ISTJ, I may be more educated in leading the conversation in a direction that we would both enjoy.

Presuming the worst, or perhaps second worst -- that I keep the convo on a shallow level -- we may agree on silly topics: the weather, bands, politics if I'm lucky.

You know the story: Two people end up living together and find they had less in common than they thought they did. J.D. Salinger even wrote a short story about it exclusively.

The problem is that, even if we find that we both like the Beatles, her experience of their music will be different from mine, and thus our whole intellectual lives may be entirely perpendicular where we might assume them to be parallel. I don't "really know her", nor does she know me. Disaster.

This is not a matter of astrology, where we look up to the skies to explain what happens to us. This is a description of her actual psychology and mine, no metaphysics necessary. If the relationship is to be anything but sexual, I need to know Where She is Coming From, not what her "sign" is.

If I acknowledge the MBTI as B.S. ("Bad Science"), I should presume that our agreement is not superficial but profound: That she too is motivated by a search for Truth. The notion that she feels herself to already "have" the truth by virtue of her senses, as an incontrovertible figure rather than a vague but powerful limit to be approached, would be alien to me. We wouldn't ever mention it in words, for each of us would take his or her own frame of reference for fact. I would probably find her drive to help people to be noble, but I might even be awkward in seeing the "clearly dysfunctional ways" in which she implements it, overlooking critical details. She, in turn, would find my attributing value to intellect to be overblown and pretentious (this is, incidentally, an entirely imagined scenario).

There could only be so long that we could ignore our cognitive dissonances without the relationship rupturing and flattening. If I "keep the company of my friends" and treat her as though she were one of my intuitive buddies, I would be doing her a disservice. If she were to insist on driving me around from meaningless encounter to meaningless encounter with the solemn resolve that life is good if she can find at least one person to help through the day today, she would probably do well to know that it is not out of an Obvious, Incontrovertible Selfishness that I would probably do well to stay home and focus on my writing instead.

If, however, we both acknowledge that the MBTI holds validity -- that, rather than being a self-fulfilling prophecy and a testament to "what the thinker thinks the prover proves", it is a mirror by which we may more clearly See Patterns that EXIST REGARDLESS OF WHETHER OR NOT WE RECOGNISE AND ACKNOWLEDGE THEM -- then our relationship should be nourished.

As a fact, I cannot guarantee that it Will be nourished, but I Can say that you do not know until you experiment, and it is Bad Science ("B.S.") not to try. Two people may be equally logical but, based upon incredibly disparate lifestyles, have different premises going into their logic.

If our relationship is to be superficial, I'll stay on my planet, presuming that it is the only one, and that she is here as well. She will remain on hers, with the same presumptions, or otherwise we shall both presume that the other is entirely ungrounded, floating in space and beyond help.

If it is to be deep, We should see that we live on two of at least sixteen unique planets, with their own atmospheres and gravity, and perhaps, in that recognition, interplanetary travel should be possible.

dm.A.A.

there is no ego.

I can think of no single human activity that is objectively "egotistical". From my observation and study of people, both first-hand and second-hand, it seems incontrovertible that "ego" is what we attribute merely to one whose motives we do not understand, and that, conversely, Godliness (although by no means God) is what we attribute to one whose motives we overestimate.
 

The ego as a menace
is a blade that cuts a schism in the heart
But if your crusade
is to keep the chasm wide

if your aim is to persuade
me to keep the parts apart

Shame on you for your parade
of heartlessness and foolish pride.

 dm.A.A.

How Salinger killed Lennon and why he should not be blamed.

Jerome David Salinger, a writer with a flair for Eastern philosophy who was reputed for creating characters reflecting his own idealism, spent ten years writing The Catcher in the Rye. It was precise to the word, as befit the philosophy of writing that he ardently espoused in later work. It was also effective at touching the hearts of millions, across generation gaps, rendering him a celebrity against his intent. It followed that he became a recluse, refusing to comment on it.

Almost two decades later, another man known for his idealism and his interest in Eastern philosophy, John Lennon, was shot to death by Mark David Chapman. The killer cited The Catcher in the Rye as the main influence upon his thought.

I can think of two possible themes here:

1. No matter how perfectly one phrases one's message, and perhaps to the extent that one does, it will be misinterpreted as lunacy, probably by someone of questionable sanity.
2. Refusing to shed light on one's message, despite the conviction that, if it could be summarised in an interview, two-hundred and seventy-seven pages would not have been necessary, can be fatal.

dm.A.A.

My response to Brian Dunning's criticism of the MBTI:

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4221

A friend of mine in high school, long before I had heard of Jung, once said that she could never imagine me as an extravert. I kept my inner world quiet with almost a paranoid fear of others, shielding the intensity of my incredible emotions, towards which I attributed the closest thing to Godliness that an atheist can conceive. Part of my disconnect from people came from their lack of interest in "profound" matters. I found it fascinating and unbelievable that, despite the invisible Essence pervading the world, a unitive entity that I perceived that pervaded all things, like an Oversoul, revealing itself in glorious moments of spontaneous clarity, went entirely unmentioned by people, and some would even insist on using logic where this Presence would, by virtue of logic, hide itself.

I just talked to one of my friends from high school, and elementary school, in fact. It was the first time in my life that I fully fathomed that he, and perhaps most people, would not discern any meaning in the above paragraph. Considering the depictions of Bradbury, of Poe, of Salinger, of Rowling, of Shakespeare of this phenomenon, -- Of Meaning as an incontrovertible phenomenon Presenting itself serendipitously -- it was boggling to discover that my friend had only experienced this whilst using psychedelics.

Could it be that, in fact, these writers are on a different planet? The MBTI helped me to see that and understand why friends had called me Hamlet and Holden Caulfield.

- INFP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scwcnXRtVt4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzeAD70_oRo

My Roadmap.

I. Every act by any human being and any sentient (and maybe nonsentient) being is motivated, whether with or without conscious intent, by Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
II. Everything that anyone ever tells you is true.
III. It is ignorance that would obscure facts I and II.
IV. Because ignorance does not exist, it may be overcome by Wisdom.
V. The wise individual is one who has, to the... best of his or her ability, synthesized the truths of everyone and everything with whom or which he or she has interacted, measured against his or her own logic and experience, into a perfected whole.
VI. The process described in fact V may or may not involve conscious intent.
VII. The perfected truth of the wise individual is neither superior nor inferior to the truth of the conventional person.
VIII. A preference for the perfected truth over the conventional truth is not necessarily misguided or ignorant.
IX. There is no evidence to disprive facts I through X.
X. If any one of facts I through X should be untrue, moral behaviour would be entirely impossible.
 
This is, of course, not to be taken literally, but hyperbolically. The intent is to stress and strain a particular emotional attitude to an extreme so as to illustrate a particular quality of character which tends more or less to dominate my personality.

If I could have any feedback, it is: to which extent is the manifestation (although not dominion by, as in this example) this archetype (if it is one) 1. constructive/tragic, 2. pervasive and 3. the manifestation of truth?

Comment back.

dm.A.A.

Finding the method in my madness.

I see the logic in my prior work where before I only saw the emotionalism. This would suggest that it was emotionalism itself that prompted me to reflect upon my prior work with harsh judgement in mind. Perhaps my greatest impediment was the emotionalism of logical people: People abusing logic when they have not thoroughly developed emotionally, attacking sensitive people, calling them "irrational" when, in fact, the sensitive people were either as rational, as logical, but with a wider frame of reference, or they have so many variables to work with -- so many premises to assess -- that they have not yet had the time to apply the logical method, still immersed in the process of finding the truth or falsehood of incredibly subtle and vague premises.

 

dm.A.A.

I'm supposed to slash John with a long Japanese sword...

   John says that my experience of 'beauty' is merely a feedback loop: The projection of my own prejudices onto the world, obscuring its objectivity.
   By the same token, isn't logic a feedback loop? After all, to say, 'this is true because it is logical and it agrees with my existing philosophical and cognitive prejudices' seems to be merely the masculine equivalent of 'this is true because it is beautiful, thus affirming my existing aesthetic and emotional biases'.
   I also contest him on his assertion, still, of the superficiality of Personality distinctions. I have always, in mature life as well as my most memorable childhood moments and Eternities, gravitated towards the temperament of the emotive poet over that of the intellectual, despite brief visits to the latter. Had I stayed as a Thinker rather than a Feeler, my choice would have been probably advantageous to me, sparing me many uncomfortable conflicts that, nonetheless, for the sake of sheer Truth, I chose to endure.
   As a poet who did not always know it, I universally felt that it was a matter of the deepest, most incontrovertible wisdom that what was Beautiful was revelation: That those moments in Life when I experienced a splendor of utmost novelty were when the Universe was looking me straight in the face, almost scoffing at the petty attempts of my logical mind to map it.
   It was not a feedback-loop: It was contact with an alien Other that was nonetheless the very Ground of Being, and thus all other truly beautiful things seemed a part of the same energy, to be revered. And it always came unexpectedly and spontaneously, never by virtue of my adherence to a doctrine. 'Anatman' is a tantalising state of ambivalence when regarded intellectually, but what really discerns it from any other form of intellectual stuffiness that my spoiled mind could cling to?
   I saw Dan Faughnder today. His very presence, however momentary and fleeting, in my day left an imprint that mere memory could not recall. Had I been less preoccupied with contemplating Anatman and trying to make the external world conform to my logical prejudice, maybe I should have seen his soul without hesitation, but it was delayed until I reached Starbucks.
   Here was a Beautiful man, and should I have forgotten that I would not have Seen him. Is any beauty a falsehood?
   Do we not arrive at truth by stressing our most gorgeous extremes, rather than conforming to a sterile balance?

  dm.A.A.