I think I'm going to stop now

[Reluctantly]

I'm going to stop analyzing people. It doesn't matter. It never amounts to anything but conjecture and speculation. Even social empirical studies are just imprints of the past. Jung, psychology, it just leads in circles, like a dog trying to catch a tail. I feel violated. It allows me to violate myself.

The only thing that ever seems to make any sense is to just treat people benevolently with respect and tolerate them if it doesn't cause any significant harm. I hate Jung. I hate MBTI. I hate socionics. I hate psychology. It just gives me a headache for finding how misguided it all is for those looking to explain themselves or even their lives. But it's all so arbitrary. Nobody can verify any of it and the proponents of each can't escape their self-fulfilling positions.

Really, am I wrong?

Just mashed potatoes...mashed potatoes and condiments...we all are.

 

[Minuend]

Coincidentally, I've actually just gotten more interested in analyzing people. Like a puzzle to be solved. I find it has advantages; Like predicting who will give you trouble, who is reliable etc. It explains why people do what they do, why people can't be perfect. You accept people more easily because you see why they are.

Though, it seems quite obvious there is more to your dilemma than analyzing. Perhaps you should be honest with yourself and face the real issue. Is it a girl? A friend? Family?

 

[AlisaD]

You people actually analyse people? Other then yourself?
I just get a general hunch, or a feel about a person, and go with that, works well.
Well, most of the time anyway.

 

[Minuend]

^Have you read Dune? It is inspiring.

 

[Reluctantly]

Though, it seems quite obvious there is more to your dilemma than analyzing. Perhaps you should be honest with yourself and face the real issue. Is it a girl? A friend? Family?

Major Periodic Dissociation. I've had to look at situations and people without having to care for my well-being at all. I found my identity changes easily and I am quite different around different people.

But that's the smallest problem. What I've found and makes me feel an uncomfortable split in my ego is that if you go into a situation, you have to choose between two parallels:

1. looking at a person's behavior through history as a probability and judging your relationship with them by that
or
2. as a person that will be treated in the moment as if they have no past and will be redefined to make a new potential relationship with them.

Forgive and redefine or remember and define from the past.

Everyone has to choose...and neither one is more rationally real than the other...

 

[AlisaD]

^Have you read Dune? It is inspiring.

Nope
Played the game when I was a kid
What does it inspire?

 

[Reluctantly]

^Have you read Dune? It is inspiring.

Me? No. It's one series that has been recommended, but I tend to stay away from fiction because I probably live in my head enough as it is.

How is it inspiring? I must tell you that that word makes me a little uncomfortable, but I'd like to hear anyway.

 

[Melllvar]

1. looking at a person's behavior through history as a probability and judging your relationship with them by that
or
2. as a person that will be treated in the moment as if they have no past and will be redefined to make a new potential relationship with them.

Forgive and redefine or remember and define from the past.

Everyone has to choose...and neither one is more rationally real than the other...

Why do we have to choose? I don't see how the options are mutually exclusive.
Prediction based on previous experience while continually allowing freedom for redefinition of the relationship. Besides if you stop analyzing people it seems like you're just choosing the latter option (2).

Although I wholeheartedly support your lack of interest in typology and psychoanalysis (or whatever). I generally feel like 99% of it is just stereotyping and constraining your views of the complexity of human behavior.

I remember the other day thinking, "person X is going to be better than me at Y because they're an XXXX, who are stereotypically good at Y" and then realizing how stupid that was to just assume that. But I couldn't help it, the thought was already out there, ingrained in my subconscious no matter how much my conscious mind tried to tell it that it was an uncertainty. Beyond that when person X does something good/bad/neutral, there's always the tendency to try and contextualize it within their supposed MBTI type (e.g. "person X always does that annoying thing, I bet they're an XXXX"). So yeah I agree 100% with your OP, just not with the above statement about being forced to choose between the parallel.


Off-topic: Dune is probably my favorite novel (of the ones I've read). (I think the relevancy Minuend referred to was the Bene Gesserit and their analysis abilities, usually focusing on humanistic areas like speech, religion, facial structure, ethnicity, etc. Overall though it's just a great combination of sci-fi, philosophy, religion, politics, fantasy, and lots of other stuff)

 

[nihilen.]

fuck tolerance. love from afar.

 

[Reluctantly]

Why do we have to choose? I don't see how the options are mutually exclusive.
Prediction based on previous experience while continually allowing freedom for redefinition of the relationship. Besides if you stop analyzing people it seems like you're just choosing the latter option (2).

Haha, "have your cake and eat it too?", it doesn't quite work that way in the moment though, although I guess you could argue that's how everyone operates overall. Think of it more as a projection (or Jungian irrationality); you can project someone's history to decide how you will treat, act, or judge them or you can project nothing but the moment of how "you would like" or "how it could be for" your interaction to go or relationship to be. Two totally different ways of being that create equally valid results that oppose one another. If you think you do both, I would bet you're much more of the latter in your life, but now I'm analyzing and I want to stop...so I'm going to, but I think they are mutually exclusive in that they can't exist at the same time in any one person, although everyone uses both at different times in their lives.

 

[thoumyvision]

Spoiler

I'm going to stop analyzing people. It doesn't matter. It never amounts to anything but conjecture and speculation. Even social empirical studies are just imprints of the past. Jung, psychology, it just leads in circles, like a dog trying to catch a tail. I feel violated. It allows me to violate myself.

The only thing that ever seems to make any sense is to just treat people benevolently with respect and tolerate them if it doesn't cause any significant harm. I hate Jung. I hate MBTI. I hate socionics. I hate psychology. It just gives me a headache for finding how misguided it all is for those looking to explain themselves or even their lives. But it's all so arbitrary. Nobody can verify any of it and the proponents of each can't escape their self-fulfilling positions.

Really, am I wrong?

Just mashed potatoes...mashed potatoes and condiments...we all are.

But... it's fun

Seriously though, it's important to remember that while the map is not the terrain it's a useful tool nonetheless.

I can use a map to get to the park, but it's not going to tell me what the grass looks like.

All those different psychological models you're railing against are attempts to map the psyche. Just because they'll always be approximations and generalities doesn't mean that they're not worthwhile tools or shouldn't be developed.

 

[terraxceles]

Major Periodic Dissociation.

Spoiler

That's so Ni.

 

[Minuend]

What does it inspire?

Analyzing people.

The game was ahsome.

 

[Trebuchet]

Really, am I wrong?

Yes. Thinking of everyone as a buttery, cooked root vegetable is highly inaccurate. Not everyone contains chives, you know.

I don't try to type people because I'm pretty bad at it, but a rough estimate can work very well. I can make a guess, and try a few things until one works.

If I think someone is INTJ, then I don't have to worry if I bring up counterexamples or options, nor do they generally break down if I don't agree with them.

If I think someone is ESFJ, it goes better if I just nod a lot and keep my mouth closed. Anything I might say will be taken wrong.

An ISFJ lights up when I tell them thank you for all their hard work, which I make a point of doing even when they are driving me crazy.

An INFP will appreciate it if you try to enter their world, which can be both fascinating and tiring. If I just nod at them, they quickly sense I am not listening and get all hurt.​

It helps me to know people aren't all motivated by the same things, and don't see the world the same way. So I don't see why you hate all that, but treating people benevolently seems like it would work okay. (Just, really, don't put butter on their heads.)

 

[Causeless]

^Have you read Dune? It is inspiring.

"Imperial law is void where Muad'dib stands!"


(Okay, not from the book, just the movie... Still kicks ass.)

 

[Thales]

I've done this. But, a byproduct of analyzing others seems to be analyzing yourself, at least for me. Which may or may not be a bad thing.

 

[Reluctantly]

yeah...so...I'm gonna try this...

Objective - based on fact alone; only facts change the conclusions
subjective - based on interpretation alone; only interpretations change the conclusions

Each one is real and both are needed to exist by virtue that to interpret is a fact and a fact is also to intrepret.

So we can determine facts or interpretations based on the past or what is in the present. We can't do both at the same time by virtue of one being concerned with what has already occured and the other concerned with what is occuring now, so to speak.

And this is all fine, but it becomes a problem when the past does not repeat predictably; then the past is used to paint or project the future rather than elucidate. But funnily enough this is not a problem the other way around - the present has no obligation to the past and is the rawest form of existence. I truly believe it is when people focus solely on the past at the cost of the present that the most harm is done. Good memory is probably a curse.

For an example of what I'm saying we can look at psychiatry. It's fact based, although based heavily on the past. Many people that have tried it and failed to achieve what it claims show themselves as an example of how psychiatry fails in its conclusions (present occurences). Psychiatry seems unconcerned with this and thus becomes heavily invested in projecting into the future by ignoring the present. And ironically, when this happens, it also falls into the domain of interpretation by the fact that it projects. In fact, I think it is reasonable to look at any science and tell whether or not it is currently a failure by whether or not it arguably falls into both the factual and interpretive categories because it does not make logical sense for one to be both - a fact can not be interpretive and an interpretation can not be a fact.

Psychology generally on the other hand does not really claim to be factual. It knows it is intrepretive, at least that's how I think most people see it. It has a good combination of past and present and although it projects or paints the future, it does it's best to make the best projections by utilizing a combination of past and present and doesn't pretend to be anything different and come off as factual (these are really the only true psychologists imo).

My problem then with Socionics, MBTI, and Jung's psychological types (and I wouldn't be surprised if this is why he dropped the idea) is that it focuses on the past and attempts to come off as factual, but implicitly projects the past as the future via cognitive type. There's no concern for the present. It's just completely irrational. I've tried so hard to ignore this, but I just can't now. Everything always adds up to the logical conclusion that it has failed in its claims just as psychiatry has failed. They are both stuck in a self-fulfilling loop that ceases to accept reality for what it is. And the one's that fight for them cause themselves and others so much strife in doing so.

It's a hellish loop of getting too stuck in the past and allowing that to cause blindness. People love that hellish loop though, it's like trying to catch the end of a rainbow...if you could just get to the end you know there's a pot of gold waiting...and everything will be perfect. And if you think it works well for you, all the more reason to keep believing and supporting it, even if that means running in the same circle for a lifetime when deviating might lead to greater understanding even if it means to give up the possibility of a holy grail or even an explanation to everything. I doubt very few, if anyone, is going to understand this...but I'm going to try.

 

[Minamimoto]

Essentially, what you're saying is that using the past alone to predict the future is a self fulfilling prophecy, therefore not worth using, no?

Yes; the present is the only thing currently in front of us, but it changes faster than we can observe, does it not? If you use solely the present in determining the appropriate course of action, you are lost, and experience becomes invalid even as you're beginning to accumulate it.

Not sure if this is a good example, but say you walk into a dense forest. Eventually, you can no longer see the exit. So what do you do? You can't retrace your steps, and to use a map would be to make the assumption that the current state of the forest is the same as it was in the past; the forbidden manner of thinking. The only solution is to walk blindly in one direction, in which case, there's no knowing where you'll end up, and nothing learned from the experience.

Our means of finding enlightenment may be flawed, but they do provide limited results. I find it more useful than having no idea what to do in any situation.

 

[Reluctantly]

^ Yeah, I think understand where you're coming from. I realize I wasn't being clear. The way I'm reasoning this is that with Objective Rationale both past and present circumstances seem to work best together. It seems easy to understand where either one can hurt the other, like in your example with the forest and having a map that I would classify under Objective Rationale.

But what I meant with Subjective Rationale is that the present doesn't have to have any connection to the past unlike Objective Rationale; the past can then limit the potential of a psyche to learn and develop in the present by supplying too many interpretive definitional and directional cues for the mind.

So basically, my interpretation or conclusion is that a good memory full of Subjective Rationale is harmful, whereas a good memory full of Objective Rationale is not harmful. But I bet separating the two isn't as much of a choice as we would like to think?...hence good memory probably being a curse.

Just a momentary thought, but do you think that Ti's basic theoretical construct is to separate the two and provide clarity and solutions to conflicting situations and people that confuse Objective Rationale and Subjective Rationale as one? I feel like those are the only times problems ever occur between people.