indifferent architect, or architect of indifference?

[loveofreason]

I want to be a person of action. I want to accomplish, to perform, to create.

I feel this drive strongly too. All those burgeoning designs and plans and visions in my head? Depression descends when they die there, unrealised.

I have read that the INTP architect is supposed to be indifferent to the execution of his plans, so I sometimes question my typing when I feel absolutely possessed by the need to grasp the world and shape it.

But this is my thought process:

So much of the world is fashioned in stupidity and malicious intent. The consequent frustration is intolerably profound. It could be so much better... a world in which I could be happy to live, perhaps even thrive.

A world in which my detachment could flourish.

If I want to champion my thoughtful needs I must act. If I want the best world I can imagine then I must create it. No one else will. I must break the charmed role of observer and become a player in the game.

And lose the objectivity I seek to defend. Grrr....

 

[Cabbo Pearimo]

To the new world order!


Hell, I just like to create things.

 

[Wisp]

Lets all make music! INTP jam session FTW!

 

[Cabbo Pearimo]

OHAYE

 

[Ermine]

Yes, let's! We've got a cellist and a bassist here, and I'm a guitarist. Ok, where did the drummers go?

 

[Linsejko]

I'll play piano.

--

But seriously. Do you feel a little jealous to the INTJ profile, in this respect? I have considered cultivating a stronger development of the "J" in my personality- I wouldn't trade my P for the world, I love seeing things the way I do; but I think I could put my thoughts to better use if I learned to buckle down.

I have been thinking about that since January, in a way- my new years resolution was to organize my time, with the thought process being that I cannot succeed in any of my pursuits if I chase them as sporadically as I currently do.

I still haven't succeeded in this resolution, but, I think I'm on to something.

.L

 

[Cabbo Pearimo]

Ah, we do what'll keep us out of trouble. If that involves enhancing J, go for it.


Jammin'!

 

[Dissident]

Maybe its not that we are not interested in putting our ideas to practice, but that we are no good at it. We are supposed to work in a group in which we think of the designs and someone else more fit to the practice make the little arangements and implement them. Noone can shape the world by himself, everyone has a part to play.

 

[Sleep]

Actually from what I've read and experienced us architects have an innate desire to change the environment around us.

Heres a quote from this site's description:

The Architects' distant goal is always to rearrange the environment somehow, to shape, to construct, to devise, whether it be buildings, institutions, enterprises, or theories. They look upon the world -- natural and civil -- as little more than raw material to be reshaped according to their design, as a formless stone for their hammer and chisel. Ayn Rand, master of the Rational character, describes this characteristic in the architect Howard Roark, her protagonist in The Fountainhead:
He was looking at the granite. He did not laugh as his eyes stopped in awareness of the earth around him. His face was like a law of nature-a thing one could not question, alter or implore. It had high cheekbones over gaunt, hollow cheeks; gray eyes, cold and steady; a contemptuous mouth, shut tight, the mouth of an executioner or a saint. He looked at the granite. To be cut, he thought, and made into walls. He looked at a tree. To be split and made into rafters. He looked at a streak of rust on the stone and thought of iron ore under the ground. To be melted and to emerge as girders against the sky. These rocks, he thought, are here for me; waiting for the drill, the dynamite and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn, waiting for the shape my hands will give to them. [The Fountainhead, pp 15-16]

Personally my life-long goal has been to utterly change the face of society in some way. Its what has motivated me in every aspect of daily living.

______​

This desire to change things is what motivates us to learn and become Einsteins. Its just that most of us have yet to find our true calling (the thing that will interest us enough the carry out our inner visions).

 

[Wisp]

Whether or not we even have a True Calling is up to debate, you know...

 

[Linsejko]

I think he speaks casually; i.e., true calling = that which we fit very well in to, and nothing more. I don't think it is implied that we have one assigned to us by his statements.

I also agree, however; I would love to actually implement my designs. I just have a hard time getting around to the drudgery that is required for it to actually happen. It's like I have a subconscious block, that distracts me whenever I know I need to go do some chore-like task.

It's terrible. It has made my life considerably less meaningful.

.L

 

[EditorOne]

"I also agree, however; I would love to actually implement my designs. I just have a hard time getting around to the drudgery that is required for it to actually happen."


This can briefly be countered by designing the most efficient means possible of doing the drudgery. :-)

 

[Linsejko]

Unless, of course, the most efficient way to perform the task

A) Still isn't very efficient

B) Requires a laborious process of set-up or efficient-implementation-design (i.e., most efficient way to handle certain programming task is to just get around to setting up a separate gui that allows you to visually process large strings of information that is otherwise fairly abstract... ugh, that sounds like something I'd never get around to.)

.L

 

[Vulture]

I think that since my greatest fear is incompetence, it is very important to me to accomplish things throughout my life. The physical (could a philosophy or theory printed) must be made manifest in a way for me to consider an accomplishment. Since I am quite comfortable with my moral understanding and growth, I do not consider it a feat to do the right things during my life. It is simply the norm of living for me. What is truly important is to be right in my complex theories, and to have a sort of outlet for it.

 

[Jordan~]

I find that I devote most of my plans to futile things - for example, I devised several systems over a period of a few months for relatively fast long-distance communication that could have been built by the Romans with existing technology. I tend to take little interest in the practical. I do have the desire for society to change, but none of the desire to change it myself. I used to be - when I was much younger - megalomaniacal, which could have been INTP frustration expressing itself, I suppose. Since then I've become much more subdued, and I feel indifferent to the prospect of being in power. I know I could do a better job (or at least tell others how to do a better job), but it doesn't bother me anymore - I just retreat from the world when it gets too frustrating (almost all the time). I do enjoy playing leader, like in strategy games, especially those involving some control over how you look after your people. But I'm resigned to the fact that the real world will always be crappy, and there's no way I could change it.

 

[loveofreason]

Personally my life-long goal has been to utterly change the face of society in some way. Its what has motivated me in every aspect of daily living.

I'm not the only one?! *blinks*

Jordan, you're so young to have reached the conclusion that the world can't be changed for the better. I've actually cycled through this realisation and then frustration and resolve to do something, then back to giving up...

in the end though, we're being slowly killed and our children deprived a future. Sometimes all that anger has to go somewhere - and if our plans weren't futile it would be channelled into seeing our visions become reality.

If it were already a perfect world then I could simply enjoy being detached.

 

[Jordan~]

I turn to transhumanism as a source of hope that there might be a perfect future. As I see it, advances in nanotechnology, biochemistry, computing, etc. could solve all of our problems. It's just a matter of surviving with our current rate of progress long enough, and I don't have much faith that we'll be able to do that.

I am not so resigned to the conclusion that the world can't be changed, as to the conclusion that it won't be changed.