Post
by Devil's Advocate » Fri May 30, 2014 8:53 am
I too find these different personality types rather fascinating, and yes, they do seem to explain lots of things. But at the same time, I also sometimes wonder if that apparent explanation that they provide is just a sort of faux-explanation.
Here’s why : Say I set up a well thought out list or questionnaire that asks you searching questions, and the end result of this is to set people up in five distinct boxes :
Box One or Type 1 : The Absolutely Honest and Incorruptible. Those who, no matter what, will never budge an inch from total honesty and full integrity in all they speak and do.
Box Two or Type 2 : Those who hold Type 1 as the ideal to strive to, but in practice often make compromises as long as those deviations from the ideal are sanctioned by precedent : that is, they cut corners as long as it is the “done thing”, while acknowledging to themselves that they are perhaps not behaving quite ideally. Of course, they wouldn’t go so far as to actually break the law, ever.
Box Three or Type 3 : Those who would not mind breaking honest practices, or even breaking the law, in minor things and NOT huge major things, as long as they are sure they’ll get away.
Box Four or Type 4 : The out and out amoral types, whose only consideration for doing anything at all is whether they’ll get away with it.
Box Five or Type 5 : The out and out criminal types, who may be guided by the can-I-get-away-with-it principle most times, but who may not always worry too much about breaking even that very lax standard.
There, sounds nice and scientific looking, does it not? And probably we can all fit ourselves fairly well in those boxes, perhaps directly and perhaps more circuitously via a long questionnaire (or set of questionnaires and tests). And what is more, we will probably find that, like MBTI, a person’s real honesty-type probably does not change after attaining adulthood and personality-and-values-stability. That is, at heart they remain one of these honesty-types all through, although they may in practice act differently, out of choice or necessity.
And if you think long enough you may well be able to devise other similar stereotypes or boxes to fit people into. For instance another categorization comes to mind that involves courage : a full range, going right from the so-courageous-they-don’t-know-what-fear-is, right across to so-cowardly-they-wouldn’t-know-what-courage-is (with some stages in between). See if you can think of other such types and categorizations.
So while yes, these personality “types”, however defined, do help us understand others, I wonder how truly “right” that understanding is.
To take two very stark real examples from times past : If you went back two centuries, you could easily bifurcate the human race into Men and Women. Creatures with very different physical traits (I mean strength and endurance etc), and very different personalities as well : very different aptitudes, very different desires and goals, and very different mental ability. And what the heck, that would have been a very true personality classification at that time (for the overwhelming majority of men and women) because of different reasons that we need not go into now. So it was a helpful classification then : but would it have been “true”? Certainly it is far, far less true today (if not entirely meaningless yet).
The same argument could be made with blacks and whites (as seen in predominantly white society), back in the days of slavery unquestioned, when calling a black a black (or any other name) was not considered bad form. Two very different categories, with very distinct personality traits, and not much in common between the two tyes (for the overwhelming majority of those with either skin color).
I know, the flaw with the men-and-women and whites-and-blacks categorization is the fact that they received such different/distinct and set-in-stone inputs from society and their environment, unlike today’s “types”. But still, these two examples from history do compel one think about how truly valid these categorizations are, don’t they? And then you have the honest-dishonest range that I just outlined above, and the courageous-cowardly range too, on the spur of the moment (and probably many more such that others can think of).
So yes, these categorizations of personality types do help (MBTI, for instance), but how truly valid, how ‘true’ are they really? Are they merely superficial descriptors applicable only in this time and age (like the male and female personalities, and the white and black personalities, were in times past), or do they have a deeper basis?
Between sleeping, thinking and fantasies, most people spend most of their lives inside their own minds, NOT in motion or speaking. And does the absence of visible external movement constitute idleness? (No it doesn't, as anyone with a quadriplegic friend can attest.) Identity is way more than achievement/utility or the lack thereof.
