Temperament: Describing Keirsey’s Idealists (NFs)

Posted on February 17, 2012 by INTJ

Describing Keirsey’s Idealists (NFs) is the fifth in a series of blogs I am currently posting on the four Keirsey temperaments, and following that, what the world might if each one ran the world.  We have looked at SP Artisans and SJ Guardians in past weeks.  Today I will try to reproduce Keirsey’s description of the NFs as it appears in Please Understand Me II.

Idealists move away dramatically from both Artisans and Guardians in that  their orientation to the world is considered to be abstract, linking to ideas, possibilities  and things that can be imagined, rather than concretely anchored in what is observable, touchable and tangible.  Theirs is the world of theories and imaginings , philosophic explanations, history, symbols and the experience and meaning of emotion.  Keirsey notes that they are “naturally inductive”  moving “quickly from part to whole. from a few particulars to  sweeping generalizations, from the smallest sign of something to its entirety.”

This use of words and language is no accident.  The underlying passion is the need to understand the world in all its complexity and to make sense of existence itself.  With this comes a very frequent use of metaphors to express some view of this.  A good example is Shakespeare’s description of human life: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances.” Because the desire to understand is very strong, and the delight in any new understanding is considerable, NF language also tends to be dramatic and full of superlatives.  Things may be gloriously good, or devastatingly awful, but rarely just nice.  All of this means that NFs may generate amazing insights, seeing patterns where others see only isolated facts.  On the downside of this, however they may also leap to foolish conclusions, imagine intricate patterns that do not exist in reality.

Abstract Cooperators.  Along with their passion for abstract words and ideas is an equal passion for cooperative action.  Keirsey calls this “cooperative tool usage” because he includes everything that we use together.   This is by no means limited to mechanical tools, but includes our streets, buildings, transportation, and even the organizations that we use to generate all the things we use together.  In this, they have some things in common with the Guardian, who is also a cooperator in Keirsey’s system.  However the Guardian SJ is mostly concerned with compliance in the proper community uses of  resources, on doing one’s fair share, following established rules, etc., and relatively little concerned with whether a given indiviual is pleased with this. Continue reading →

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Temperament: What if SJ (Guardians) did rule the world?

Posted on February 8, 2012 by INTJ

Today we will ask what would happen if SJ (Guardians) did rule the world.  This is a continuing series, looking at Keirsey’s four temperaments. The last blog post described Keirsey’s SJ Guardians and summarized this as follows:

IN SUMMARY  The Guardian SJ thinks about the world literally, as does the SP, but is totally different in willingness to shoulder the burdens of the world, and take responsibility for every task and every problem that comes his/her way.  SJs are devoted to a model of community, and believe very much in their own (and everyone else’s) moral responsibility to put common needs before personal whims.  They are the worker bees of the world, enormously involved in all the day to day functioning of human life.  Their primary intellectual strength is considered to be “logistical”, concerned with the movement of goods, services and people, and their interests follow this.  They have a deep respect for authority and for tradition in all forms.  Much of their own self-respect and self-esteem derives from carrying out their duties and obligations very well, and receiving recognition for this.

To those of  other temperaments, the inner life of the Guardian may seem rather sad.  Their dominant mood is said to be one of concern that things will get out of hand if they are not vigilant. Self-esteem is highly dependent on constantly playing their part well. They long for the gratitude of others but shrink from asking for it, long for belonging, perpetually seek for a sense of security, and aspire to positions of high authority so that they may obtain better control over life’s pending chaos.  However, to the Guardian SJ, no doubt this is the only fitting and proper way to interact with the world.

This week we explore two related questions, as we did earlier with the SP Artisan.  The first, and major question is:  What would the world be like if SJs not only ran it, but were the one and only temperament.  That is:  What if we were all SJs, from janitors, farmers, cab drivers etc.  to the President, and this had been true from the beginning of human existence?  As you read this please be aware that I am assuming very strong and clear preferences for both S and J.  (These are not your sorta-kinda SJs but really strong Guardian SJs.)

A comment from Lars, in advance of this was  ” “What if SJs ruled the world?”  I think they already do.“  I guess I would say not quite (or at least, not quite, here in the US).  Lars writes from Germany, I believe, so perhaps that makes some difference.  I certainly agree that the SJ Guardians manage a huge amount of everyday organization and oversight of rules and regulations of every kind, but our edgy world of hiphop, rap, X rated everything, personal ornamentation from tattoos to nose rings, single parenthood, and on and on, doesn’t feel very SJ to me. Continue reading →

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Temperament: Describing Keirsey’s Guardians (SJs)

Posted on January 27, 2012 by INTJ

Describing Keirsey’s Guardians (SJs) is the next in a series of blogs that will look at one Keirsey temperament each week, and then speculate in the following week on how it would be if this temperament ran the whole world.  Today we look at SJs.

Guardians share with Artisian SPs a preference for concrete use of words, and language in general.  They tend to be descriptive factual, and specific in terms of topics.  In many ways this will be similar to the speech of Artisans, but true to their responsible guardian role there will be more talk of problems to beware of and practical actions to be taken.  SPs would be unlikely to discuss practical matters of finance, and the best ways to organize daily life, but SJs may relish this.  Like their SP cousins, though, SJs will have little interest in abstract or hypothetical issues.

Where the SP Artisan is classed as a utilitarian–interested in whatever actions will solve a problem or produce a pleasing or interesting effect,  the SJ  diverges maximally from this and is considered by Keirsey to be a “Cooperative“.  He notes that SJs “believe that we should park on the right side of the street even if the left side is empty, stop at red lights when there is no other traffic, signal when turning even if there’s no one to signal to, and on and on.”  He adds “Cooperation, compliance, conformity, obedience:  these attitudes toward the rules loom larger in the consciousness of Guardians than any other temperament.” Continue reading →

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Temperament and the world: What if SPs did rule the world?

Posted on January 19, 2012 by INTJ

Last week I ended the blog with the following:  If SPs ruled the world–then what?  Education, business and commerce, behavioral norms, government, politics and–who knows what!  Since no one knows, this is a pure thought experiment.

To get this started, I used David Keirsey’s  Artisan description of the SP, and followed it closely.  I am really interested right now in how temperament may affect  politics and institutions, given all the pre-election hubbub in the United States.  I chose the four Keirsey temperaments to focus on four two reasons;  one to reduce the potential complexity of discussing sixteen types, or something else equally complex, and two to set up a straw man standard for each of the four types.  One comment received today was that Keirsey’s temperament descriptions may not be all that solid.  I would agree, but I am going to use them as the real thing for this purpose.  So I asking this–if SPs as they are described by Keirsey did rule the world, what would it be like?

Here is a repeat of my summary SP description from last week’s blog: Artisan SPs are literal and down to earth in the words and ideas they use to communicate to others.  Their relationship with Keirsey’s “tools” is utilitarian, with interest only in what an object or tool could be used for, not its relationship to the greater world.  They experiment freely with anything that they work with, not worrying about the value of their actions, or what might go wrong.  As a result they sometimes have remarkable and novel successes.  Their interests tend to be in arts, crafts, sports and technical skills of all kinds.  They are considered to have a “tactical” intellect, focusing their greatest mental energy on ways to improve any techique or process they are working with.  They live in the here and now, are unashamed pleasure seekers, are happy with the moment and optimistic about the future (which is never far away for them).  They tend to dismiss the past as essentially random, with goods and bads that no one can control, feeling neither regret nor concern.

In self-image they value their skills and abilities very highly, and are humiliated by any poor performance.  They especially respect themselves for being audacious and daring, and take pride in being highly adaptable.  A final  set of personal values include being excited, trusting their impulses, yearning to have impact on their world, seeking stimulation, prizing joyous and impulsive generosity in themselves, and aspiring to hone their best skills to virtuoso level.

A comment from Lars (see last week’s blog) was that the result would be “chaos”.  This sent me thinking about the difference between SPs that had somehow come to power while all the other types continued to exist, versus SPs who were the only major type in the world.  I think these two possibilities would produce very different outcomes, so I am going to play first with the idea that SPs are the only major type, and have been from the beginning of history.  That means that civilization would have evolved to suit the SP temperament.  I am guessing wildly, but I think that in that scenario the result might not be total chaos. Continue reading →

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Temperament: Could Keirsey’s Artisans (SPs) run the world?

Posted on January 12, 2012 by INTJ

For the next few weeks I would like to muse on what the world would be like if just one of the four Keirsey temperaments ran everything.  This week I will  do my best to give you Keirsey’s description of the Artisan or Sensing-Perceiving SP and the following week I will speculate on how it would be if his SPs ran the world!  Week by week I hope to continue that pattern for all four temperaments.  In the description below I will try to be as faithful to Keirsey’s model of the (SP) Artisan as I can.

In his initial description Keirsey notes that all four temperaments (SP Artisan, SJ Guardian, NF Idealist and NT Rationalist can be fit into a 2 by 2 matrix by their word usage and their tool usage.  Word usage may be concrete or abstract and tool usage may be cooperative or utilitarian.

Concrete word usage:  SP Artisans deal in concrete terms and concepts rather than abstract ones, tending to talk about whatever is going on in the present moment.  They do not show much concern about things that cannot be seen, touched, handled.  Therefore, they relatively literal in what they discuss.   Keirsey says of this  “Indeed the abstract commands little of their attention, content as they are to do without definitions, explanations, fantasies, principles, hypotheses, and the like.  They usually consider such topics a waste of time, interesting to others, perhaps, but not to them.”  (For those of you who read the blog on Fear of Nihilism, this would probably not be a big  Artisan concern.)  Overall their communications are literal, specific to the moment, mostly factual and often including considerable detail. Continue reading →

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Temperament and the “Fear of Nihilism”

Posted on January 1, 2012 by INTJ

The Fear of Nihilism is the last of four fears that Steven Pinker sees as the major reasons for rejection of the idea of inborn temperament.  In previous blogs we have looked at the fears of “inequality”, “imperfectibility” and “determinism”.  Nihilism in Webster’s Unabridged has a variety of meanings.  These include

“1. Total rejection of established laws and institutions.  2. anarchy, terrorism or other revolutionary activity.  3.  total and absolute destructiveness, especially toward the world at large and including oneself  4.  a. an extreme form of skepticism:  the denial of all real existence or the possibility of an objective basis for truth.  b. nothingness or nonexistence. 5. the principles of a Russian revolutionary group, active in the latter half of the 19th century, holding that existing social and political institutions must be destroyed in order to clear the way for a new state….”

None of these definitions are exactly cheery.  # 1, 2, & 5 (and partly 3) are directed at political institutions, while 4 is the philosopher’s form of nihilism. Wikipedia stretches it further giving us Moral Nihilism (rejection of all moral and religious principles) Existential nihilism (“life has no intrinsic meaning or value”) Epistemological nihilism (belief that no knowledge of any kind is possible) and the following additional possibilities: Continue reading →

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Temperament and the Fear of Determinism

Posted on December 24, 2011 by INTJ

The Fear of Determinism is the third of the four fears that Steven Pinker lists.  I’ve discussed the Fear of Inequality and the Fear of Imperfectibility over the last two weeks.  Together with his final example–the Fear of Nihilism–these are the motivations that he sees as keeping many people from welcoming the idea of innate temperament, and instead, clinging to some version of the Blank Slate view of human nature.

The Fear of Determinism is in part a fear that we really have no choices and no control over our own lives.  If our temperaments are given in our DNA and stamped in the corridors of our brains, then it might seem as though we might as well be robots.  Pinker quotes a cute limerick about this as follows:

There was a young man who said: “Damn!

It grieves me to think that I am

Predestined to move

In a circumscribed groove:

In fact, not a bus, but a tram.”

However, the Blank Slate author  feels that this sense that we would have no choices if our temperaments were a given, is in itself, an illusion.  He asks you to just try (if only in your head) making no decisions at all, and just letting the day happen.  Get up in the morning?  for most of us that is a decision.  If you have no obligation requiring that you get up, you could probably stay there all day.  But would you?  Finding something to eat for breakfast would seem to require a choice.  Maybe not eating could just happen, but not eating indefinitely would require a decision to resist or ignore all bodily hunger signals.  Pinker says “The experience of choosing is not a fiction, regardless of how the brain works.  It is a real neural process, with the obvious function of selecting behavior according to its foreseeable consequences.  You cannot step outside of it or let it go on without you, because it is you.”  “…because it is you” seems to me to be the most critical statement here.  There is no “ghost” in your machine because you are it–your brain, just the way it is built, your experiences and all that you have learned from them, and all the choices you have already made, really are you. Continue reading →

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Temperament and the Fear of Imperfectibility

Posted on December 12, 2011 by INTJ

The “Fear of Imperfectibility is the second of the four reasons that Steve Pinker* suggests as the motivation for rejecting the idea of innate temperament, and clinging to alternative explanations for human nature.  Last week I looked at the first–the Fear of Inequality, but I would like to start here by looking at the rivals to innate temperament.

The principle alternative is the Blank Slate–the concept that we arrive in the world literally as an empty tablet to be written upon, or as a ball of clay, ready to be shaped in any direction by the events we encounter as we grow and develop. Pinker quotes an almost perfect description of this written by a modern day scientist,   Geneticist Richard Lewontin wrote on a book jacket “our genetic endowments confer a plasticity of psychic and physical development, so that in the course of our lives, from conception to death, each of us, irrespective of race, class, or sex can develop virtually any identity that lies within the human ambit.” So our genetic endowment is for total plasticity.

A secondary version of the blank slate is what Pinker calls the Noble Savage.  I think of it as the pretty nice blank slate.  Here the idea is more that we are born peaceable and kind, rather than completely blank, but commonly corrupted by civilization.  Pinker cites the philosopher Rousseau as saying in 1755 that “So many authors have hastily concluded that man is naturally cruel, and requires a regular system of police to be reclaimed; whereas nothing can be more gentle than him in his primitive state, when placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes and the pernicious good sense of civilized man.”  This view has a large chicken or egg problem since you have to wonder where the stupid brutes and the pernicious civilized man came from.  Presumably we were all in that primitive state at the beginning–so where, in this model, is the source of the corruption? Continue reading →

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Temperament and the Fear of Inequality

Posted on December 5, 2011 by INTJ

Those of you that are reading this but missed last week’s blog:  Innate temperament:  A terrifying idea? might want to go back and skim through it. For today, and at least the next two weeks, I want to explore Steve Pinker’s* views on this.  He suggests that we cling to the notion of the Blank Slate for one or more of four possible reasons.  The first is the “fear of inequality”, and he translates this as “If people are innately different, oppression and discrimination would be justified”.  The others are as follows:

The Fear of Imperfectability:  If people are innately immoral, hopes to improve the human condition would be futile.

The Fear of Determinism:  If people are the products of biology, free will would be a myth and we could no longer hold people responsible for their actions.

The Fear of Nihilism: If people are the products of biology, life would have no higher meaning and purpose.

Today I just want to think about the “Fear of Inequality”.  In some ways it seems like the most perplexing of the four.  In my experience, most people are not terribly bothered by the fear that others who are similar in ethnicity, religion, political beliefs etc. are also better, brighter, wiser or more gifted than themselves.  We may long for talents that we do not have, envy others, and really get down on ourselves if we don’t seem to have any compensating strong points, but fear does not seem to be the right word for this, for most people.

Recall the Larry Summers debacle at Harvard.  In addressing a large group of very talented faculty at a workshop on increasing faculty diversity, he was discussing the relative lack of women faculty in science and engineering areas and said “….that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of instrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude….”  In the end, he was dismissed as President of Harvard because these words were deeply offensive. One female faculty woman found herself on the verge of fainting and left the room in a rage.  She, herself, was not in question.  Having been hired by one of the finest universities in America, and as one of very few women considered for such a position, her own qualifications should not have been in doubt.  And yet, the idea that her gender, not herself, might be less talented in these highly specialized areas than the other gender, was extraordinarily threatening. Continue reading →

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Innate Temperament: A Terrifying Idea?

Posted on November 28, 2011 by INTJ

Yes, for some, biologically based, innate temperament is a terrifying idea.  In his remarkable book, The Blank Slate,* Steve Pinker devotes 90-some pages to discussing this topic directly, and many more pages to discussing how this plays out in both science and society.  “Terrifying” may be an excessive description for the qualities measured by the MBTI and other “normal” temperament scales, but the roots of temperament theory go deep and wide, and spread to other, less, palatable areas of thought.

First of all, consider that all temperament scales assume that the differences that we measure are innate and genetically programmed in the development of each human brain.  Logically, that means that many other, less “normal” differences are also genetically programmed.  This idea, when turned to extreme aggression and/or a tendency to violence, suggests that crime itself has a genetic basis.  You can’t logically admit that major areas of the brain–and related behavior–are under genetic control, and then automatically exclude less desirable behaviors.  Similarly, you can’t logically exclude the very important area of intelligence, and that certainly tends to open Pandora’s box.  If you are one of those happy souls who can keep pleasant and unpleasant ideas apart, in logic-tight compartments you may be fine with this, but many people cannot.  This may be most true of some scientists who struggle to be logical about this, but refuse to accept the implications that follow.

To see the effect of bringing unwanted information to the world, you can go all the way back to 1616 and Galileo’s assertion that the sun was fixed in space and the earth revolved around it.  His long struggle with the Catholic church culminated in 1633 with a conviction for heresy, a sentence of house arrest for the rest of his life, and a ban on any publication of his works, past or future.  It might seem a bit over the top for a mere difference of opinion about earth and sun, but the fact is, his heliocentric theory rocked the foundations of both the belief system of the Church and the belief system of most ordinary inhabitants of Europe.  Church doctrine saw the earth as fixed and the sun as revolving around it–thus man at the center of the universe.  No doubt most everyday laymen saw it the same way, and were greatly comforted to believe that human life was the central focus of everything. Continue reading →

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