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Thread: Ode to Divergent Perspectives on a Ball

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    Default Ode to Divergent Perspectives on a Ball; or, The Root of Human Political Conflict

    (I had a better idea in mind than "Ode", but I couldn't quite pin it to its word)

    "Divergent perspectives on a ball" was a thread I held back in 2006 in which I first introduced the idea of context lines. FDG asked me back then "what is the reason for all the hate and hostility we experience?" I believe I've just finally brought, via Model B, some closure to that self-same question.

    All of us attempt to learn and expand the content ranges of our functions. (to "develop" them, so to speak) However, there are such things as obstacles to development, owing to incompatibilities between function growth. If I, for example, want to improve your -Ti by explaining a theory to you, then you will accept it only if you actually desire that your -Ti be improved. What if you thought your -Ti sufficient for the time being, and did not want it further expanded? What if instead, you thought it more important to improve others' -Ti based on what you believe to be a minimum acceptable level they should have. Now let's say you tried to "improve" my -Ti by insisting that I restrain my own expanded content level back to this level you yourself hold as competent.

    The above is part and parcel of the struggle between conservative and liberal thought. The liberal always has a higher content level than the conservative, because their minds change easier: they more easily assimilate new content, and are OK if it doesn't meld with the rest of the content available. The conservative is more concerned with making sure the information they have is consistent with everything they already know; if something doesn't easily fit, then they will ignore it whether or not it has merit of its own accord. (research on the brains of Bush and Kerry voters in the 2004 election yielded this theory late last year). This is why Bush and Co. are so eager to remake the Middle East in the image of the U.S.' standard of thinking. The U.S. simply has a higher standard of content than these other countries, and what you have is a case of one conservative group trying to impress its own standard of content on other conservative groups which are still trying to impress their own respective content standard. (this is why, too, the U.S. is failing: the conquered groups simply cannot understand the, unless they are educated and thus, closer to the standard of more-developed-countries).

    I think this bit speaks for itself, so let me just say, "try finding THAT without Model B!" ;-)

    More relevant to this forum, I can see so many instances where this dynamic has come between myself and other forum members in our search for mutual understanding.

    @Labcoat:
    I believe that we could very well use the analysis techniques used in that experiment to identify the presence of the functions in the brain, after typing participants beforehand. We could observe the actual growth of information in the mind.
    Last edited by tcaudilllg; 04-29-2008 at 07:48 AM.

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    I don't know how to relate to your divide into "liberals" and "conservatives", because if I have understood your use of that dichotomy correctly it coincides with how these terms are use in the US as labels of the two main groups of people in politics. But from my perspective these two groups are have more in common than they are different. Basically, I see both "liberals" and "conservatives" as belonging to roughly the same group, only differing slightly in degree.

    A "liberal" is not what I would call a true liberal. A "liberal", as most americans are using the term, is roughly the same as a social liberal, very similar, in fact, at least in spirit, even to a social democrat in Sweden (or rather similar in spirit to almost every middle or right-wing party we have in my country). Both "liberals" and "conservatives" are conservatives as I see it. None of them is a classical liberal, that is, none of them is a libertarian. Both main political movements in the US are collectivist movements, both are based on collectivism philosophically speaking, and its not easy to see any relevant principal difference between them.

    A better contrast is to compare with Ayn Rand or someone with similar individualistic views. But Rand might be the most convenient example, because she has clearly expressed and explained the fundamental differences between a collectivist mind and an individualist mind in a way that people can easily understand.

    What I wonder is, what is the real point of contrasting "liberals" with "conservatives"? What difference is it that I don't see? How does this relate to the difference I have in mind here, that between individualists (like Rand, Tibor Machan etc) and collectivists (which include a clear majority of all people in the world). What is it that I don't understand here?

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    Ayn Rand was a selfish cunt that ultimately couldn't understand we're naturally a social species no matter how aloof some people are. I've had people sacrifice themselves for me. It's what love is all about. Ayn is merely too weak to do that. She thought, like 99% of Americans that by being self-reliant it made her more likeable.

    It never did.

    Relationships are weird things that give us neurosis because in all reality, what it all boils down to is this and nothing but this:

    You need people and then you don't. You don't need people, and then you do. The latter sentence sounds more idealistic when put last, and more cynical when put former. Depending on your point of view I guess. Obviously I feel like I am one of those humans that developed a (grudgingly) soft spot for other people and I really, really didn't want to.

    So you really do rely on other people to make you happy, but then again - you don't. You want independence, but you want to be loved. Constant conflicting shit like that.

    I am urged to seek out and touch/be touched, and to communicate with you all on a human level. I'm not looking for something so abstract as a friend, I have this urge to do it and yet I could very well live without it. This annoys people. Obviously I'm not relying on anybody else here. But then again, I am. Ugh.

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    Quote Originally Posted by BulletsAndDoves View Post
    Ayn Rand was a selfish cunt that ultimately couldn't understand we're naturally a social species no matter how aloof some people are.
    That may be true. But it is also totally irrelevant to our understanding of the fundamental philosophical differences between individualism and collectivism.

    Quote Originally Posted by BulletsAndDoves
    I've had people sacrifice themselves for me. It's what love is all about.
    That may also be true. You express a clear collectivist line of thought here. Everyone should agree on that, regardless of whether one sympathizes with your stance or not. And everyone should agree that Rand's stance is the opposite of yours, regardless of what one thinks of Rand as a person or her philosophical ideas.

    Quote Originally Posted by BulletsAndDoves
    Ayn is merely too weak to do that. She thought, like 99% of Americans that by being self-reliant it made her more likeable.
    Well ... who cares? At least I am not interested in what her personal motives were. I am interested in the theoretical aspects of differences in personalities, world outlooks, types, value systems, etc.

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    By liberal vs conservative, I meant left vs right. The exact methods of the instinct to be on either side differ between cultures, because each culture differs in its living standard. Conservatives concentrate on maintaining the living standard they, as a collectivist group, have in their culture; liberals concentrate on improving it. (before I continue, let me go ahead and say that what I'm offering by this, is a rationale for the behavior of the U.S. Republicans, the U.K. Tories, the Canadian Conservatives; the Democrats, Labour, the Liberals... generally the entire Right and the entire Left as we know them today, and have since the French Revolution).

    It comes down to a manner of perceiving objects and fields. Either gives more weight to the internal representation of an object/field -- what it means to the person experiencing it -- to the objective representation of it as something to be manipulated, transformed, applied to technology, or culturally integrated. (that other extreme would be the reformers/individualists and traditionalists) However, one sees the representation as unchanging in nature (static), while the other one sees it as always changing. (dynamic) How it changes is a matter of one's apprehension of it: do you always seem to be seeing different sides of it, or does your idea of it stay more or less constant? The liberal does the former, the conservative the latter. Conservatives concentrate on fitting in new data into existing systems and ideologies; liberals concentrate on the essence of the data -- what it is independent from anything else. For a conservative to understand something, they must fit what they know of it into everything else they know (saying "because God did it" is a good copout for this as you might imagine; although of course with so many things that don't seem to fit at all, it is also a matter of substantial comfort to "believe" in something that has benevolent dominion over all of them). Liberals need not do this: their minds create a place for consideration of the data distinct from other data, like a seperate universe just for it.

    I theorize that a person has two such "political types", which are one of the four internal/external dynamic/static combinations. The foreground function set defined by Model-B has one (possessed by the type or operating auxiliary to it); the background set has another. I've not worked out how the political types not possessed by the foreground/background sets interrelate with their opposites, although there is definitely tension between them. To illustrate, one might be internal dynamic in the foreground function set (that means, the foreground set prefers to concentrate on the internal representation of objects and think of them as changing), and external static in the background, which would result in a dominant liberal attitude toward politics (democracy whatever the cultural norms of the region) and a leaning toward traditional cultural practices. However, in this example the person would identify themselves by the principles of their politics, and entertain their cultural leanings only privately. A person with the reverse configuration (external static in the fore, internal dynamic in the back), would probably vote Democrat, but if they were American would probably refuse to vote for a Democratic candidate who they thought might try to limit the 2nd Amendment, because gun ownership is a closely held tradition to many in the United States.

    You mentioned the word "libertarian", which was the stance of American liberals (classical liberals) in the 19th century on economics. Today American liberal views of economics have changed because 1) they were proven naive and easy to abuse; 2) they were developed as an alternative to feudalism, which liberals of the 19th century were still trying to role back in many countries. The modern American libertarian (which remains true to the original definition thereof because they have adoped it as a practice) is an external static type who prefers to work with objects rather than fields. (discojoe, Rocky are good examples) They are complemented by the external static field type, of which Expat is an example.

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    Quote Originally Posted by tcaudilllg View Post
    By liberal vs conservative, I meant left vs right.
    Okay, so you are referring to the socionic distinction between leftist/result/involutionary and rightist/process/evolutionary types? If you are, it could explain the confustion somewhat, but you also seem to associate these things with politics to some extent, so it is still not entirely clear. The distinction between left and right in politics is not well defined, because socialists and conservatives are collectivists, and most "liberals" are also collectivists.

    Quote Originally Posted by tcaudilllg
    The exact methods of the instinct to be on either side differ between cultures, because each culture differs in its living standard. Conservatives concentrate on maintaining the living standard they, as a collectivist group, have in their culture; liberals concentrate on improving it.
    That way of expressing it captures something essential if we look at these things in a political perspective, but on what grounds do you see a connection to the differences between involutionary and evolutionary types? (In a political framework, if you are concentrating on improving the living standard you have you can still be either a collectivist or an individualist.

    Quote Originally Posted by tcaudilllg
    Conservatives concentrate on fitting in new data into existing systems and ideologies; liberals concentrate on the essence of the data -- what it is independent from anything else. For a conservative to understand something, they must fit what they know of it into everything else they know (saying "because God did it" is a good copout for this as you might imagine; although of course with so many things that don't seem to fit at all, it is also a matter of substantial comfort to "believe" in something that has benevolent dominion over all of them). Liberals need not do this: their minds create a place for consideration of the data distinct from other data, like a seperate universe just for it.
    This is a very interesting and illuminating way of expressing a fundamental difference in thinking. In this sense, my way of thinking is rather clearly conservative. If you and other LIIs, clearly identify with the liberal's way of thinking here, then this can be used to improve the descriptions of the differences in thinking between LIIs and ILIs, which are one of the most poorly understood in Socionics, at least on this forum.

    Quote Originally Posted by tcaudilllg
    The modern American libertarian (which remains true to the original definition thereof because they have adoped it as a practice) is an external static type who prefers to work with objects rather than fields. (discojoe, Rocky are good examples) They are complemented by the external static field type, of which Expat is an example.
    How do you know that?

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    Okay, so you are referring to the socionic distinction between leftist/result/involutionary and rightist/process/evolutionary types? If you are, it could explain the confustion somewhat, but you also seem to associate these things with politics to some extent, so it is still not entirely clear. The distinction between left and right in politics is not well defined, because socialists and conservatives are collectivists, and most "liberals" are also collectivists.
    When I mentioned the word "types" in that passage (the one you just quoted), I was not at all referring to socionics types (the ones Augusta talked about); rather, I was referring to what I believe to be a different typology that emerges due to a completely different mental process than those described by socionics. If anything, this process lies [i]above and beyond[i] the IM element processes. Socionics IM elements and aspects only refer to the attributes of objects and fields, but say nothing about the nature of the objects and fields themselves in so far as they relate to each other. This process, which can be oriented one of four different ways (eight if you count the object/field dichotomies -- again, not speaking of socionics!), makes broad statements about the nature of objects and fields themselves. It is the sweeping generality created by those statements which defines the political dimension of the personality in which the process functions.

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