Bizzare is the way of psychology.Originally Posted by Rick
Seeing that I don't trust Rick that much (although his work to translate socionics texts is indeed helpful), I'm not going to associate with him. He seems to have a bit of distrust in my judgement, necessarily because he is perceiving what my principles as invalid and dangerous. (in other words, he's a critic of mine. The feeling is mutual)
Rick, let's make a deal: I won't interfere in any of your discussions, if you won't interfere with mine. I'll warn you you are messing with something you're not understanding, regardless of you functional preferences.
Anyway, I was conducting my conversation with non-critics, right? Yes, that other 2/3 of the population: those who either share the same providence as I, or are neither under ours nor "theirs". (the middle, independent voters, etc.) Best to evade this all out assault by my shadow, yes....
Of course I'm not naive enough anymore to believe that I'm alone in facing these incarnated sources of self-doubt we call "critics". It's just the price of existence, as we discussed above.
Back on topic, I've been thinking a lot about Sycophant's question about how INTJs feel about balls. I can't say now what I feel about a ball... my emotions are quite distant from me, and limited to a sense of reaction. (they are unconscious, after all) I would wonder first how the ball got there. But only after my initial, unconscious reaction of perceiving the ball.
Specifically, I'd ask "who left it here, and why?" I'd then apply my role function in determining how best to react to the ball in a social context; like, is it socially OK if I touch it, or will that be frowned upon by people. If I have a motive for touching the ball, however, then I will assert my second function, extroversion, to understand the providential motive of my need to touch the ball; so to say, how my interacting with the ball fits into the grand plan of my friends, too. (adolescent INTJs can't do this, BTW) Extroversion follows the external patterns of the world and reports its findings to introversion.
Has anyone had any insights about where to go from here? Bringing in relativity to the equation has produced a lot of uncertainty in me, simply because I have more information available than I know what to do with. There is a lot of information to be derived from the union of psychology with physics, but as an INTJ I need guidance to know which information to derive when. I feel almost threatened by chaos.
The point of this discussion, as I had set it from the outset, was not to discuss how the different types perceive the ball. That was only a means to an end. The point was to logically, intuitively establish that the functions of the psyche and the physics they experience are inexorably wedded by the laws of reason. By tying the unconscious to a material object, and necessarily ascribing personality to that object, one opens the door to understanding the world's psychodynamic nature. This nature implies that every point in space has the potential to be perceived as one or more aspects of psychological functioning. This idea is actually not as new as it may sound: the idea of a tensor--a set of functions that are native to every point in space--is the cornerstone of the general theory of relativity. That is what the psyche is: a tensor field.
In relativity, fields operate by exchanging energy between their points. These points each have multiple aspects (Einstein's model had 256 aspects, of which 160 were independent of each other) and a seperate energy level for each aspect. No aspect can gain energy without a corrsponding loss of energy by another aspect of the same point. In this way, a point in relativity is very much like a personality: the personality has a ceiling of energy that is divided amongst eight functions, each with their own energy level. These functions, being components of the larger function that we call the personality, can be likened to the aspects of particles in general relativity.
To describe how these functions truely interact, without a model that is simple and prone to inaccuracies (and therefore chaotic), one must apply the Lorentz transformation which when applied to the speed of light produces special relativity, and general relativity when coupled with the idea of a tensor. If the total psychic energy available to the personality must be divided amongst the functions, then no function can have total access to the full psyche potential at any given time without collapsing the consciousness of the other functions. This necessarily would diminish the personality and break Socionics, no less. One can only conclude that in the differentiated psyche that Socionics and MBTI (among others) postulate no function can ever acheive the upper limit. Therefore its potential over a period of time is unlimited, but fixed for any given moment. The Lorentz transformation specifically applies to these conditions. It doesn't matter what the 'c' term in the transformation is; only that it meets the total energy available to the psyche. (e.g., the total energy the brain can process to produce the psyche)
This is all I've yet deduced. Has anyone else had new insights?
...Actually there is something else I have deduced that I feel should be mentioned. If the psyche is composed of complexes, as psychologists in all fields tend to agree, and a complex is defined as a system that is capable of reorienting energy to sustain its own integrity, then the brain itself doubles as a physical complex and as a psychic complex, because it performs the dual function of organizing the body to procure resources for its own maintenance, and simultaneously produces a personality capable of reinforcing itself through communication with other personalities. Given that the eight functions are tied to the perception of space itself, one can only conclude that the function of the brain is to act as a complex of a specific ordering of those functions, and a force to order the aspects of reality in correspondence to its own functional ordering.
So to say, we are the wills of reality toward specific ends.
If this postulate can be proven, it would seem to me to have profound implications for the meaning of human existence.
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