• MCV: Stories of Se

    Se - What is this TPE? (Readily observable via direct Experience)

    Last week, when I was testing out ways to introduce the ideas to someone via Skype, I used a friend who knows nothing of personality typing and nothing remotely like Socionics.

    I gave her an item and told her to imagine that she hasn't a clue what this is, it's something she's never seen or heard of before. Now, how would she go about finding information about it? She suggested 'read a manual'. I told her, 'You don't know what it is, it comes with no manual. Now, how do you find information about it'. (a manual would give a conceptual understanding of the item, but not an experiential understanding)

    She took the item from my hand and started turning it around, pressing on it, and started describing attributes about it. 'It's black, rectangular, light, thin, this side is heavier, there's an indented line running along the edge of it, if I didn't worry about breaking it, I'd try to pop it open there.' She started pressing buttons, nothing was happening, until she pressed one button, the Tv turned on. She pressed that button again, nothing happened. So she pressed a few different buttons, various things happened, and finally after a different button, the tv turned off.

    I said, 'Ok, now, instead of this item, what if it was a person. How would you find out information about it? about me?' She said she would ask me questions. I said no, that's like reading the manual. How would you find out about me, by direct experience? She said she'd touch me. I said go on. So she started touching, pinching, pushing, pulling, turning me, etc etc, in similar fashion as she had done with the tv remote. Via this method, she learned how much stability and balance I have, how much pressure was required from her to push me back, that I made giggling and ouch sounds, etc.

    I asked her, If someone was doing this to you, how might you interpret it? She said 'I would think that the person was being pushy, aggressive, and stepping over my personal boundaries.' I asked, 'How would you know if you were stepping across someone's boundaries?' She said 'they would tell me, or push back.'

    I asked her, you found by pushing the buttons that the remote did certain actions, as part of being what it is. How would you find out what actions I do or would do, as part of being who I am? She said that if I was a puppet, she could pull my strings. But since I'm not, then she could try telling me what to do, and watch to see if I did it.

    I then explained to her that there's a common perception of "Se" as being pushy, bossy, aggressive, assertive, knowing people's boundaries, pushing people's boundaries, and associated with force, power, social position, and Will. She said 'but that's all part of how I got the information about you.' I said 'Exactly.'

    -----------------------

    I've written about Se in a other posts, such as the following link:
    http://www.the16types.info/vbulletin...ad.php?t=31891
    I'll quote a few relevant parts:

    I tend to view Se as the information about the qualities of concrete objects (objects that we can pick up or manipulate in other ways).

    How do we find out information about the concrete objects that are in our world? By doing things to them. We get into a car with gadgets we've never seen before, and we start flipping switches and pushing/pulling knobs and buttons. The action that happens after that lets us know some of the qualities of that car. We'll experiment with how fast the car goes when we press the gas pedal, or how the car handles when we have to suddenly apply the brakes.
    I think Se gets its 'force' definition because to get the information about the object, you are having to manipulate it, which is generally done manually or mechanically. Part of the qualities of an object is what it does, so you have to get it to DO whatever it DOES.

    Add in that a person can be treated as an object as well. So you want to find out the concrete qualities of a person? Get the person to DO something. One way is by a variety of 'rough housing'...here we get friendly (or not so friendly) pushing around, friendly (or not so friendly) punches, etc. The recipient of such behaviors may think the Se info processing is bullying, while the Se person may be thinking "hey, this guy's a good guy, a friend".

    I think that this is also how Se gets its 'power' definition. Power is used as an example of an object's quality. But how do you determine something's power? By getting it to DO things.

    Now, lest people confuse 'getting an object to DO something' as being 'dynamic', please remember that the qualities being looked for are qualities that are relatively consistent for that object.
    ------------------

    Using the Wikisocion as well as the Semantics of IMs as a bit of a guideline:

    The TPE are Readily Observable via Direct Experience. If I needed to communicate information about the TPE to you, I could just show you the TPE, and you would be able to extract the information yourself, using your own senses.

    Some of the attributes you might get are visual (appearance, shape, form), auditory, kinesthetic (texture, pressure, resistance), smell, taste, and location in space. If you manipulate it enough, you may even get a sense of what it does, or can do.

    You would obtain this information by coming into direct contact with the TPE. And if you've rich information of this type, you might use metaphors based on physical contact.

    If the TPE is a person, some of the attributes might include their possession of other TPE... This gets into discussions of territory, who has what, who doesn't have it, and who wants it (desires it). Obtaining new TPE may be on your agenda, and may act as a motivating force for work. "He who dies with the most toys wins." And TPE usually cost money.

    Being familiar with dealing with TPE identity, your language would distinguish this TPE, not that TPE, by pronouns such as this, that, him, her, I, you, we, us, them, they, and even actual names of the TPE.

    Being aware of what TPE do, or can do, or how it can be used, your language might also use Actor Verb Object structure, such as "I beat you" as opposed to "I won".

    Having full, rich sensory data at your 'mindtips', you might slip into describing a familiar TPE in the present tense, rather than past. Also, you already have the data from past TPE. You cannot experience future TPEs until the future, so you may also have a life philosophy of 'The past TPE are past, the future TPE have yet to come, far better to enjoy the TPEs now, while you can'.

    ok, the above is written a bit silly, it was the only way I could get through the guidelines on this one.

    -----------------------

    One more story, regarding Se as 'Will".

    My NiFe brother and I have typed our older brother as SeTi. The SeTi brother is constantly pushing people's buttons. Mine used to be a favorite of his to play with. How far could he push me before I'd push back, and which buttons did the trick. We couldn't be in the same room together for more than 5 minutes before we'd wind up in an all out yelling and potentially physically fighting match.

    Yet, believe it or not, he and I were a lot alike, and used to have some decent conversations when we got along.

    I half-joked to one of his grown-up kids, a passing reference of how often my SeTi brother and I fought. The joke took him aback. He asked me questions about those times, and was surprised that I truly had taken all that so personally and was hurt by those times. To him, I had freewill, to choose or not choose to engage him in those 'play-battles'. I had engaged in them, so he assumed I'd done so by choice, not because I felt pressured to defend myself.

    It's like, with an object, like a remote or car, you press a button, it has to do what it's programmed to do. But with a person, they have freewill. They don't have to do what you tell them to do, they choose to do what you tell them to do.

    Another example, one my NiFe brother used to tell me. Our SeTi brother used to try to get the NiFe brother to do stuff. He'd try to manipulate him and even tried to blackmail him. But it backfired. When blackmailed, my NiFe brother would just go and tell whoever it was the secret, and take the consequences that way. They'd both get into trouble. This would irk my SeTi brother "why'd you do that?" NiFe: because you tried to make me do something I didn't want to do.

    -------------------------------

    Take a chance, experience a glimpse of what's it like to find out about a TPE by using your senses only. And then remind yourself that an Se ego type probably gets far more info from that TPE than you did, and his mind is filled with that kind of info at hand.

    ----------------------------

    If you did the experiment, you may have noticed a change in how your eyes and mind reacted. Your eyes would have been more narrowed, focused on the TPE itself. Initially your mind may have wandered away from the topic at hand, maybe even saying to yourself that this is pointless. Guess what, if your mind wandered, you weren't doing the experiment. Your mind would have been just as focused as your eyes were.

    Ok, so you've worked at it and were successful with the one TPE. Now look around your environment, at all the TPE that are around you. How much about them do you actually know? And imagine if you were to scan your environment with the same TPE visual and mental focus as you had looking at the one TPE. You might feel a bit like a predator, looking for it's next 'meal'. And now, imagine you're a person on the receiving end of such a TPE focused look. Feeling like running yet?
    This article was originally published in blog: MCV: Stories of Se started by anndelise