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Originally Posted by
Skeptic
Skeptic's post
Oh geez, more? Alright, I can do that.
It seems I have a real bias towards ethics in tests, mostly because of the presumptions I have towards thinking. I always assumed that logical types didn't get depressed because they could just "think" their way out of it. Like, "Yeah, I feel bad, but I'm healthy and my parents love me and I've got ots of friends who support me so I really don't have it that bad and, thus, QED, I don't have anything to be depressed about."
But now I'm realizing that a logical type is just as subject to the illogic of feelings as much as any ethical type. A logical type can get depressed and angry and happy as any other type, they just don't base their decisions on those feelings.
So one of my fears with this is that I may in fact be typing myself wrong as an ethical type when I may actually be a logical type. I mean, I get melancholies pretty frequently where I just hate myself and chastise myself for my weaknesses and for any perceived character flaws, but that's not a uniquely feeler thing to do, I've realized.
But when you take tests its like, "Are you cold and unemotional or do you live in a rich world of feelings and emotions?" and I interpret that as, "Am I a callous stodgy asshole robot or am I, in fact, a human being? Gee, I wonder." Or you'll come across a question that say, "Do you see the world in terms of systems and models" and I think, "What, like John Nash in A Beautiful Mind? Sketching out algorithms to track the movement of pigeons and stuff like that? No. No that's totally crazy." And then you see the opposite answer and it says, "Do you prefer to see the world in terms of relationships and people" and I think, "Oh yeah, people and relationships and shit, I'm all about that stuff!"
So right now I'm divided between the two, because, well, when they're both subjective processes, how do you tell which one you're using? Am I being nice to people because I genuinely want to be nice to people or because being nice to people means that people are generally nice to me back which nets me a benefit?
Extroversion and Introversion I'm kind of divided on too. I mean, sociability isn't a type thing, that's a person to person thing. Because if it was just sociability, then, yeah, I'd be an introvert. But from my understanding of socionics, the dichotomy describes how much initiative and willpower you have and where you draw social energy from: alone or with other people. And when its phrased like that, I'm not quite so sure. I certainly have a lot of intitiative at work (but then your work persona isn't indicative of your actual persona, I'm told). When it comes to socializing I usually don't make the first move, I let someone else address me first and then I'm all jokes and charm and that good stuff. I usually don't disturb someone unless there's a really good reason for it (so how about that test, eh?).
But then I tend to "draw energy" from conversation. Or, at least, if I'm in a funk it can help me to pull myself out of it. I don't know if that's actually an extroversion thing or something else, but talking to people generally helps me get outside of my head and keeps me from chastising myself, so I at least feel better in the short term.
I do agree with intuition though. Not sure which one, but that, if anything else, seems to fit. When it comes to interests I tend to just fixate on one thing for a while before getting bored of it and moving on to something else. For the moment, that thing is Socionics. Before that it was tabletop miniatures games, which I really enjoy even if I'm not very good at them. Friend#2 is awesome at them because he just figures out how the game works, what the best strategy is to use, and then just kind of wins. All the time. Playing with him is good for helping one get better (in the very long term), but it still sucks when I lose to him all the time. He plays the armies that are guaranteed to win while I play the armies that have the most interesting backstories and the coolest looking models.
Before that it was handguns. I own one little compact nine-mil. I used to go shooting a lot, but ammo and range time is expensive so I've kind of had to put a stop to that for the moment. My accuracy was getting pretty good, too, but school cuts in on the amount of time I have to work, so money's getting pretty tight. Socionics is nice in that respect because it's free.
I'm also the same way with music. I'll listen exclusively to one genre or album or artist for a month or two before just becoming totally sick of them and never really listening to them again. My friends think its weird that I have only a 1GB music player, but then again I tend to rotate through music pretty quickly. I don't really have any preferences. I tend to enjoy music more when it doesn't have lyrics. Unless the singer has a really good voice, I feel that lyrics get in the way of the melody and the sound. I mean, the actual music part is what I listen for. Singing only really works for me if it adds to and enhances the music.
I tend to like video game soundtracks because they're composed specifically to convey moods rather than themes or ideas. They're made specifically to make you feel something, and that something usually tends to be "excited" so I love that. Its kind of embarassing to only have Silent Hill soundtracks on your mp3 player though. I also listen to classical (but only if it has some pep to it) most kinds of techno and jazz, and occassionally metal or rap songs, but only if I like the specific song. I tend to not really enjoy a rap or metal album as a whole, just maybe one or two songs on it. Really, I'll listen to anything as long as I enjoy the music.
Now, in a really awkward transition, I once crashed my car. Lost it completely. Axles were so badly bent it would never drive again. I had just left my house, had just enough time to swill down some coffee and hop into my car and I pulled up to a T-intersection a half-mile to my house. I was fiddling with my mp3 player and then, when I found a really good song I liked I looked up and floored it. Then I realized that the light hadn't changed. See, I associated "punchy fast driving music" with "its go time" and it was, in fact, not go time.
So I tried to accelerate and make it into the lane but to no avail. I got totally t-boned by... a black... Mercedes, I think. Anyway, I realized I was in the middle o the lane, so I pulled my car onto the shoulder so that I wouldn't obstruct anybody, pulled my phone out of my pocket, told 911 that there had been an accident at such and such intersection and there they came.
Everyone had been surprised that I'd come out of it not only not dead but also without a scratch on me. ...it strikes me now that I am rather lucky to be alive after doing something so appallingly stupid. Anyway, I started freaking out and thinking that I had just ruined, say, the next three or four years of my life. Then I realized I was being silly, that insurance would take care of the cars, that I could just ride my bike to the train station, and that I'd work things out somehow. I talked to the other driver. She and her friend were shaken up but were alright and they forgave me for making them hit me. Then I walked home, called the parents, told them what happened, and... I don't really remember what happened after that. I think I went to bed.
So, when someone tells you that most accidents happen within two miles of home, they are, in fact, totally correct. Wow, I am not ingratiating myself well with the driving public of this forum, am I? Anyway, what really sucks about that story is that I had just put $1500 into making that car roadworthy enough to pass emissions and inspection, so by then I felt like I had well and truly purchased that car. It was a green '98 Honda Civic. Ugly car on the outside, but so beautiful on the inside. She cornered tightly, accelerated quickly, and she knew how to pace herself when it came to fuel. And so something of immense sentimental value was destroyed by my own hands. Lame.
I've got a new car now, but I feel like I haven't earned it. After the accident I wanted to just do everything myself. I worked out the bus and train schedules so that I could get around to school quickly, and I was going to just cut off my dependence on cars altogether and ride my bike everywhere, but my parents insisted I have a car. They bought my sister a used car and gave me the car that she and I used to share during school. It just isn't "mine" in the way my first car was. Its a perfectly fine car and it does just about everything mine used to do, but it still just isn't "mine." You know? I just don't feel the same connection to it. I'm not going to lose this one though. I hope, anyway.
As to school, I've tried lots of different fields. I started off in Pharmacy. Seemed like it'd be easy money and a relatively easy job. But then, I realized it was basically the same job I have now, where you get exactly the same amount of respect from your customers (read: minimal) with astronomically higher pay. I wanted something a little more interesting than that. That and all of the stuff you had to memorize... all the drug interactions and pharmacology stuff? Good God, no. Who has time to suck in that many details? Well, pharamcists do, obviously, but I don't.
I found physics and physiology to be absolutely fascinating. They took things that I took for granted in real life and reduced them down to math equations. I did pretty well at those too, just because I enjoyed them so much as to make the work worth the effort. Chemistry though... Jesus. Its just so hard to care about stuff that's fundamentally unobservable without specialized equipment. Physics and physiology you can see at work when you do... well, anything.
Despite it also being mostly unobservable, I found psychology really neat as well. I didn't really understand why we had to learn about Freud's theories, though. Sure he's an important figure, but since most of his "research" was discredited, why is a lot of it still taught? Psych was about major choice number six, by the way. Two was Physician Assistant (what my dad does), Three was Emergency Medical Technician, Four was X-ray technician, and I believe it was about then that I got tired of looking into medical professions.
I have a tough time picking just one thing to devote myself to because... I'm not sure, its tough to say why exactly, but I think its because I want my choice of career to reflect well on me... Maybe. I don't know why, but I just tend to lose interest in the career fields I've chosen for whatever reason and I think it may be because I want my job to define who I am.
Anyways, choice number Five was Urban Planning, number Six was Psychology, number Seven was Arcitecture, number eight was Writing, number Nine was Social Worker, number Ten was Actor, number Eleven... is journalism. I guess it was just eleven major choices after all.
Of all of them, I wish I could be an actor. I really had fun doing that in high school. Acting class was just an insane combination of improv and scene-work and it really made my day. College acting class was... well it basically managed to snuff out any sense of fun in acting (as college classes seem wont to do with any subject matter), and, well, really, how many more actors does the world need?
Anyway, that should be good enough for now, I hope.
Oh, and to answer your questions, no, I don't find it easy to incentivise people into doing stuff. I usually just ask them, like, "Say, would you do this for me?" and if they refuse I'll just do it myself when I can.
As to "many walls," well, it was explained to me as the "castle theory" in elementary school. Your social life is envisioned as a castle. Beyond the lands of your castle are villages, wherein reside the various service workers who serve you lunch at restaurants and fix your water heater and drive you in taxicabs. Essentially people whom you interact with on a daily basis but whom you don't really know well enough to want to get closer to, and thus, you keep them outside of your castle. Beyond the villages are Ye Unknown Lands, which, basically, are full of people you haven't met yet.
On the very exterior of the castle is the moat, which is cold and full of crocodiles. This is where your enemies go. You want your enemies to be cold, and eaten by crocodiles. The only way over the moat is by means of the drawbridge. If you leave the drawbridge up you're a total recluse and you're going to starve to death. Starving to death, in this metaphor, means to die lonely. So you have to keep the drawbridge down if you want to have any kind of social life, but you need to keep it guarded so that any random barbarian can't just invite himself in. Guards, in this metaphor, being, like, your evaluatory processes for how you determine what you want in a friend. So if someone passes the drawbridge guards then they find themselves in The Outer Courtyard of Acquaintenceship. Its the largest courtyard anyone has, because the most people are going to go here. People who you think are mostly trustworthy (or, at least, haven't stabbed you in the back yet) and who you're on pretty good terms with, but whom you're not sure whether or not you should allow them into the castle further yet. You might do simple favors for them or help them out with simple things, but you're probably not going to be offering them a shoulder to cry on or helping them move their couch up three flights of stairs yet.
So they may try to get past the second set of Guards into the Inner Courtyard of Lukewarm Friendship. People whom you know of as the right kind of people who most definitely wouldn't stab you in the back or abuse you in some way. People who won't use your friendship for evil purposes. If they try that shit after they've been invited into the Inner Courtyard, they're probably going straight to the Moat. But generally, they're only in the Inner Courtyard because you trust them enough to let them in.
After that, there's the Keep of Forbidden Knowledge. The Keep is very well fortified and its got, like, a trillion armed guards armed with crossbows on top of it watching for any sign of intrusion. No one gets into the keep without invitation, because inside the keep their are secrets. Your secrets, specifically. Only very few people are allowed into the Keep of Forbidden Knowledge. You have to really trust that these people aren't going to use those secrets for personal gain, so you have to be careful about who you let in.
Beyond the keep is the Central Courtyard of Everlasting Friendship. People are only allowed in here when they've proven that you can let them mill about in the Keep without them being tempted to screw you over in any way. So, basically, these are the people for whom you would take two or three bullets for, and for whom you would drive hundreds of miles to be with. Solid, reliable friends who will be with you until the end, so to speak.
Then, beyond even that, is the Inner Sanctum of Absolute Trust. The easiest way to get in here is to just be born here. That is to say, your children. People who began life outside the castle walls will have a very difficult time getting here, as we are talking about unconditional love here. The people who make it here are the people you would gladly die for and for whom you would undertake the most horrifying and certainly lethal tasks for to save. Which doesn't happen much in real life, but its the thought that counts, god damn it.
Anyway, that's castle theory. Depending on how private a person you are, you may increase or decrease the number of courtyards and guards between people and your inner sanctum.
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