ILX myers briggs poll

INFPs get very angry when you suggest that the MBTI (as most people use it) is on a spectrum with phrenology and horoscopes.

Yeah, so do Capricorns.

Link to the shortest M-B quiz out there?

http://www.dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/00000/6000/600/6665/6665.strip.zoom.gif

INTP 4 me

FPNU

Sagittarius and my name is Noodle

I've found it helpful in a work setting, it explains group dynamics. Scientifically, it measures preferences, especially with regard to decisions. Although I found from experience that you may answer the questions differently depending on your environment. Anyway, I'm an ESTP. Which explains why I get frustrated in the arts environments that I work in.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a2/Inxs.jpg/220px-Inxs.jpg

It has often been my experience that ppl who say "i am this kind of person" are in fact, regardless of the 'this', the kind of person i need not to talk to for very much longer if my kind of person can help it

makes you an I then

DOTM

This topic is a perennial ILX nonstarter. MB provides some insight, as noted above, into group dynamics and why some people butt heads. As long as you don't fall into the trap of thinking "I AM A _ _ _ _", I think it has a lot of utility.

But then I'm INFP, so I would say that.

The way it was explained to me was that being P, say, didn't mean you couldn't do J - but it did mean that J would tire you out more or make you uncomfortable. It was about learning to cover the other four as much as tailoring your life to your four preferences.

Basically, yeah. It's helpful to see each of the categories as a continuum (from, say, P to J). No one is all P or all J, and some healthy synthesis of the two is probably worth striving for.

there are about a million threads about this on bodybuilding.com, they mainly seem to be INTJs.

TLDR

I think my work test came out as ISFJ and what I got out of it was pretty much that if I ever want to get into some kind of senior position I probably want to be ENTJ so I need to change my preferences a bit to basically: a) bullshit more and b) give less of a shit about others.

I love these kind of tests, even if it is probably/mostly bullshit, I usually get INFJ. There are forums specifically dedicated to various M-B personality types that are a bit scary

INFJ, though I think I have been an INTJ in the past too idk

http://www.geekinheels.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/star_wars_mbti-600x750.png

Apparently I'm either Yoda or Palpatine. Kind of a big gap for one letter.

many lols at Uncle Owen and Wicket

ObiWan yo

brb cross-posting that image to the Irrationally Angry thread

this was on bodybuilding.com

http://s7.postimg.org/pxd0rv1ob/1320337406907.png

heeeeeyyy what the

God Tier:
R2-D2
Palpatine
Han Solo
Yoda

High Tier:
Wicket
Leia Organa
Jar Jar Binks
Bail Organa

Mid Tier:
Chewbacca
Qui-Gon Jinn
Darth Vader
C-3P0

Shit Tier:
Padme Amidala
Owen Lars
Luke Skywalker
Obi-Wan Kenobi

what the fuck do bodybuilders know anyway, screw those ppl

tries to imagine a bodybuilder worshipping R2D2 as a diety. fails.

as a member of the shit-tier I'm going to go poop in their gym lockers

shittier shit-tier

DGAF

OICU

TSOP

mbti typically has a lot more give than people give it credit for, it's just sort of too-structuralized by office-efficiency/FIND YOUR HARRY POTTER IDENTITY trends that makes it horoscopey. from what i can tell it was always supposed to be more interpreting jung to define and connect certain tendencies in similar people -- not a "this is who you are/this is who you aren't" -- the letters you aren't are supposed to reflect areas you feel less comfortable, come less naturally to you, and may develop over time

also never trust those character grids, they always give the best ones to INFPs because INFPs are the only ones who take this shit seriously

i'm an INFP

Rad, so I'm Princess Leia

waiting for lj to take the test and discover he is an ewok

I bet he's Padme

he certainly has made a lasting difference in the life of ilx

just what lj needs: another thing to make him feel like a special snowflake

INTJ

is there like a quiz you can take that tells it to you without answering the questions directly? can't self-diagnose this shit :(

EITJ

theyre well balanced for the most part but like whotf is gonna rate themselves J instead of P? might as well be y/n are you an asshole

yoda

bodybuilding.com chart seems pretty otm

i am not about ~labels~

http://pstypes.blogspot.ca/2009/03/free-jungian-type-tests.html

you could just take a bunch of them and see if theres any consensus

Star Wars would have been better if it was just a sitcom w/ r2d2 palpatine Han Solo and yoda as bodybuilding frat brothers

theyre well balanced for the most part but like whotf is gonna rate themselves J instead of P? might as well be y/n are you an asshole

i remember j/p is meant to be about whether you prefer to focus on your decision making (T/F) or information gathering (S/N) aspect or something

Can we do Enneagrams next?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enneagram_of_Personality

^^^my Mum is well into these things, when AFAIC they are the most spurious bullshittery pseudo-psychological loads of codswollop. I mean, I have some time for Myers-Briggs when used purely as descriptive rather than prescriptive, but enneagrams to me seem less useful than horoscopes.

STFU

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

that's a LOT of introversion right there

shocker

inxp

ESTP 1

;_;

oh wait, i was looking at the wrong thing! i guess i'm ENTP.

i mean, i AM ENTP, according to this awful test.

sorry i'm hitting the bottle early tonight, pls ignore

i don't put too much stock in things like this but it feels weird to be in the E group when 42 the 49 voters are I's.

who are the other ENTPs? just curious. we are probably either supposed to work together in a pleasant way or hate each other's guts

I'm one

*high fives*

Just checked, im ESTP fwiw 44-1-24-22 where do i sign

When I did the official version of this at work I was INTP but hovered close to the middle for all the axes, except N–S.

ENTP!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D8q956nGeI

Hive mind after all

No wonder we all fight so much; IN*P's are so open-ended they cannot agree with themselves sometimes!

As an ENFP, I feel underrepresented here. But also as an ENFP, I respect everybody else's perspectives and value your company.

Can't believe ILX accepted a version of this poll without a "fuck this bullshit" option. Suffered through a really unbearable, unending Myers-Briggs conversation at a wedding reception a couple weeks ago, reminded me of everything useless, non-predictive and tedious about conversations around this thing. Basically twenty minutes of "I'm a Pisces, We pick up on those things."

this stuff is for people too boring even to talk about themselves unaided

i took a version of this called "strengths quest" when i was an RA. there were like twenty adjectives and each person got four of them as a result of their responses to a quiz. almost all the other RA's got the same things -- "natural leader," "efficient," -- stuff like that. i got totally different ones. i think "ruminative" was one of my "strengths."

one of the strengths was called "woo"

What's the Myers-Brigg type that bitches about Myers-Briggs tests

when i was around my teens, somehow, via the internet i think, i was befriended by a genial retired businessman who was a myers-briggs typing enthusiast. probably because on some message board or profile or something i had said something about the test or my type and wondering about how to take a full test (which, if i recall, he snail mailed a copy of). i think he was just super into people understanding who they were so that they could thrive and be happy.

What's the Myers-Brigg type that bitches about Myers-Briggs tests

I'll happily volunteer for this label, except I can't tell you my specific M-B label, other than it starts with 'I'. This test probably has just enough validity that taking the same test a second or third time, after a certain lapse so you don't recall what you answered the previous time, won't result in wildly divergent results. You might shift one 'letter' from test to test.

But as far as being 'scientific', afaics it lacks any predictive ability at all. It is mildly descriptive, but at the same time the description it yields is so general that all 7,000,000,000 humans are divided into just 16 categories. This seems little better than useless as an individual description.

'asshole' divides the world into two categories but it's hella useful

As my inconsistent scores foreshadowed, the MBTI does poorly on reliability. Research shows “that as many as three-quarters of test takers achieve a different personality type when tested again,” writes Annie Murphy Paul in The Cult of Personality Testing, “and the sixteen distinctive types described by the Myers-Briggs have no scientific basis whatsoever.” In a recent article, Roman Krznaric adds that “if you retake the test after only a five-week gap, there's around a 50% chance that you will fall into a different personality category.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/give-and-take/201309/goodbye-mbti-the-fad-won-t-die

like basically Myers-Briggs might be about as good as the fortune-teller tests you took at the start of Ultima games to determine whether you were more attached to Humility or Compassion. it's a novelty quiz which might prompt some useful introspection or conversation about how you and the people at the table handle different situations, but it doesn't 'mean' anything and has no value beyond that.

but what of the introvert content industry

i took one of these when i was in therapy as a teenager, and i really took it to heart (i think it was INFP). i was v proud of the "only ~1% of the population" part of it.

anyway its bogus, but harmless. i mean, i def am v introverted, but no longer need a test to verify that.

but what of the introvert content industry

― El Tomboto, Saturday, July 23, 2016 11:28 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Peak Introvert has been reached and passed it seems

p controversial

what's y'all's enneagram type?

I selfreport as green/red ito colours fyi

i was v proud of the "only ~1% of the population" part of it.

I was proud of being part of only 7% until I remembered that 100/16 is a little over 6.

TP

^ accidental post

INTP for my bunghole

I think the "Temperament" stuff (NT, NF, SJ, SP) is more stable and useful than the 16 meyers-briggs types. Just took the Keirsey sorter again, EFIL4TN

I hate this shit so much.

SP?

I took a Big 5 test after reading the PsychToday article above and even if it's objectively better I still don't get the usefulness because it's testing what people say they think/feel/react where we know that people are irrational and stupid when it comes to examining their self and motivations.

Studies that rely on external data like heart rates or measures of how people actually act/react are much more interesting to me but I guess you can't make an industry of selling that to HR departments.

A friend is painfully into this shit, simultaneously claiming that I'm overstating it's harm when it comes to judging others ("it's just a tool to help you explore yourself, maaaan") while trying to divine every other human being's type.

Its useful to demonstrate the variety of genuine reactions/approaches across a range of individuals undergoing the same experience/process. As with most self-diagnoses, accuracy is not really the sought outcome.

I think I'm trying to turn into an NF as I get old

dear ilx,

isfj-a

if i can protect you, i will

love,

vito corleone

https://storage.googleapis.com/neris/public/images/types/famous/sentinels_ISFJ_vito_corleone_the_godfather.png

Apparemtly I’m a peacemaker. It is supposedly bec I’m fucking lazy? Wtf

I envy you, actually.

wow so that's why you guys are inside so much

Xpost wuuuuht?

Tbh I only took the ennea gram (?) test bec I was at a party. Was super excited until the lady also asked everyone’s sign. Lol. I love astrology but to take it seriously? Nope. That ended 30 yrs ago.

basically Myers-Briggs might be about as good as the fortune-teller tests you took at the start of Ultima games to determine whether you were more attached to Humility or Compassion

these invariably made me a bard. repeatable!

probably even more crippled by the problems of self-reportage than myers-briggs tho. why yes, of course i would Sacrifice myself to the saber-toothed tiger so that my friend might escape.

This enneagram shit is so popular right now.

we sold a decent number of enneagram books at the shop i worked at 2000-2002 - must come back around in waves.

i think it's all based on the recurring waves of popularity of the egg song "enneagram", which is a very good one

also, apparently all trans people are INFP. I used to be INTP but when I stopped hating myself I changed to an INFP.

I just found a copy of an Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ-R) I took when I was 20. "Are you a talkative person" - yes. "Are you rather lively?" - yes. "Do you enjoy meeting new people" - yes. Who was this outgoing party animal? I took the test again just now, my extroversion score has gone down by three points.

sincere congrats tbh

thank god this shit passed and we just brought back astrology instead

I think the "Temperament" stuff (NT, NF, SJ, SP) is more stable and useful than the 16 meyers-briggs types.

Yes, the big insight of these tests and classifications is that the N and S outlooks (which then determine whether the T/F or J/P axes are more relevant) are different enough that they are almost separate planes of human existence.

I keep getting ENTJ and I definitely don't feel like I'm very commanding ...

Tested equal parts INFP/INTP when i did this in a university class a few years ago. I was the only one of either, so surprised at results.

felt like it nailed my personality traits

feel the value in any self described test like this is in any variation in how others who know you see you and vice versa and the realisation that ppl genuinely approach things differently instead of your way but stupidly (yes this is a lesson i constantly have to relearn)

i think the way the test is constructed, it emphasizes the handful of "strong agrees" and "strong disagrees" as opposed to the majority of "kinda yeah? kinda no?" answers that I give.

Your type should be voted on by your closest friends, bc you yourself have too much of a bias

Btw critics say your result comes out differently each time you do the test, but mine always comes out exactly the same

i am always an "NTJ"

Tried this for the first time in decades (INFP fwiw) but just kept thinking about how much the answers were down to ADHD or SAD, do those determine my personality? I mean yes in a sense they do, but it's not something I want my face rubbed in.

I'm always INFJ and I don't have ADHD or SAD

M8

https://i.imgur.com/Q6y58SF.png

Is that real? OMG I should not be let out in society.

When did this thing start? Did Hitler and Trotsky really take the test?

To be fair you've also got Ghandi, Jung, Plato, Wittgenstein, Chomsky, Tolstoy, lots of other people who are better than Hitler

https://www.idrlabs.com/infj.php

That is a bit of a relief

Imagine, though, how much worse Hitler, Khomeini and Bin Laden would have been, had they been "look at me" extroverts rather than shy, retiring introverts.

Any meme which puts Trotsky alongside Hitler can safely be ignored.

yeah, Trotsky was a Scorpio

le Histoire du Edgy Miley (difficult listening hour)
Posted: 23 July 2016 at 16:54:45
this stuff is for people too boring even to talk about themselves unaided

lol savage

Any meme which puts Trotsky alongside Hitler can safely be ignored.

― I Left My Harp In Sam Frank's Disco (Tom D.)

peak horseshoe theory

impossible to validate fishhook theory with this site due to lack of centrists anybody cares about or remembers

anyway i went from INTJ to ENFP after starting estrogen, so yeah horoscopes are better. i'll always be aries/leo/leo.

I haven't done it in a while but any time I have I'm always ENFP and it does sound a lot like me.

Hate horoscopes. I'm pretty much the opposite of what my sign is supposed to be. Oh well.

Imagine, though, how much worse Hitler, Khomeini and Bin Laden would have been, had they been "look at me" extroverts rather than shy, retiring introverts.

Also LOL @ Trotsky the shy, retiring introvert.

He was an introvert until he ran into that icepick

i am an istp-t. i knew it! i didn't know it. i am virtuoso.

94% introverted!
54% observant
55% thinking
90% prospecting
81% turbulent

do you know how i can tell that i'm a virtuoso? i'm sitting on my bed pricing CDs for Discogs while eating a chicken sandwich and watching season 1 of 2 Broke Girls on DVD.

He was an introvert until he ran into that icepick

― ydkb (gyac)

look i know stalin says he ran into it, but there's a widespread belief that he was actually stabbed with the icepick

does this test account for the proposition that certain types might not reliably answer the test questions? some ppl are just liars and are telling both the world and online tests what they want you to think about them and they think they're fooling everyone. mostly just themselves; that's how they operate. like, can you test/ differentiate between idealized self-conceptions and accurate representations of actual behavior?

why so much inxx up in here? just the lopsided intp votes is concerning because statistical improbability. i have theories.

this is ultimately about jung, yes? i remember reading stories in rolling stone or probably spin in the 80s about sting and synchronicity and then all of the 90s happened and i was looking at websites bout alchemical symbolism and gnosticism and then lucid dreaming and i had the mind's eye tapes and that fractals tape and i had a lucid dream about flying through a walled garden (biblical!) and i came to a red stone (harry potter!) with symbolic markings and i went to grasp it then i woke up and was left with a mission i could never complete. there's a lot of storytelling in human psychology that somehow correlates to what our synapses are doing on their own but not really. one summer never ends, one summer never begins. and then suddenly, last summer. this is playing as i write. i feel like it means something in this particular moment, continuity and connections and parallel eventualities. eternal returns. the stories have pulled loose of their moorings.

anyway,i don't get all that stuff about subordinate functions and how youtube meyers-briggs ppl extrapolate all the details in detail. i get the basics, like i get joseph campbell generally, but at really fine resolutions i don't see the connections. i feel like it's like newspaper astrology: anyone can find some relevance if you want to go there. otoh, some of those intp meme things on the internet feel really specific to my experience, so it's a useful construct to say i'm this type of thing as opposed this other type of thing. it works more or less if you don't put money on it.

tests like these can have 'lie questions' e.g. 'i have never stolen anything, not even a pin or a button' which can be used to gauge if the participant is answering in good faith, i don't know how reliably that works though.

yeah, but the liars i know are really good at liar jiu jitsu. they are primed to always be on defense against attacks; it takes a lot of deliberative cross-referencing to suss out the contradictions and they know you'll give up before they do.

as a counter-indicator vis a vis personality tests, i identify without too much introspection with liz lemon and will graham the most as far as pop-culture references go. i dunno their respective meyers-briggs types but there it is. i have a longer explanation but it comes down to empathy as an intellectual proposition and self-doubt as both weaknesses and salvation and that's not in the tests, i don't think.

let's dance is the liars' credo. they'll sway through the the crowd to an empty space. if you say run, they'll run with you; if you say hide they'll hide. you have to put on your red shoes and dance the blues to get anywhere.

sorry about the diversion. still wondering about the costanza it's not a lie if you believe it exception to self reported bahaviors.

self reported tells you something about the respondent but not what they think or what is purported

the thing i like about cinema 21 is that they don't make you listen to the ads before the ads. like half of the ads are for the c.g. jung society of portland. now the excitement really begins.

slugbuggy your questions have this underlying assumption that the mbti isn't pseudoscientific crap, which it is. since it has no statistical validity in the first place, it doesn't matter whether or not people's answers are honest.

i think your point is probably the correct one but to me the question is, given a hypothetically scientific test based on whatever, how does self-reporting account for ppl who strive for accuracy in all evaluations because the social contract depends on accurate foundations vs ppl who who value surface impressions and control in social interactions? this isn't just the mbti but any real or hypothetical personality inventory that relies on self-reporting. this probably has to do more with my interest in narcissists than in personality tests. the biggest part of their mo is expending all their energies into constructing false narratives to justify or hide truth as far as we can define it. also honest people can be deluded as far as self-image and presumably, idealized vs actual behaviors.

also it think, and i thought i said, pseudoscience is pseudoscience. that whole screed with me going on about alchemical symbolism and sting and jung was about the temporal zeitgeist and irrational beliefs that get into the now and how beautiful they are in their storytelling but also i totally don't believe have any basis in reality. mbti stuff appeals, i think, because biochemical processes and synapses and such get translated into archetypes and stories that totally have no validity but resonate because i like thinking that that poussin painting et in arcadia ego somehow is a map of my subconscious processes. myers-briggs gives you protagonists.

i have a stephen jay gould book of essays i read and there's this one that proposes that unqualified nutjobs who go off on wild tangents sometimes and somehow come around to truths no rational or systematically cautious person would get to. i think that's the myers-briggs trap: most assertions are too general and could apply to anyone if you only focus on that but then it'll say something like you can stare at a wall for hours and ppl think you're sleeping with you eyes open but you're just deep in thought about the logical inferences about something that doesn't even matter because you're an intp and i'll be you see me, and i don't think this applies to most ppl i know. i was tested for hearing in the fourth grade because i didn't seem to be hearing my teacher but i was just thinking about the last thing she said and had to stop time to mull over it. that's intp.

i dunno, it's crap, but beautiful crap.

it cant, is the answer

i'm not arguing with you or disputing you kate but the succinct way you summarized the issue had me re-evaluating and defending my previous rant.

yeah, see, ppl like you are what i need to cut the crap (clash reference).

x-post.

i think i'm good and can move on with my life.

lol i was regretting the shortness of the response and debating following up with

'the value of any of this (including imo many forms of therapy) is a what you get out of any of it while using it as a tool'

so yknow in measure i think any form of self analysis can be healthy and can be helpful- like anything else it's to know when to get off the carousel

i think of myers-briggs the same way that I think of astrology, tarot, and other occult-lite practices: they can be helpful in aiding reflection upon one’s own subjectivity and how it is expressed both inwardly and outwardly.

those who attach scientific and serious meaning to such practices are often engaging in behavior that approaches denial of free will, fatalism, and fascism.

i dunno, it's crap, but beautiful crap.

― slugbuggy

the problem with the mbti is that it posits "personality" as fixed and immutable

it isn't

constructions like the mbti not only can't _account_ for "personality disorders" like narcissism, by assigning people fixed, essential personalities, they _create_ "personality disorders" - they make bad _people_ out of bad _behaviors_.

you answer some questions and then they say "you are like gandhi" or "you are like hitler" or "you are like j.k. rowling" and depending on _other people_ to tell you who you _are_ or what you can _do_ causes _problems_.

the reason i like the "big 5" framing and not the MBTI, and probably part of why the "big 5" can be clinically validated and the MBTI can't, is that the "big 5" acknowledges that _people change_.

in fact if you start talking about the big 5, there's actually a modified version of it, known as "HEXACO", which includes "honesty" as a sixth factor. a personality test _can_ test for honesty.

the reason this works is because narcissism is just a _pattern of behavior_. people exhibiting narcissism don't lie arbitrarily or at random. they lie for specific reasons.

the thing is that people characterized as having "personality disorders" who "lie" might not always _know_ they're lying, or why. that doesn't mean that their behavior is incomprehensible. it just means that _they_ don't understand their own behavior, which, in turn, limits their ability to control it. hence why some people are called "compulsive liars".

if someone is a compulsive liar, that pattern can be observed and identified by someone who knows what to look for. people engaging in narcissism are scary because people don't know what to look for to identify that behavior. they're mimicking prosocial behavior.

a flawless mimicry of prosocial behavior would be fundamentally indistinguishable from actual prosocial behavior, though. if this was the case, narcissistic behavior would not be a threat.

you can't fix people, because nobody is actually broken. you can only hold people responsible for their behavior.

i'm not a "cut through the crap" kind of girl, lol.

those who attach scientific and serious meaning to such practices are often engaging in behavior that approaches denial of free will, fatalism, and fascism.

that is a common misconception, to put it politely. divination in the ancient world was used for timing and aligning actions to accord with nature and other forces beyond your control, also for diagnosing illness and spiritual blame among other things. actually, that hasn't changed. the purpose almost always is to wrest control of a situation.

what creeps me out about myers briggs is that the aim of it seems to be to neutralize your extraordinary aspects, to flatten your "personality curve" and become and erasure of yourself.

the purpose almost always is to wrest control of a situation.

I haven't done it in a while but any time I have I'm always ENFP and it does sound a lot like me.

I honestly thought ENBB was a M-B classification haha

denying free will, embracing fatalism, and caving in to oppressive regimes of meaning

...would be relinquishing control. baffling post tbh.

It isn’t, but whatever, I am not going to explain how all this mumbo-jumbo bullshit leads to fascism

Adorno does it better:

“Moreover, by strengthening the sense of fatality, dependence, and obedience, astrology paralyses the will to change objective conditions in any respect and relegates all worries to a private plane promising a cure-all by the very same compliance which prevents a change of conditions. It can easily be seen how well this suits the overall purpose of the prevailing ideology of today’s cultural industry; to reproduce the status quo within the mind of the people.”

Placing a primacy on occult practices and divination tools is simply another method of placing control in the hands of a system outside of oneself— this isn’t about wresting control for oneself, it is about reproducing systems of obedience and control via supposed mystical practices.

right but astrology is nonsense and myers-briggs is scientific?

i never said that! i said it was similar!

im legpulling

this isn’t about wresting control for oneself,

oh, ok

i'm familiar with the argument. you seemed to be saying the opposite before. the inconsistency baffled me

like you, i can't be bothered.

the influence of these systems on regimes who have either believed in them and governed by them, or appropriated them in order to promote self-serving orthodoxy has been catastrophic, but that's a long and varied history and not at all something that can be usefully summarized or explained in a paragraph by a fucking theorist.

Yes sorry to be so rash I realized I wasn’t typing clearly and needed time to flex it out for a second.

Of any of the 20th century theorists, Adorno is the one I fuck with the most, but I have a lot of problems with his thought too— at least what I’ve read, which is a fraction of his output.

np
i'm detatched to a fault a lot of the time. i know you tend to be more passionate. divination has been the thing in my life that i've been able to most easily form a messy, unfettered and deeply emotional connection with. i'm not really interested in defending it as a practice. in many respects it's obsolete.

anyhow, if we're going to conflate different systems, and *kinds* of systems under an umbrella of quackery might as well include critical theory right? jk

i like Walter Benjamin for 20th c theorists. if that shoe even fits. but i haven't read much theory either, and basically zero literature. what i read quite a lot of are research monographs on divination in China lol (i've read a handful on divination in other cultures, too). a number of these concern the use of divnation in governance. so i'm painfully aware of the scope and scale of political disasters.

there's a mental state, an emotional arc that i recognize from my firsthand experience, which is considerable, in the many divinations of contemporaties and ancients alike that i've reviewed. pleading and appealing from a position of fear and anxiety. the kings too. turns out making decisions which would impact tens of thousands of people was agonizing- who knew? the thing that hasn't changed is the emotional connection people seem to form with it in moments of desperation. despair spans the millennia.

to clarify, when i insist that they used divination to wrest control for themselves. i am mostly concerned with where the urge to manufacture an omen arises from in the first place. whether the use of these systems then fosters a more fatalistic outlook- to me, that's a more compilcated question & doesn't have one right answer because some of these systems are based on open texts with countless possible interpretations and approproations.

i could go with "sometimes". and stick a gigantic asterisk on the end of it.

At least, if we're talking about the Yijing or the Odu which are "open texts"... people looking for dogma have usually found it.

--you know that i held epicurus strong,
and his opinion? now i change my mind,
and partly credit things that do presage.
coming from sardis, on our former ensign
two mighty eagles fell, and there they perched,
gorging and feeding from our soldiers' hands,
who to philippi here consorted us.
this morning are they fled away and gone,
and in their steads do ravens, crows, and kites
fly o'er our heads and downward look on us
as we were sickly prey. their shadows seem
a canopy most fatal, under which
our army lies, ready to give up the ghost.

--believe not so.

--i but believe it partly.

holy shit this ended up better than i expected, given i have no idea what i'm talking about. i think you're talking about what i meant to be talking about, if i knew what i was getting at, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I am definitely more “passionate” and polemical, which I know rubs people the wrong way. It used to be worse, but I was away from ILX during that time…

I actually respect yr position, fwiw, but honestly I simply see it as an extension of religious faith, which is fine by me. I just don’t want any part of it lol!

xpost

is open texts and religious faith still about the mbti or is it past that?

what creeps me out about myers briggs is that the aim of it seems to be to neutralize your extraordinary aspects, to flatten your "personality curve" and become and erasure of yourself.

― Deflatormouse

but it's so _bad_ at it, i mean i understand it's part of the hegemonic enlightenment-liberal-capitalist-imperialist narrative that constrains all acts of "deviancy" to heavily gatekept and socially restricted outlets, but damn, nobody ever said to me "wait, you can't wear that dress, you're an INTJ".

Placing a primacy on occult practices and divination tools is simply another method of placing control in the hands of a system outside of oneself— this isn’t about wresting control for oneself, it is about reproducing systems of obedience and control via supposed mystical practices.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table)

i get the theory but all the people i know who do this stuff are queer communists

there might be some selection bias given that all the people i know are queer communists, mind you

anyway astrology and the mbti are both shit, if you really want to tell me who you are show me your TTRPG character. i think brillat-savarin said that.

Yeah, I am definitely more “passionate” and polemical, which I know rubs people the wrong way

lots of people also like that about you. i'm sure you know.

yes, I have stuff in common with people of e.g. Christian faith who get into Biblical philology and start learning Greek or Hebrew. Less so folks who mostly engage with religion through their social connections.

is open texts and religious faith still about the mbti or is it past that?

we could make this a thread for Buzzfeed "which Pokemon are you?" quizzes which is more fun and has a solid grounding in the Wuxing :D

there might be some selection bias given that all the people i know are queer communists, mind you

this made me LOL

we could make this a thread for Buzzfeed "which Pokemon are you?" quizzes which is more fun and has a solid grounding in the Wuxing :D

― Deflatormouse

too many pokemon, stick to "which eeveelution are you"

problem with that is that everybody i know either wants to be sylveon or vaporeon

or some combination of both, the transness of sylveon with the...

ah look if you don't know the vaporeon memes i won't explain it here, i'm not going to type the words submissive and breedable in a thread about the fucking mbti

hahaha okay, it's settled. this is a pokemon memes thread now.

Would a mod please change the the thread title to 'Welcome To Wigglytuff's Camp Corner'

this place will pick right up when the queer millennial tumblr kids find this thread

Every journey begins with a choice
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