An INTJ’s perspective
MBTI is one of those things that gets a bad rap because some people misunderstand it, and it, therefore, becomes basically … astrology. Given the way some people think of it or use it, I agree.
More so, even if understood, most people, of course, fall somewhere in the middle of definitions, and so they believe that because if they take the test and one day get one result ‘Introvert’ and next test get ‘Extrovert’ that the test is broken. That is not how it works.
Next, MBTI itself is a poor rework of Jung’s realisation, which itself was just a rudimentary observation. So, let’s not imbue it with powers it does not have.
Lastly, some people use it to predict what personality is best for which job. Mostly silly. Rather, what I’m interested in, is how we can classify any attribute of another person to better model how annoying they will be to ‘work with,’ and then, and therefore, avoid them.
MBTI is therefore simply a ‘good enough for now’ labelling system.
So, let’s review some details:
There are people who love to be with people and get their energy from people. Clearly, there are also people that hate to be in large groups and need to be alone to get their energy back. Those are the extremes. Somewhere in the middle are people that can take it or leave it, or they like to be extroverts just on the weekends, etc. So we can agree that everyone’s behaviour falls on a spectrum, and giving it labels does have value. It has WAY more value if you use it as a weapon.
I’m an introvert, to the core. I ran a (too) long ‘experiment’ trying to be an extrovert for decades. I’m done. I learned things.
- I don’t like being in groups
- I don’t like parties
- People suck the life out of me
- I’m happiest when I’m alone
You can use this to perfectly and completely model answers to questions. It can also be invalidated if it were wrong. So this is pure science.
‘Ki, want to go to Disneyland?’ No.
‘Ki, want to go for a nice quiet walk in the hills and talk philosophy?’ Yes.
We can run tests on the other axes and by using the extreme examples prove their value.
Here is a very brief distillation of MBTI’s axes and their weaponised value to me. Each assumes extremes:
Extroverts Don’t attribute verbosity to this characteristic, just focus on one thing; they want to be around other people. Clearly nothing wrong with this, this is all about thresholds. An Introvert starts at +0, an Extrovert starts at +1.
Introverts become drained the longer they are not alone, able to gather their thoughts, do things at their own pace. It is the difference between walking alone and walking with one leg tied to another person. I find carrying a grenade and pulling the pin out will calm an extrovert and get their full attention. They also seem more willing to leave the room.
Sensing The best description I’ve heard of Sensing vs. Intuitive is mapping them to Packing vs. Mapping. Which itself is an Intuitive act of modelling. Sensing people seem to me to simply take what they see at face value. And face value has its value, but usually not to or for me.
The packing vs. mapping model mostly refers to how one learns or understands. A packer sees the pin pulled from the grenade, and assumes an explosion is going to happen so they run. A mapper NEEDS to understand; how, why, where, when, what? They need to map how this new thing they are learning is similar to some other thing they already know. They can’t just accept what is in front of them. Sadly, Intuitives do often die as a result of this. But once they understand the complete inner workings, they can use this to their advantage. Comprehension equates to ‘accuracy and precision’ of the delivered blast.
Feeling — Bless their giant bleeding hearts. Like puppies, place your Feeling person on some newspapers spread out on the floor. Clearly, most people have some level of ‘feeling.’ So this one is not so much a single scale, but two scales represented with one value. I think of it as a percentage of Feeling, and a percentage of Thinking. Which one wins matters, humans are complex.
To an Intuitive, a Feeling person appears especially broken, ravaged by pain and anguish to their own detriment. But more importantly, at its worst, it manifests itself as throwing logic and reason out the door in exchange for addressing personal and arbitrary emotions. Feeling people are best paired up so they can console one another and leave Thinking people alone. In fact, handcuff them together in a separate soundproof room.
Perceiving They have the loftiest of goals, to optimise for the very best experience or options. Judging people love this about Perceiving people, and we try to surround ourselves with them. We can extract the nectar of their efforts. However, one must keep a cattle prod close by, for a Perceiving person will, if permitted, consume all available time in the known universe. I find the best weapon of choice for dealing with Perceiving people is a bomb with a timer.
Now, we don’t need to be limited to just MBTI. There are many other systems, both ones that build on MBTI, and others that look at other dynamics. But for just four simple easy to remember silos, MBTI works well enough.
Personally, I try to size up another person’s Irony.
Ironically Irony doesn’t have an antonym.
I use it in the more modern situational sense. The realisation that existentially we simply don’t know where we are (or what this is, or how we are here, etc.), and any story we tell one another is no more or less insane than the reality we find ourselves it. Therefore nothing is serious, or above being laughed at. Terrorists have the worst sense of humour.
Update 2024 January:
[Did you ever see the Tarantino movie ‘From Dusk till Dawn?’ The first half of the movie starts out as a standard Western, including a bank robbery, and suddenly, the movie takes a complete turn revealing it is a vampire movie. Enforcing one of my two rules for making fun movies: ‘Things are not what they appear.’ This medium post is about to do the same thing]
Everything above was written 5 years ago, as a bit of humour, but also as a bit of insight into how to genuinely size people up, and perhaps help a few people gain some clarity on themselves, and those around them.
I mentioned above trying to size up a person’s irony. And this goes much deeper for me than the toss sentence I put there. About 25 years ago I began asking myself exactly what is the quality of the amazing and truly wonderful people I did have in my life — who were able to put up with me, and me… with them. I tend to surround myself with clearly exceptional people, accomplished in one or more fields, etc., and while they were the majority — clearly this was not even closely related to the ineffable quality I was seeking — that bonded them to some club I was part of, or filtered for. Many are very real, salt of the earth, practical people, nothing stands out, and yet, I have instant chemistry with them.
Was it just that? Chemistry? What does that even mean? I began getting more serious about answering this a decade later, logging qualities I admired, or disliked, hoping to expose some simple metrics I could point to.
At first, the word ‘humour’ floated to the surface. But when I tested it, it just didn’t fit. People I didn’t enjoy often had great senses of humour, both in taking jokes, and making them. But damn, I was close.
I know I get excited when I meet other polymaths, autodidacts, people that always want to learn, people that avoid doltish endeavours, and try their genuine best to be their best. I knew what turned me away from people; people with shallow agendas, failures in critical thinking, an inability to keep things in perspective, as well as people who were ‘touchy’ or got their feathers ruffled easily.
‘I rub people the wrong way, shame people can’t be rubbed in all direction’ — Ki
… but no, none of this revealed anything simple, and so I gave up a bit on assuming I could impress Jung (I like to pretend he’s still around, and my job is to impress upon him more facets of his work). I was seeking the fifth element of MBTI, but nothing rang true. This is when I began deeply contemplating this sublime facet of irony. Yes, irony captured the largest share of the silo. Sadly, while I knew irony was now key, holding up to scrutiny, and test, it was still however a monopole, there was no Allen to its Burns, Teller to its Penn, Chong to its Cheech, Laurie to its Fry! What was the other side of Irony? It had no antonym, and so it sat.
Then, a few years after writing this, I was driven off of FaceBook. An odd thing given I had a huge following, and wonderful conversations and connections with both people just online, and people in real life I met via FB, but also where IRL my circles would gather, like at that one house in the 70s with the orange pile carpet and the parents that let all the kids hang, join for dinner, and always had a ping pong table and a crap load of board games for everyone.
But, something had changed. People had become angry, angry about politics. On all sides, this side, that side, and sides I did not know were even an issue. And unlike the past, it was driving families and friends apart. Quickly it became so bad every post was about the current president, which meant people who hated him wrote hateful things about anyone who disagreed with them, and anyone who liked him wrote hateful things about people who hated them. There was a lot of hate.
Sadly, I even witnessed some groups separate from each other that would normally be considered the same side, where one person was hated for not hating enough. If we did not speak of this one president, I liked people from all sides.
I was done.
Clearly, I would take a serious social hit by leaving FB, but I was also finally coming to terms with my own true Introverted nature, and what makes me happy. People who wanted to keep me in their lives would make a small effort, and I would reciprocate. I moved out of the role of always making first contact, throwing parties, and being the first to say hello, and would now wait for others to make this first move. A lot of people expressed their deep sadness at me leaving FB (literally some cried to me). These threads really were like a Cheers Pub where everyone knew each other’s name. It did sadden me deeply.
From there, I took up a new residence on LinkedIn. A slow primitive system, but at least (at that time) against a background of the same pabulum as FB, was a warming glow of people working, building the future, focusing on making, and inventing, and theorizing, like a virtual salon I enjoy so much in person and with friends around the world. It was a pale comparison to LiveJournal, but it was at least ‘made with real fruit.’
I’m simply not political (in the sense of how this word itself is weaponised), because I can’t sum up people as a single thing. All I can do is model that some people belong to the Venn of qualities that have been given a label. A strange summary emerged from this — I noticed that those who identify as Democrats were clearly (to me) better joke writers, but I also noticed that Republicans were clearly better at taking a joke.
And there was the spark!
A word floated to the top of the heap I had never considered before. A similar word exists in religious circles, and is needed. It is a word that means ‘I’m right, and you are a stupid git and must die.’ That word is… sanctimonious. YES! Finally, I was on to something. When I thought of all the people I found off-putting, that this one word applied to all of them — except — most were not religious. Sure, we can treat politics as religion, and it appeared to me to be the same, along with sport, but this was not just about religion, it was about how a given person frames and assumes righteousness and their own flavour of morality on all topics.
And there it was, the Holy Grail, er, sorry, the ‘cat’s pyjamas’ (wow, that really is not as good as Holy Grail) — the word I was looking for was … indignation.
Wow, yes, ok, bingo, this fit. The antonym of irony is indignation! This was the Judger to the Perceiver, the Sensor to the Intuit. Jung would approve.
There are people that are just grumpy old gits, but they also believe everyone needs to see things their way only, and there is little to no room for humour, or witty repartee — it is a personal affront to them.
‘You can fake being serious, but you can’t fake being witty.’ — Sacha Guitry (a French playwright)
That is one of my favourite quotes, it so perfectly captures my core outlook. The more serious people are, the less witty they seem to be, and the more fake they appear to me.
These are the type of people that get angry when you are not being serious, and you must be serious, because they believe they control when people must be serious. And if you are witty and not serious, they get really angry. Time for Godwin’s law — you know who forces everyone to be serious? Nazis. Yeah, I said it. Again, terrorists don’t have a sense of humour.
I looked back at some things friends of mine had written, and I realised one person had already captured this quality in my personality without saying ‘irony vs. indignant.’ But they had in fact captured the essence of it. It turns out I had already developed a weapon to deal with people who were indignant, a way to force them to reveal themselves as fast as possible, which is always my goal. Time is not money, time is fleeting.
Indeed, this is my simple trick to reveal really great people I’m probably going to become great friends with, from those who will be arrested at some rally wearing matching clothing and armbands.
Tl;dr Sensing people take orders without questioning them. Feeling people can be manipulated with a hug. Perceivers spend torturous hours considering every single possibility regardless of how inane so I can come along and just pick the best choice they’ve made so far … quickly. I’m not sure what to tell you about Extroverts. I just know I had myself fixed so I would never make one. And lastly, if you believe you have it all figured out, and anyone that disagrees with your should be ignored, or worse killed, well, now you know why I need a weapon to defend myself.
