I know some people feel insulted by personality tests. After all we’re all unique and shouldn’t be pegged. True? True. But while I agree I also know that there are radically different but predictable personality types that people fall into in a general sort of way. For instance in the Meyers & Brigg system people are in varying degrees Introverts or Extroverts (only one of many criteria). Some are about 50-50 while others are extremely introverted or on the other hand extroverted. Being or relating to an extremely extroverted person is radically different than being or relating to an introverted one. Understanding other types - especially the types NOT like you - can really untie knots that arise in communication and understanding when we deal with someone very different from ourselves. Recognizing our own type can help us come to terms with what we’re inherently better or worse at handling in the day to day world.
I argue these tools help us understand our individuality far more than they "peg" us so maybe the tests are worth trying even if you are skeptical. The worse that could happen is that you’d say the tests are all wrong but my experience is most people find the results insightful and worthwhile.
“Around the devisers of new values revolves to world: - - invisible it revolves. But around the actors revolve the people and the glory; such is the course of things.”
“Valuing is creating: hear it you creating ones! Valuation itself is the treasure and jewel of the valued things. Through valuation only is there value; and without valuation the nut of existence would
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
“To paint a tree green is not true painting for the reason that however well one imitates her, nature is still the essential thing; nature is still more beautiful, more vital; it needs no copy. A real painter never imitates. He uses an object as a recipient or focus of the sun, or to observe a color reflex in that object’s surroundings, or to catch, above it, an interweaving of light and darkness. In other words, the thing painted is merely an inducement. For example, we never paint a flower standing in front of a window; we paint the light which, shining in at the window, is seen through the flower. We paint the sun’s colored light; catch the sun.”
“The task of art is to take hold of the shining, the radiance, the manifestation, of that which as spirit weaves and lives throughout the world. All genuine art seeks the spirit. Even when art wishes to represent the ugly, the disagreeable, it is concerned, not with the sensory-disagreeable as such, but with the spiritual which proclaims its nature in the midst of unpleasantness.”
In the Meyers and Briggs Personality system “NF”s are Idealists.
David Kiersey, creator of the Kiersey Temperament Sorter says:
“Idealists talk little of what they ovserve ‘of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings.’ They talk instead of what can only be seen with the mind’s eye: love, tragedy, heart and soul, tales and legends, eras and epochs, beliefs, fantasies, possibilities, symbols, selves and yes, temperament, character and personality.”
In taking responsibility for an action, we are not really taking responsibility for the action as an action. We assume responsibility for that which makes the action our action. And that is not the motive, which is the cognition of things outside us, but the character, which is our own very inner being.
Responsibility involves the satisfaction or regret, as the case may be, over the fact that one is who one is, that one has the character that one has, as revealed in the things one did provided certain motives.
Implicit in the feeling is the recognition that one would have acted differently had one been a different individual – a being with a different character.
Which way is the figure rotating? It’s up to you. Some people see her spinning to the right, others to the left, a small group of people can see her rotating one way and then the other.
An article in the Australian Sunday Times about this animation states ” If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa. Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.” The article also includes a list of right brain and left brain activities:
LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses logic
detail oriented
facts rule
words and language
present and past
math and science
can comprehend
knowing
acknowledges
order/pattern perception
knows object name
reality based
forms strategies
practical
safe
RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses feeling
“big picture” oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can “get it” (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking
I spent all weekend looking at the I Ching. This isn’t the first time I’ve dabbled with it and it probably won’t be the last.
Although the interpretations have always seemed vague and rather outdated, I’m very attracted to the idea that these binary (On-Off, Yin-Yang) patterns underlie both things and concepts.
I’m working with a light weight book from the library called something like I-Ching Birthdays. Based on the numerology of the birthdate, a hexagram is built that is supposed to represent one’s basic personality. I did mine and many other peoples who I know fairly well and found the results accurate but not all inclusive. That’s just what I’d expect from a system based just on the birth date. The advantage is that unlike astrology you don’t need the location of birth and exact time of birth - data that’s often hard to locate. As such I could also do famous people like C.G. Jung - just by knowing his birthdate.
Speaking of which, this whole renewed interest of mine in the I-Ching was brought on by a recent obsession with Carl Jung. I’m almost done with his “Personality Types” and “Answer to Job” both amazing books. Personality Types is the groundwork for the Meyers Briggs Personality system and reveals so much that is helpful to an introvert like me. I suddenly “get” where the many extroverts who I’ve never understood and who don’t understand me are coming from. I see how I come across to an extrovert - something really hard to do unless someone else walks you through it.
Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven’t time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. — Georgia O'Keefe
“Around the devisers of new values revolves to world: - - invisible it revolves. But around the actors revolve the people and the glory; such is the course of things.”
In taking responsibility for an action, we are not really taking responsibility for the action as an action. We assume responsibility for that which makes the action 
