Lol, well, I didn't mean to create such a stir.
Vetani said:
Well fyi, he didn't really choose. He got called out and he's defending himself.
Not called out, no, just hypothesized on. There's nothing to defend, really. Just ideas floating in the mist.
By typing me, you avoid me as a person.
By typing me, you sell me short, and make me less than a person.
I can understand you might feel overwhelmed by me and so wish to reduce me to a type so you can handle me.
What makes a person? Can you ever fully comprehend, much less communicate, all the complexities and intricacies and depths and whorls that create a human soul? I admit that I can only try.
Right now, Victor, I don't think of you in terms of type, nor will I probably ever, but it's interesting to speculate on. Much the way our minds tend to create a hair color for a character in a book whose hair color has never been described. Much the way I cannot link numbers and scents, but synaesthetes can. It's interesting to speculate what a 5 would smell like. Apples, maybe. Macintosh. Maybe type is even a subjective reality, a little different to each person. Maybe your INFP is my ENFP. In the end, all that will remain is that I tried to understand you, tried to extend myself and my world to include you. I apologize if I offended you by trying to type you, because that wasn't my intention.
I use the MBTI and the Enneagram as personality tools to understand people, much like I use English and French as language tools to understand communication, though I will never grasp everything that is attempted to be said. It is implicit that type, like any tool, is best-fit, imperfect, useless in some situations, and merely a stepping stool in all others. You could make the same logical arguments about identifying you as a brunette or a blond - am I reducing you? Of course. One can never properly encompass all that is a person. By typing you, I seek to
begin to understand you as a person. It's a mark of respect and an indication that I care enough to try to define you in as many ways as possible. Of course none is the be-all, end-all.
By asking your opinion, I directly engage you as an equal and invite you to create your own personhood to me. If you dislike typological descriptions of yourself, why not explain why you don't feel well-described by type? What details doesn't it flesh out properly? I'm not particularly upset if you don't like typology, nor do I necessarily need a typological interpretation of yourself to frame you in, but I feel like if you're going to be a member of a typological community, it would be both sensible and kind to be understanding when someone seeks to define you through type. Perhaps you could teach us all something.
The way you write your posts, in almost poetic, sing-song format, is a distancer to begin with - most people are more straightforward. I enjoy the originality of it, but I find it amusing that you suggest that I am trying to avoid you, when you avoid typical communication. How many people take the time to ask you about yourself, Victor? I wonder about you, wonder about who you are, wonder about why you say what you say and why you phrase it as you do. You're interesting.
Regardless, at the end of the day, I'm going to make my own opinion of you. I invite and welcome you to collaborate with me in creating my understanding of you, type or no type. I would love to hear about your self-description, your background, your story, type or no type. But if you don't choose to share, my world will keep on spinning, and I'll keep dancing along with it, including creating as much of my own definition of you as I need to keep your star anchored in my heavens - type or no type.
Vetani said:
Usually that doesn't happen from what I've seen... they're more likely to use your type as an anchor and then depending on their attitude of the said type, they adjust their behavior accordingly.
I'm with @Victor on this one. I'd rather people read me through my posts and not some mumbo jumbo of letters and numbers.
Well, me too, of course. I think we all would prefer that, but the mumbo-jumbo can be as useful as understanding how old you are, or what country you're from, or what your childhood was like. All of that background information "orients" us in time and space. And since we're on a board dedicated to that specific information, I can't really understand why a forum member would hold it against anyone who asks that information of them. Like you said, they could just say, "I would prefer not to be analyzed in that way", and encourage everyone to move on.
I feel like there's a learning curve, where you have to sort of overattach to the theory for a while before you "grow beyond" it. Many of the oldbies here have grown beyond it... they like to speculate type for fun, but ultimately they recognize it just as another imperfect descriptor. Some people are still in the learning phase where EVERYTHING must be typed and rigidly understood by type, and some will never progress beyond that. I see religion and politics much the same way, but that's a discussion for another time.
I wish theory of theory were a taught subject, so that people would understand what theory's about. It's just an attempt to transcend the limitations of our finite minds in a world of infinite information. No definites, no boundaries, no accusations. Just ideas floating in the mist.