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Having a ranking of better and worse people

Charmed Justice

Nickle Iron Silicone
Joined
Jul 22, 2009
Messages
2,805
MBTI Type
INFJ
I hate spelling stuff out, but I'll do it for you.

Wildcat compared my OP to some Nazi agenda. In his opinion, I was sorting people out to better and worse per Nazi ideology. I refuted the idea by pointing out, that I'm not calling in for a total discrimination of some people I've specified. Instead, I am using my evaluation of someone as better & worse to decide if I'm going to interact with them, enjoy their company etc. Quite a different thing.
That's how I understood the OP as well. Are people actually saying they have no functional personal biases? It's one thing to have a personal bias, and quite another to institutionalize your bias.

All people deserve to be loved and treated with compassion, and we all have our own gifts that can help certain others along the way. But no one person has the mental or emotional capacity to give to just anyone.

For example, I would never intentionally befriend the person who wrote the quote below, or have any desire to work with them. I have no problems with saying that they would be at the bottom of my personal ladder:

Ever since I was little I've had what I guess you could call 'fantasies' about hurting people. When I was 13 I had urges to strangle my stepsister to death. One morning before school I attempted it and I enjoyed doing it. She was trying to scream but couldn't and just before she went unconscious, I stopped, as I knew I had no plan of what to do after the death...When I was 15 I chased my neighbours friend down the road with a large knife, hoping to stab him and watch him bleed to death. He was a fast runner so he got away.
 

DiscoBiscuit

Meat Tornado
Joined
Apr 13, 2009
Messages
14,794
Enneagram
8w9
That is not the trouble with my post. That is the trouble with your reading of my post. I do not include superfluous words: "I have found" modifies my sentence and circumscribes the realm of applicability. It also makes it irrefutable. :)

I think you are generalizing.

They are the fundamental building blocks of knowledge.

You have said nothing of substance with this post, just attacked how I made my argument not made one of your own.

In my argument I used myself as an example of an exception to your generalization.

If I have misunderstood you, you have the opportunity to explain to me the error of my ways.

Please do so.
 

Totenkindly

@.~*virinaĉo*~.@
Joined
Apr 19, 2007
Messages
50,187
MBTI Type
BELF
Enneagram
594
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
I would like to say I understand where you all are coming from with this. I understand that humans have a range of behavior, and we're all beautiful and children of the universe.

...

If you have a person, who consistently acts like a petulant child even though petulance falls completely within the spectrum of human behavior, I personally, and maybe I'm completely unreasonable in my expectations(!!!), I expect a person to act like a mature and reasonable adult.

Like you, I don't think these truths are mutually exclusive.

I worked with someone for years who had Asperger's or some form of autism.

She was a wonderful woman in many ways. She was one person who would always send Christmas cards to her coworkers, with handwritten notes, and she had a child with many physical and mental difficulties who took a lot of care, yet she was tirelessly his sole defender and passionately loved him. She was also meticulous and very intelligent, a wonderful analyst.

At the same time, she was just one of the most difficult people I have ever worked with, and her presence in the department was more disruptive than anyone I have worked with in my entire professional career. Just because she had many good traits and was doing the best that she could did not resolve the office interpersonal difficulties. It took a few years, but her effectiveness as an employee was greatly reduced because none of the project groups wanted her working on their team -- she was inflexible, vocally critical, paranoid, used inappropriate language when upset, and simply would refuse to do the tasks she was assigned in a way that integrated with the goal the team needed to accomplish. She also had little sense of boundaries or appropriate behavior in a community setting. She would act inappropriately in front of the customer, which threatened our retention of work contracts; at least one company said they did not want her to participate in any more meetings, or else...

Morale suffered when she was involved in a project because progress would inevitably be derailed; things would take 2-3x longer to accomplish, and often her portion of the tasks would have to be redone.

I attributed a lot of this to her condition, which wasn't her fault; but it didn't change the fact that she was a hindrance to an effective workforce and was causing the bulk of other employees to either transfer or leave because of their own diminished effectiveness.

How did the company first try to deal with things? By accepting her as-is and trying to turn a blind eye to her influence. This was entirely ineffective, degraded morale, and built resentment, even among mature employees who were duly taxed by their dealings with her.

In the end, she got herself fired when a consultant was upgrading the office systems and did not handle the backup process exactly how she felt he should have handled it. I was sitting in the cube next to her and it freaked me out -- she became verbally abusive and no matter how professionally the consultant tried to handle things and resolve the issue (I was listening and was amazed at his patience), she began shouting out strings of obscenities and finally began throwing things at him, one of them being one of the heavy paperweight-style staplers that shook the cubicle wall when it hit. (her aim apparently sucked, thank God.)

The consultant was smart and left and reported the incident to HR; the next morning she was gone.

I find myself torn in situations like this. Obviously we are all different, as is she; and you want to be as accepting as possible and embracing diversity, as well as being understanding of particular personal issues that have difficulty changing. At the same time, when someone is a disruptive and demoralizing influence, just turning a "blind eye" is not going to work and in fact seems to exacerbate the difficulty.

I'm not sure how to resolve such a problem in a way that honors everyone or makes the most sense in terms of company productivity and efficiency.
 

Synapse

New member
Joined
Dec 29, 2007
Messages
3,359
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
4
I would like to say I understand where you all are coming from with this. I understand that humans have a range of behavior, and we're all beautiful and children of the universe.

But I'm thinking this out in practical terms.

If you have a person, who consistently acts like a petulant child even though petulance falls completely within the spectrum of human behavior, I personally, and maybe I'm completely unreasonable in my expectations(!!!), I expect a person to act like a mature and reasonable adult.

I'm not advocating shunning the mentally ill or that they're lesser beings. But if you have a person with a personality disorder and knowing a person with this disorder often plays manipulative games with themselves and with those around them you all saying just smile kindly at them. I even gave examples of when at other times and under similar circumstances the advice would be to get out of the situation. BUT, when someone's mentally ill it's suddenly stand and deliver!

That's controlling. People always talk about others being controlling, but how do you imagine that manifests itself in real life? In my office, when a whole department moves according to the whims of one person, that person is controlling the atmosphere. It's like people have totally skipped over the negative effects of such a person and like those who say they prefer not deal with such a person are lining them up outside of a crematorium.

I was referring to how processing the world differed. There are personal lines that delve into ethics, morals and diplomacy. Such situations are more about structure and order rather than rankings. Besides that's emotional blackmail and emotional manipulation where you do use judgments and discrimination accordingly to put distance between such behaviour and create the boundary that is needed to shut down the behaviour. It is outside of ranking, it is for me seen more in the realm of exploitative behaviour.

Mental health, yes you do need to place boundaries and buffers between disruptive situations. Without this you get walked all over, for there are people who test for the boundary and want to find the loop holes so they can be in control. And yes some people are like a dirty bomb, wanting entire departments to skip to their tunes. And as soon as they are out of the scene the atmosphere is better for it. These are tests and projections then. I dunno its a tough call. Accepting people is a fine line. Since many people's attitude and idea of what is acceptable or what isn't depends on upbringing and what happened in the formative years of life to have turned into the people that we turn into. Some people learn to be attention seekers, some learn that to rub people the wrong way gives attention and will continue to do so. A bit like a troll until you stop feeding their reality, goes back to tolerance too
 

Jaguar

Active member
Joined
May 5, 2007
Messages
20,647
That's how I understood the OP as well. Are people actually saying they have no functional personal biases? It's one thing to have a personal bias, and quite another to institutionalize your bias.

All people deserve to be loved and treated with compassion, and we all have our own gifts that can help certain others along the way. But no one person has the mental or emotional capacity to give to just anyone.

For example, I would never intentionally befriend the person who wrote the quote below, or have any desire to work with them. I have no problems with saying that they would be at the bottom of my personal ladder:
Ever since I was little I've had what I guess you could call 'fantasies' about hurting people. When I was 13 I had urges to strangle my stepsister to death. One morning before school I attempted it and I enjoyed doing it. She was trying to scream but couldn't and just before she went unconscious, I stopped, as I knew I had no plan of what to do after the death...When I was 15 I chased my neighbours friend down the road with a large knife, hoping to stab him and watch him bleed to death. He was a fast runner so he got away.

Actually, I'm interested in why you were reading an article about sadism.
It's not exactly material one reads with their coffee and danish.
Your quote came from this website:

Help! I Am a Sadist. I Love to Hurt People and Cause Pain. I Have Bought a Knife and Plan to Murder My Mother.
 

proteanmix

Plumage and Moult
Joined
Apr 23, 2007
Messages
5,514
Enneagram
1w2
Like you, I don't think these truths are mutually exclusive.

I worked with someone for years who had Asperger's or some form of autism.

She was a wonderful woman in many ways. She was one person who would always send Christmas cards to her coworkers, with handwritten notes, and she had a child with many physical and mental difficulties who took a lot of care, yet she was tirelessly his sole defender and passionately loved him. She was also meticulous and very intelligent, a wonderful analyst.

At the same time, she was just one of the most difficult people I have ever worked with, and her presence in the department was more disruptive than anyone I have worked with in my entire professional career. Just because she had many good traits and was doing the best that she could did not resolve the office interpersonal difficulties. It took a few years, but her effectiveness as an employee was greatly reduced because none of the project groups wanted her working on their team -- she was inflexible, vocally critical, paranoid, used inappropriate language when upset, and simply would refuse to do the tasks she was assigned in a way that integrated with the goal the team needed to accomplish. She also had little sense of boundaries or appropriate behavior in a community setting. She would act inappropriately in front of the customer, which threatened our retention of work contracts; at least one company said they did not want her to participate in any more meetings, or else...

Morale suffered when she was involved in a project because progress would inevitably be derailed; things would take 2-3x longer to accomplish, and often her portion of the tasks would have to be redone.

I attributed a lot of this to her condition, which wasn't her fault; but it didn't change the fact that she was a hindrance to an effective workforce and was causing the bulk of other employees to either transfer or leave because of their own diminished effectiveness.

How did the company first try to deal with things? By accepting her as-is and trying to turn a blind eye to her influence. This was entirely ineffective, degraded morale, and built resentment, even among mature employees who were duly taxed by their dealings with her.

In the end, she got herself fired when a consultant was upgrading the office systems and did not handle the backup process exactly how she felt he should have handled it. I was sitting in the cube next to her and it freaked me out -- she became verbally abusive and no matter how professionally the consultant tried to handle things and resolve the issue (I was listening and was amazed at his patience), she began shouting out strings of obscenities and finally began throwing things at him, one of them being one of the heavy paperweight-style staplers that shook the cubicle wall when it hit. (her aim apparently sucked, thank God.)

The consultant was smart and left and reported the incident to HR; the next morning she was gone.

I find myself torn in situations like this. Obviously we are all different, as is she; and you want to be as accepting as possible and embracing diversity, as well as being understanding of particular personal issues that have difficulty changing. At the same time, when someone is a disruptive and demoralizing influence, just turning a "blind eye" is not going to work and in fact seems to exacerbate the difficulty.

I'm not sure how to resolve such a problem in a way that honors everyone or makes the most sense in terms of company productivity and efficiency.

THANK YOU, Jennifer!!! You said this so much better than what I was saying it.

ETA: One of the reasons why this person isn't in danger of being fired is because they're very focused and do extremely good work on this particular area of interest, they also work her like a mule. I think the directors realize that she has something going on with her, she realizes it, and she stays because she could not go somewhere else and behave the same way. She's been at this organization for over 15 years (simply because she's been here so long and others have left has she was promoted to director because she has the departmental knowledge and context. Turnover is very high in my department, higher than the whole organization. I've been here three years and have watched four people leave my department, all of them staying for less than two years because of the atmosphere. Even people in other departments know about it.
 

Salomé

meh
Joined
Sep 25, 2008
Messages
10,527
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w4
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
I would like to say I understand where you all are coming from with this. I understand that humans have a range of behavior, and we're all beautiful and children of the universe.

But I'm thinking this out in practical terms.

If you have a person, who consistently acts like a petulant child even though petulance falls completely within the spectrum of human behavior, I personally, and maybe I'm completely unreasonable in my expectations(!!!), I expect a person to act like a mature and reasonable adult.

I'm not advocating shunning the mentally ill or that they're lesser beings. But if you have a person with a personality disorder and knowing a person with this disorder often plays manipulative games with themselves and with those around them you all saying just smile kindly at them. I even gave examples of when at other times and under similar circumstances the advice would be to get out of the situation. BUT, when someone's mentally ill it's suddenly stand and deliver!

That's controlling. People always talk about others being controlling, but how do you imagine that manifests itself in real life? In my office, when a whole department moves according to the whims of one person, that person is controlling the atmosphere. It's like people have totally skipped over the negative effects of such a person and like those who say they prefer not deal with such a person are lining them up outside of a crematorium.
Unlike Jennifer, I don't think you have provided sufficient evidence for anyone to make a conclusion about your situation, other than that you are incompatible with this person. I would have thought being "controlling" was an admirable quality in a supervisor.

You admitted in your first post that accusations of mental illness could just be "a really nasty rumour". One for which you have no evidence, yet you are quite happy to repeat it because it supports your assertion that this person is impossible to get along with.
I can imagine that you would be a very difficult person to supervise. Your tone can frequently be read as patronizing, condescending, hostile and you are giving to hyperbolic flourishes - though you may not see any of this yourself.
You also said you had a heated exchange with your boss, which suggests you are insubordinate.
I say this not to be inflammatory, but just to stress that one's perceptions are merely that.
 

Totenkindly

@.~*virinaĉo*~.@
Joined
Apr 19, 2007
Messages
50,187
MBTI Type
BELF
Enneagram
594
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
I can imagine that you would be a very difficult person to supervise. Your tone can frequently be read as patronizing, condescending, hostile and you are giving to hyperbolic flourishes - though you may not see any of this yourself.
You also said you had a heated exchange with your boss, which suggests you are insubordinate.
I say this not to be inflammatory, but just to stress that one's perceptions are merely that.

You know, I think if I did an analysis of you in like vein, right now, in this very post, you'd consider it inflammatory and respond as such; you'd also probably tell me I cannot see you in real life and it would be wrong for me to intuit based on what you might post here. It's funny to me that you don't seem to perceive that in yourself and simply dismiss it. What's up with that? It definitely reduces communication potential.

Now, I do agree with your assertion that one's perceptions are merely that.

One way (which works for me) to erode bias is to triangulate observations with other people. If different people have similar observations about the same person, while it doesn't yet thoroughly "prove" anything, it does tend to weed out / weaken any of the personal bias in play.

I guess another way would be to view people in contexts other than the one in question, although that can be difficult for some types of relationship. Again, 'walking around' the person and viewing them from different angles (i.e., in different contexts) can filter bias as well.
 

Charmed Justice

Nickle Iron Silicone
Joined
Jul 22, 2009
Messages
2,805
MBTI Type
INFJ

Salomé

meh
Joined
Sep 25, 2008
Messages
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You know, I think if I did an analysis of you in like vein, right now, in this very post, you'd consider it inflammatory and respond as such; you'd also probably tell me I cannot see you in real life and it would be wrong for me to intuit based on what you might post here. It's funny to me that you don't seem to perceive that in yourself and simply dismiss it. What's up with that? It definitely reduces communication potential.

Now, I do agree with your assertion that one's perceptions are merely that.

One way (which works for me) to erode bias is to triangulate observations with other people. If different people have similar observations about the same person, while it doesn't yet thoroughly "prove" anything, it does tend to weed out / weaken any of the personal bias in play.

I guess another way would be to view people in contexts other than the one in question, although that can be difficult for some types of relationship. Again, 'walking around' the person and viewing them from different angles (i.e., in different contexts) can filter bias as well.
The only thing inflammatory about your post is your presumption about my motivation and reaction to a hypothetical situation. Which is completely invalid.

Am I difficult to supervise? Probably - that's why I work for myself.
 

Jaguar

Active member
Joined
May 5, 2007
Messages
20,647
I say this not to be inflammatory



crying-baby-272x300.jpg
 

Jaguar

Active member
Joined
May 5, 2007
Messages
20,647
I like Dr. Robert and I've linked to him in other post before on other topics. I felt like this case helped to illustrate one of the things I was trying to say.


Remind me to quote Charles Manson to illustrate a point. :newwink:
 

Charmed Justice

Nickle Iron Silicone
Joined
Jul 22, 2009
Messages
2,805
MBTI Type
INFJ
Remind me to quote Charles Manson to illustrate a point. :newwink:

Haha. Well in the case of this thread, that might be a good idea. All I know is that I have no interest in holding hands and singing kumbya with the likes of either. And that's not to say they don't deserve lots of cuddles.....from someone else.:smile:
 

Jaguar

Active member
Joined
May 5, 2007
Messages
20,647
You fail to inflame me puss-cat.

Though the joke is getting a bit old.

My intent was never to inflame. That's your intent, with what you call: "destructive Ti."
I merely posted your photograph.
If you look in the mirror you will see a remarkable resemblance, baby blue.
 

Salomé

meh
Joined
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Messages
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My intent was never to inflame. That's your intent, with what you call: "destructive Ti."
I merely posted your photograph.
If you look in the mirror, you will see a remarkable resemblance.
Jaguars stalk - who knew?

What you see in the mirror is not what everyone else sees in the mirror.
You'll realise this if and when you ever grow up.
 

Jaguar

Active member
Joined
May 5, 2007
Messages
20,647
Jaguars stalk - who knew?

Here we go again.

You once accused Jennifer of invading your "privacy" for reading your comments on a PUBLIC wall.
Now you accuse me of "stalking" you, because I read your PUBLIC comments on PUBLIC i-Spy?

What the fuck is wrong with you?
Are you so delusional you think you can post PUBLIC comments but kid yourself they are "private?"

You can't pretend to be "objective" in one thread,
and then claim in another thread your Ti is "destructive."

I guess you have a new speciality: Destructive objectivity.
How original, baby blue.
 

proteanmix

Plumage and Moult
Joined
Apr 23, 2007
Messages
5,514
Enneagram
1w2
Unlike Jennifer, I don't think you have provided sufficient evidence for anyone to make a conclusion about your situation, other than that you are incompatible with this person. I would have thought being "controlling" was an admirable quality in a supervisor.

You admitted in your first post that accusations of mental illness could just be "a really nasty rumour".

Yes, you are right I did say that. I mentioned it possibly being a nasty rumor because I have heard no confirmation/denial from her and I did not want to assume. I don't assume someone has a mental illness because I don't get along with them. Give me some credit please.:rolli: I would actually prefer her to be autistic so I can have a reason why she behaves as she does instead of believing that she's just an asshole because the sun shines.

...it supports your assertion that this person is impossible to get along with.

Oh, she is difficult. People have left the department because of her. She's been mentioned as a cause for leaving in exit interviews. I've gone to HR and they say they are well aware of the problem. But most people deal with it through leaving, avoiding, and accommodating, not by actually saying anything to her.

I can imagine that you would be a very difficult person to supervise. Your tone can frequently be read as patronizing, condescending, hostile and you are giving to hyperbolic flourishes - though you may not see any of this yourself.

Didn't you say this to me nearly verbatim last week? When you besmirch my character, please do so originally. I don't mind being psychoanalyzed, but I'd like to hear some new stuff to promptly disregard from you.

Here's this thing I learned about called reframing.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to reframe her as a unhealthy INTP (not really I'm pretty sure she's INFP but for the purposes of this post I'll call her INTP). That way, all her outbursts and toxic behavior can be chalked up to "inferior Fe." And you can call my unsubstantiated complaints inferior Ti or just being plain ol' Fe. Because laying this at the feet of the most likely cause, that she may really have some mental disorder, is offensive to you. But if it's just normal INTP behavior, to be a jerk, then all is well. So I'll give you something within your sphere of knowledge and understanding so you can have your aha moment.

You also said you had a heated exchange with your boss, which suggests you are insubordinate.
I say this not to be inflammatory, but just to stress that one's perceptions are merely that.

We've had several heated exchanges. And how did you guess how much I :wubbie: being called insubordinate! More reframing: For a Fe-dom to be continually insubordinate, it's a very freeing experience. Screw being agreeable. Must be like an INTP actually giving a damn. Give me the social skills of an INTP and the world unfurls in front of me! (<----Hyperbolic Flourish, in case you don't know).

Alright, I spent the last 15 minutes of my lunch responding to you and I've got to get back to doing some work. If I feel like going back and forth with you, I'll do it after quittin time.
 
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