MBTI by Escher

[Blackwater]

I came across this picture and had kind of an intuitive moment. I think this might serve as a very good rendition of how the psyche can be seduced by jungian typology. Of course, you shouldn't take this to mean that the MBTI is useless or anything. Just that sometimes, we all go a little overboard in our use of typology.

 

[Nadir]

Of course, you shouldn't take this to mean that the MBTI is useless or anything.

Inherently it is.

 

[mippus]

Esher is brilliant!
And indeed, there is no harm in reminding ourselves of the relative nature of typologies...

 

[marm]

All knowledge is relative, but this doesn't make the striving for knowledge useless. I hope everyone already knows that. I suppose its good for some people to be reminded of it, but I find myself to be pretty obsessed with relativitism as it is. My problem is that I can get stuck in my own subjective experience which is as relative as one can get. Systems like typology are important to me because they give me some semi-objective(ie collective) reference points. Typology is a lot less relative than most things people base their lives on.

The other way I keep from getting lost in relative systems is by having multiple relative systems that each act as an external reference point for the others. Multiple perspectives is the closest thing that humans can come to objectivity.

The problem with a system like typology is people become obsessed with it and identify with it... instead of using it. Typology is just about patterns, and these patterns are as much about how people create systematized theories as it is about patterns of personality types.

The only times I usually think about typology are when I'm on a typology forum or when I'm reading a typology book. If someone asked me about myself, the first thing to come to mind wouldn't be that I'm INFP.

 

[Athenian200]

I came across this picture and had kind of an intuitive moment. I think this might serve as a very good rendition of how the psyche can be seduced by jungian typology. Of course, you shouldn't take this to mean that the MBTI is useless or anything. Just that sometimes, we all go a little overboard in our use of typology.

I don't see anything unusual about that picture, except for the castle-like structure being so close to the homes, the unusual plants, and the chiseled fortress in the cliff off to the side. What is it supposed to convey about MBTI? That it has bizarre elements?

Multiple perspectives is the closest thing that humans can come to objectivity.

I would have to agree with you on that, marmalade. I always have to express my ideas to other people and get certain kinds of responses to feel that it actually made any sense. Because for all I know, it might well have been gibberish to them if I don't get a response that seems to indicate comprehension and acknowledgment.

 

[mippus]

I don't see anything unusual about that picture, except for the castle-like structure being so close to the homes, the unusual plants, and the chiseled fortress in the cliff off to the side. What is it supposed to convey about MBTI? That it has bizarre elements?

Follow the flow of the water...

 

[Athenian200]

Follow the flow of the water...

Hey... the water's not flowing right. It seems to cycle back on itself somehow. It's as if it somehow reaches the top, falls down to power the wheel, and then flows down somehow reaching the top and... falls again? That doesn't make sense, the slope would either be such that it fell in the first place to power the wheel and then drained off downwards rather than back upwards, or else the water shouldn't fall because it's already flowed down rather than upwards. It seems to exploit two kinds of perspective on the same object, which isn't possible in reality, but is possible in the drawing due to how the rules of perspective work. The problem is that there are no pumps in this picture. If the water were pumped and recycled, it might make sense, but then if you can power the pumps, why do you need a waterwheel? This picture makes no sense.

 

[mippus]

That is why I love Esher's work so much.
That it doesn't make real sense is the beauty of it.

 

[Nadir]

Yep. That's the idea.

 

[Athenian200]

That is why I love Esher's work so much.
That it doesn't make real sense is the beauty of it.

So... what does it mean? That things that seem like reasonable/normal assumptions at first may actually be wrong, but no one notices because they seem okay until you examine them closely?

 

[INTJMom]

I thought it was a representation of circular reasoning.

I'm an INTJ because MBTT told me so,
but MBTT told me I was an INTJ because I told it so.

 

[Athenian200]

I thought it was a representation of circular reasoning.

I'm an INTJ because MBTT told me so,
but MBTT told me I was an INTJ because I told it so.

Yeah... okay, so it's saying that circular reasoning (which exists in MBTI) seems to work, but doesn't if you look at it? Just like that river. I think I see what you mean.

 

[arcticangel02]

Escher is great!

His drawings are food for thought in themselves.

 

[wedekit]

We have to start somewhere though. People going overboard with the MBTI helps others discover its flaws and then we can work on it more and more.

 

[mippus]

"What does it mean?" is a question I never ask myself when it comes to Esher's work.
As to MBTI, it is not about what is wrong, but about incompleteness and enjoying exactly that

 

[Blackwater]

Mippus got it right.

Also, Athenian you got pretty close to the core of the matter yourself:

It seems to exploit two kinds of perspective on the same object, which isn't possible in reality, but is possible in the drawing due to how the rules of perspective work.

Like MBTI somtimes offers severel possible interpretations of the same phenomena to make things fit with the theory, even though they sometimes really shouldn't, thus seducing the psyche into reductionism.

 

[Nocapszy]

I thought it was a representation of circular reasoning.

Everything he does is...

His shit is cool, but the concepts are pretty bland and repetitive. They don't make any really revolutionary -- pun intended; that's verbal escher style -- statements.

Seems to me anyway that he just uses visual puns. I think he's more of a comedian than anything else.

I really don't see the MBTI thing.

 

[Nocapszy]

This might be what he was approaching (not sure what the coral is about though... probably layered cycles?).

Sort of a cheat at perpetual motion.

 

[mippus]

never saw this...
Nice!