• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Alain de Botton

sofmarhof

New member
Joined
Apr 30, 2009
Messages
327
MBTI Type
INTP
Any fans? I love him.

I'm thinking high ranking Si. He's all about what physical objects evoke--all of The Architecture of Happiness, the airplane graveyard, and the pelican shoes in that one book, etc.

Doesn't take criticism well, concerned with what others think of him--posted a horrible, immature comment on the blog of someone who gave him a negative review, tweeted that he felt "so ashamed" afterward. A rare moment of impulsivity. Must Google himself all the time.

I'd say Fe/Ti, leaning toward the F side but with well-developed T.

ISFJ?
 

BlahBlahNounBlah

New member
Joined
Dec 16, 2008
Messages
1,458
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
7w6
If he googles himself frequently, he'll eventually find this thread. Maybe he'll register and tell us.
 

Salomé

meh
Joined
Sep 25, 2008
Messages
10,527
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w4
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Any fans? I love him.

I'm thinking high ranking Si. He's all about what physical objects evoke--all of The Architecture of Happiness, the airplane graveyard, and the pelican shoes in that one book, etc.

Doesn't take criticism well, concerned with what others think of him--posted a horrible, immature comment on the blog of someone who gave him a negative review, tweeted that he felt "so ashamed" afterward. A rare moment of impulsivity. Must Google himself all the time.

I'd say Fe/Ti, leaning toward the F side but with well-developed T.

ISFJ?
Oh no. NONONONONO!! Are you mad?
NO.

He is definitely INXP (prolly F, as you say). His work absolutely reeks of Ne! The meticulous observation is a habit he has forced himself to learn to make his writing more evocative.
I adore him. If only he were more prolific.

I'm trying to find the bit in The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work about killing the tuna fish. Maybe I'll post it later.


If he googles himself frequently, he'll eventually find this thread. Maybe he'll register and tell us.
He has impeccable taste and would never condescend to do so, I'm sure.
(although I would faint from happiness if he did :))


EDIT:
A cry goes up on deck. One of the school, by all indications a heavier, older specimen, a veteran of five years of unmolested navigation, has taken a bite at a bait of mackerel. Fifteen minutes later he announces himself on the starboard side, panicked and enraged, his tail hammering against the boat. Fifty kilos in weight, he is attempting to prise himself free of the cable tearing apart his palette, but he does not count on two men, above him at either end, reaching into the water with steel hooks and flipping him onto the deck with a victorious cry. Pandemonium follows. The tuna has never been this far out of the water, has never seen light this bright, but he knows instinctively that he will drown in so much air. The fishermen need him to stop flooding his arteries with blood in panic, or he will darken and therefore ruin the appearance of his flesh against a dinner plate. So the captain’s brother swiftly wrestles him between his rubber boots and raises aloft a large blunt mallet, resembling the archetypal club of prehistoric man, carved from the trunk of a coconut tree. He brings it down heavily. The tuna’s eyes jerk out of their sockets. His tail convulses. His jaw opens and closes, as ours might do, but no scream emerges. The mallet strikes again. There is a dull sound, that of densely packed brain and experience, shattering inside a tight bony cage, triggering the thought that we too are never more than one hard slam away from a definitive end to our carefully arranged ideas and copious involvement with ourselves. The fisherman himself is enraged now, striking the beast vengefully, cursing the dying creature in Dhivehi “Nagooballa, nagooballa, hey aruvaalaani” (“Bitch, bitch, you’ve had it now”). This is the first tuna he’s caught in eight days and there are six children waiting at home.

Rich red blood explodes from the creature’s brain and sprays across the boat. Two of the younger crewman rush forward and slit open his mouth, pulling out his gills and ventilation system. Next they turn their knives to his stomach releasing the undigested bodies of smaller fish – fusiliers, cardinal fish, sprats – on which he has breakfasted at the start of this infernal day. The deck becomes slippery with organs. As the killing spree goes on I find myself thinking obsessively of my elder son, four years old and about the same length as some of the larger fish. It is no longer implausible that, as many religions maintain, we are all in the end, from moth to president, members of the same, large, irrevocably fratricidal family. Unburdened of his guts and reproductive tract, the tuna is hoisted in the air and plunged into the first of four refrigerated compartments, which will, by nightfall, be filled by the bodies of a further twenty of his companions. One wonders what the atmosphere will be like in the school, 60 metres below, as the survivors pursue their way to Somalia; whether there will be a memory of the absent members and, in the pitch-black waters, a terrible fear.


I read this passage aloud to a friend. At the end, we looked each other and said one word in unison: “NF!”

:)
 
Last edited:

sofmarhof

New member
Joined
Apr 30, 2009
Messages
327
MBTI Type
INTP
I'm not mad, I'm just a noob. Have you read the pelican shoes bit?
 

Salomé

meh
Joined
Sep 25, 2008
Messages
10,527
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w4
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Haha! I loved that book. I wanted to be that girl with the green eyes and the red hair and the alluring neck..

Why do I always end up sitting next to sweaty, leery, pin-striped knobs on flights? Where are all the nerdy philosophers when you want to share a bag of nuts and passion for Goethe?
 

sofmarhof

New member
Joined
Apr 30, 2009
Messages
327
MBTI Type
INTP
Okay, you got me with dead tuna --> my four year old son.
 

Salomé

meh
Joined
Sep 25, 2008
Messages
10,527
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w4
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Books are more intimate though, don't you think?
Strangely...
 

pinkgraffiti

New member
Joined
Mar 20, 2011
Messages
1,482
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
748
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
mmm, Ne-dom you sure? i'm an Ne-dom. initially found him interesting, now he's starting to annoy/bore me.

I really think he's Si-dom. At most, Si 2nd. But so much obsession with Si, seriously. An Ne-dom might find the topic of Si interesting for 2 seconds, but devote so many books to this without being an Si-dom......really?


PS. I was thinking about this and... I think what ultimately annoys me about him is how I sense that the arguments he presents...well, aren't based on his experience, aren't "human", in the sense that they are raw, imperfect, but true. This is what I value as an ENFP. Instead, when I hear him talk I get the feeling....how shall I explain... that he's being politically correct or even making disingenuous considerations about how he thinks the world should be.

For instance, I was annoyed by a video I saw of him talking about how you don't need to travel to *find yourself*. Search for it if you will. It annoys me because it's like he doesn't take into consideration to the variety of different people, personalities, ways of being. And his advise is not based on his experience. So it is useless to me. It's just someone extra offering *noise* to the already existing mess.

Another example, the video you posted: about our anxiety in achieving a social status. Yeah, it's true. But he's being disingenuous again. I read an article where he says he started the whole book writing thing because he wanted to be respected by his distant, "tyrannical" father. So now I have to watch a video of this person talking about the problems of social status in today's society? Really? Is that based on some personal experience or transformation? Don't think so. It's just politically correct. And it's crap.

Kinda how I feel about him right now. Not an Ne-dom.
 

SpankyMcFly

Level 8 Propaganda Bot
Joined
Nov 19, 2009
Messages
2,349
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
461
Instinctual Variant
so/sx
INFJ

Exhibit A: “To one's enemies: "I hate myself more than you ever could.” ― Alain de Botton
 
Top