My INTP(?) Crush Du Jour

[Fecal McAngry]

I love Lierre Keith. This is a wonderful interview:
Our Natural Life « ONL050 In Defense of Omnivores

Here's another:

Interview with Lierre Keith | Precision Nutrition

One does not always associate "passionate" and "idealistic" with INTPs, but some of the most passionate, idealistic souls I've ever encountered have been INTPs...

INTJ Michael Eades reviews her book:
The Vegetarian Myth | The Blog of Michael R. Eades, M.D.

 

[Salomé]

What makes you think she's INTP?

The fact that she has what are, by your own admission, atypical traits, is not the best argument I've heard...

 

[Fecal McAngry]

What makes you think she's INTP?

The fact that she has what are, by your own admission, atypical traits, is not the best argument I've heard...

I think you misunderstand me. "Passion" and "idealism" are by no means atypical traits for an INTP, they just are not the first words that typically pop into ones head when discussing the type.

INTP idealism is not NF idealism, of course, nor is INTP passion usually of the ripped-bodice Fabio variant...

Have you heard the interviews or read the book or at least the excerpt Eades links to? Difficult to discuss without common ground.

Her website, btw: Lierre Keith

 

[Salomé]

I read bits. I wasn't really interested in what she was evangelizing about. And my script blocker was too proscriptive to play the video...

The question mark makes me think you are asking for an opinion of her type, rather than just declaring your crush. So...

What makes you think she is INTP?


(And yes, I accept that we can be atypically idealistic/passionate. I just didn't think it made a persuasive argument.)

 

[Fecal McAngry]

I read bits. I wasn't really interested in what she was evangelizing about. And my script blocker was too proscriptive to play the video...

The question mark makes me think you are asking for an opinion of her type, rather than just declaring your crush. So...

What makes you think she is INTP?


(And yes, I accept that we can be atypically idealistic/passionate. I just didn't think it made a persuasive argument.)

"We"?? Aren't you an INTJ?

Pity you don't find the subject of her work of interest, the quality of our diets and world influence our lives...a lot.

My post was not an argument, nor was it intended as a question to anyone but myself. At the time I was about 97.24% certain that she is an INTP, now it's more like 99.87%.

Lierre's book & interviews reveal her as someone who, as she describes, is all about a search for "the deepest truth I can find" even if she finds it personally painful and even if that information requires her--as it did--to alter her life in a dramatic fashion & demolish her previous identity and intellectual paradigm(s)...her writing involves Ti destructions and deconstructions of her own previously accepted beliefs expressed in an Ne fashion, buttressed by Si factoids...the only area of doubt I could possibly have is whether she is an INTP or ENTP, but all the evidence I've encountered is unequivocal in pointing towards introversion--she does not used Fe in the manipulative or self-aggrandizing manner of many charming ENTPs, she's not distracted by zany ENP flights of fancy into intuitive playgrounds, she's extremely soft-spoken and appears to live a very low-key, introverted lifestyle, etc.

"For two years after I returned to eating meat, I was compelled to read vegan message boards online. I don’t know why. I wasn’t looking for a fight. I never posted anything myself. Lots of small, intense subcultures have cult-like elements, and veganism is no exception. Maybe the compulsion had to do with my own confusion, spiritual, political, personal. Maybe I was revisiting the sight of an accident: this was where I had destroyed my body. Maybe I had questions and I wanted to see if I could hold my own against the answers that I had once held tight, answers that had felt righteous, but now felt empty. Maybe I don’t know why. It left me anxious, angry, and desperate each time.

But one post marked a turning point. A vegan flushed out his idea to keep animals from being killed—not by humans, but by other animals. Someone should build a fence down the middle of the Serengeti, and divide the predators from the prey. Killing is wrong and no animals should ever have to die, so the big cats and wild canines would go on one side, while the wildebeests and zebras would live on the other. He knew the carnivores would be okay because they didn’t need to be carnivores. That was a lie the meat industry told. He’d seen his dog eat grass: therefore, dogs could live on grass.

No one objected. In fact, others chimed in. My cat eats grass, too, one woman added, all enthusiasm. So does mine! someone else posted. Everyone agreed that fencing was the solution to animal death.

Note well that the site for this liberatory project was Africa. No one mentioned the North American prairie, where carnivores and ruminants alike have been extirpated for the annual grains that vegetarians embrace. But I’ll return to that in Chapter 3.

I knew enough to know that this was insane. But no one else on the message board could see anything wrong with the scheme. So, on the theory that many readers lack the knowledge to judge this plan, I’m going to walk you through this.

Carnivores cannot survive on cellulose. They may on occasion eat grass, but they use it medicinally, usually as a purgative to clear their digestive tracts of parasites. Ruminants, on the other hand, have evolved to eat grass. They have a rumen (hence, ruminant), the first in a series of multiple stomachs that acts as a fermentative vat. What’s actually happening inside a cow or a wildebeest is that bacteria eat the grass, and the animals eat the bacteria.

Lions and hyenas and humans don’t have a ruminant’s digestive system. Literally from our teeth to our rectums we are designed for meat. We have no mechanism to digest cellulose.

So on the carnivore side of the fence, starvation will take every animal. Some will last longer than others, and those some will end their days as cannibals. The scavengers will have a Fat Tuesday party, but when the bones are picked clean, they’ll starve as well. The graveyard won’t end there. Without grazers to eat the grass, the land will eventually turn to desert.

Why? Because without grazers to literally level the playing field, the perennial plants mature, and shade out the basal growth point at the plant’s base. In a brittle environment like the Serengeti, decay is mostly physical (weathering) and chemical (oxidative), not bacterial and biological as in a moist environment. In fact, the ruminants take over most of the biological functions of soil by digesting the cellulose and returning the nutrients, once again available, in the form of urine and feces.

But without ruminants, the plant matter will pile up, reducing growth, and begin killing the plants. The bare earth is now exposed to wind, sun, and rain, the minerals leech away, and the soil structure is destroyed. In our attempt to save animals, we’ve killed everything.

On the ruminant side of the fence, the wildebeests and friends will reproduce as effectively as ever. But without the check of predators, there will quickly be more grazers than grass. The animals will outstrip their food source, eat the plants down to the ground, and then starve to death, leaving behind a seriously degraded landscape.

The lesson here is obvious, though it is profound enough to inspire a religion: we need to be eaten as much as we need to eat. The grazers need their daily cellulose, but the grass also needs the animals. It needs the manure, with its nitrogen, minerals, and bacteria; it needs the mechanical check of grazing activity; and it needs the resources stored in animal bodies and freed up by degraders when animals die.

The grass and the grazers need each other as much as predators and prey. These are not one-way relationships, not arrangements of dominance and subordination. We aren’t exploiting each other by eating. We are only taking turns.

That was my last visit to the vegan message boards. I realized then that people so deeply ignorant of the nature of life, with its mineral cycle and carbon trade, its balance points around an ancient circle of producers, consumers, and degraders, weren’t going to be able to guide me or, indeed, make any useful decisions about sustainable human culture. By turning from adult knowledge, the knowledge that death is embedded in every creature’s sustenance, from bacteria to grizzly bears, they would never be able to feed the emotional and spiritual hunger that ached in me from accepting that knowledge. Maybe in the end this book is an attempt to soothe that ache myself."

 

[Salomé]

Aren't you an INTJ?

Yes. That's why I have INTP in my profile.

Pity you don't find the subject of her work of interest, the quality of our diets and world influence our lives...a lot.

It's the evangelizing that I wasn't interested in. I've been through a similar "conversion" myself (from vegetarianism to back to meat-eating, for health reasons) I don't feel the need to write a book about the evils of vegetarianism though...

My post was not an argument, nor was it intended as a question to anyone but myself. At the time I was about 97.24% certain that she is an INTP, now it's more like 99.87%.

Why did you post in the Rational forum then? Advertising?

they would never be able to feed the emotional and spiritual hunger that ached in me from accepting that knowledge. Maybe in the end this book is an attempt to soothe that ache myself.

I'm gonna have to go with INFP.

 

[Alwar]

You would be interested in The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I thought they were using the book titles directly as the title for that first interview.

 

[Fecal McAngry]

Yes. That's why I have INTP in my profile.

You don't. You have INTp in your profile.

 

[Fecal McAngry]

I'm gonna have to go with INFP.

If you take that sentence, which could be the product of an INFP, and ignore the rest of her clearly & overwhelmingly NeTi writing, so be it...

 

[Fecal McAngry]

You would be interested in The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I thought they were using the book titles directly as the title for that first interview.

I like him. If you haven't seen it, this is great: YouTube - Authors@Google: Michael Pollan

 

[Salomé]

Multi-quote is your friend.

You don't. You have INTp in your profile.

Which isn't INTJ. (!)

If you take that sentence, which could be the product of an INFP, and ignore the rest of her clearly & overwhelmingly NeTi writing, so be it...

I didn't. I just didn't feel like quoting the whole thing. Perhaps you missed all my references to 'evangelism'?
I usually know an INTP woman when I encounter one, and she doesn't strike me as one. Whatever.

 

[Fecal McAngry]

Multi-quote is your friend.

Which isn't INTJ. (!)

I didn't. I just didn't feel like quoting the whole thing. Perhaps you missed all my references to 'evangelism'?
I usually know an INTP woman when I encounter one, and she doesn't strike me as one. Whatever.

Keith = evangelical = INFP? Do you suggest Algore is not an INTP because of his hokey crusade to "save the earth?"

Have you ever considered that function analysis may be a superior method of determining an unknown person's type when uncertainty exists?

INTp=INTJ, btw.

 

[Salomé]

Keith = evangelical = INFP? Do you suggest Algore is not an INTP because of his hokey crusade to "save the earth?"

INTp=INTJ, btw.

You are wrong. I'm not using Socionics notation. Small letters indicate that the trait is not especially dominant. Happy to further your education.


I don't know who Algore is. If you mean Al Gore, I don't think he is INTP, no.

 

[Fecal McAngry]

You are wrong. I'm not using Socionics notation. Small letters indicate that the trait is not especially dominant. Happy to further your education.


I don't know who Algore is. If you mean Al Gore, I don't think he is INTP, no.

Generally, use of lowercase last letter = socionics. What type do you imagine Algore to be?

 

[Fecal McAngry]

You are wrong. I'm not using Socionics notation.

Not according to your profile, btw, which lists at time of posting:

Socionics Type
INTp

 

[Salomé]

Not according to your profile, btw, which lists at time of posting:

Socionics Type
INTp

Are you stalking me now?


EDIT. I filled in the wrong field and was too lazy (read intP) to remove it.

Generally, use of lowercase last letter = socionics. What type do you imagine Algore to be?

Socionics is shit. I don't think I've ever taken the test.

I really haven't given it a lot of thought, but he's way too cool to be INTP.

 

[Fecal McAngry]

Are you stalking me now?

I hadn't thought of that, but I am hungry and I've never eaten an INTP before

 

[Salomé]

Your crushes are kinda transient.

 

[Fecal McAngry]

Are you stalking me now?


EDIT. I filled in the wrong field and was too lazy (read intP) to remove it.



Socionics is shit. I don't think I've ever taken the test.

I really haven't given it a lot of thought, but he's way too cool to be INTP.

Algore is an imbecile. Socionics is indeed shit, however.

 

[Fecal McAngry]

Your crushes are kinda transient.

No, but my hunger is.