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Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert's Type?

  • INTP

    Votes: 3 75.0%
  • INTJ

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • OTHER

    Votes: 1 25.0%

  • Total voters
    4

Qlip

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What was the context of that statement?

IRL, Ni is always paired with Fe or Te, so it's going to manifest with a closure pattern... you'll be seeing it expressed through one or the other, typically.

Oops, I meant Jenaphor. I was rushing.


The Ni in INTJ is open-ended and perceptive. A closed form of perception is not perception. You counter-argue that the plot of Dune comes to a conclusion. Well yes, otherwise it wouldn't be a novel, although you must see that many elements to the story are open-ended. For example, Paul walking off blindly into the desert leaves an opening. The many times when there was no corpus delicti (as with Paul and Jessica twice in Dune, and then Leto in Children of Dune) leaves an opening.

But that's not the point anyway, which is that evolution is an open-ended process. The ultimate goal of the Golden Path is to obviate mankind's ultimate stagnation, devolution, and then extinction, for which there can be no conclusion because the Golden Path is eternal.

I guess, see what Jennifer said, INTJ expression is very directed, with Ni as part of the process.

And as far as all novels having a conclusion, well, that's a debatable point. So far I've noticed that a lot of the open endedness that I've encountered so far seems to exist to highlight the realities of possibilities not enacted.

I like how we all just restated the same thing as far as the Golden Path is concerned, but used different words. Or are we disagreeing? I can't tell. :D
 

Mal12345

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The prescient vision resembles Ni more than Ne.

If anybody was Ne, it was Leto II, who stood in contrast to Paul's Ni visionary approach. Paul was the more passive Ni type, Leto the active Ne type. They both foresaw the same future of possibilities, but the end of all paths was the same destination - mankind's extinction. Paul saw the Golden Path as the possibility that stood against this, but he refused to take it. He was, ultimately, an ineffectual visionary controlled by the religious mob he unleashed on mankind simply by accepting the role of Mahdi.

So in that respect, it is not so much that prescience is Ni, or Ne, or anything else. It's a question of personalities, not abilities. Leto had a more reckless, adventurous personality, and did not feel constrained by historical events as did Paul. Leto was the true leader of the future, for the next 3500 years, and beyond.
 

Mal12345

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What was the context of that statement?

IRL, Ni is always paired with Fe or Te, so it's going to manifest with a closure pattern... you'll be seeing it expressed through one or the other, typically.

He meant to reference Jenaphor.
 

Mal12345

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Oops, I meant Jenaphor. I was rushing.




I guess, see what Jennifer said, INTJ expression is very directed, with Ni as part of the process.

And as far as all novels having a conclusion, well, that's a debatable point. So far I've noticed that a lot of the open endedness that I've encountered so far seems to exist to highlight the realities of possibilities not enacted.

I like how we all just restated the same thing as far as the Golden Path is concerned, but used different words. Or are we disagreeing? I can't tell. :D

It was kind of easy to see you were rushing. Perhaps you rushed on past your point about the Golden Path. I saw where you referenced God Emperor, but the point was not obvious to me. And anyway, the origin of the Golden Path was in Dune:Messiah.
 

Qlip

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It was kind of easy to see you were rushing. Perhaps you rushed on past your point about the Golden Path. I saw where you referenced God Emperor, but the point was not obvious to me. And anyway, the origin of the Golden Path was in Dune:Messiah.

Nah, I rushed the name. Everything else was me not remembering a lot of the details and order since It's been a while. I blurbed with Kdude further down about Leto II.
 

Mal12345

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I guess, see what Jennifer said, INTJ expression is very directed, with Ni as part of the process.

Of course, and that process is directed by Te. Ni possibilities, in themselves, have no direction, no point, no conclusion. It is to see the eventual fate of mankind, as Paul did, and do nothing about it. Paul's Te was under-developed, he lacked in judgment, but his Ni was highly developed. So his strong Ni personality was not balanced by good judgment, or really, any judgment at all.

And you can see this in Paul's characterization early on, where he refused to engage in his combat training exercise because he wasn't "in the mood." And of course, throughout the first two novels, Paul refused to engage in any decisive action without some serious hesitation and uncertainty. The myriad possible futures in his vision did not bring certainty, he always stood on the cusp of success/disaster, life/death.

You can see this most plainly in Dune before Paul gives his speech to the Fremen tribes which meant either his death, or his evolution to the level of Mahdi. The speech had to be done in such and such a way, one slip of a tiny vocal intonation during his speech and he was doomed.

But once he attained the level of Mahdi, he became the least powerful person in the universe. A mere symbol, really.

Ne Leto, on the other hand, was a real driving force. Leto was not controlled by the religious mob, he eventually controlled them. And he had to do so by actively pursuing a course Paul was afraid to take, that of the God Emperor.

And as far as all novels having a conclusion, well, that's a debatable point. So far I've noticed that a lot of the open endedness that I've encountered so far seems to exist to highlight the realities of possibilities not enacted.

I like how we all just restated the same thing as far as the Golden Path is concerned, but used different words. Or are we disagreeing? I can't tell. :D

As someone in these books said, "Answers only lead to more questions."
 

Mal12345

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Nah, I rushed the name. Everything else was me not remembering a lot of the details and order since It's been a while. I blurbed with Kdude further down about Leto II.

If you didn't rush the entire post, then maybe I'm just not following your point. I don't see that obverting something has anything to do with these books.
 

Mal12345

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It's been a while since I've reread the entire series. This sounds partially right, but I think Leto's worries were that people would stagnate and contract and die, which is why Leto engineered his multi-millenial reign of boredom and tension. Or, I may not be remembering correctly.

Maybe from an MBTI POV the theme all together is you can Ni yourself to death when you deny unimagined possibilites. This sounds possibly like the work of a healthy INTJ.

I see your reference to God Emperor. We're not disagreeing at all. I could nitpick and say that Leto didn't "worry" that people would stagnate and die. He knew it. All future possibilities pointed toward mankind's eventual extinction. It is its love of security within established institutions which will lead to stagnation. So Leto gave them all the security they will ever need or want, an enforced peace so sterile they couldn't stand it.
 

Qlip

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If you didn't rush the entire post, then maybe I'm just not following your point. I don't see that obverting something has anything to do with these books.

We're discussing the MBTI type of Frank Herbert. We were talking about the open-endedness of Dune. Open endedness can describe conclusions in-story or conclusions as far as a message that the author intended. I did not sense an obvert message, but more of an exploration of ideas. In this sense, the story could be considered open ended.

Paul's prescience and the handling of the structure of Dune, always hinting at branching paths, the intent to arrive at some destiny may lead to me to believe that Frank Herbert himself may have had Ni. But it's not conclusive.

Those are my points, if I have any.
 

Mal12345

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We're discussing the MBTI type of Frank Herbert. We were talking about the open-endedness of Dune. Open endedness can describe conclusions in-story or conclusions as far as a message that the author intended. I did not sense an obvert message, but more of an exploration of ideas. In this sense, the story could be considered open ended.

Paul's prescience and the handling of the structure of Dune, always hinting at branching paths, the intent to arrive at some destiny may lead to me to believe that Frank Herbert himself may have had Ni. But it's not conclusive.

Those are my points, if I have any.

"Exploration of ideas" is INTJ on the face of it.

I didn't arrive at Herbert's type by exploring the novels. In the OP I referenced the wikipedia article on Frank Herbert. It was this quote:

I think science fiction does help, and it points in very interesting directions. It points in relativistic directions. It says that we have the imagination for these other opportunities, these other choices. We tend to tie ourselves down to limited choices. We say, "Well, the only answer is...." or, "If you would just. . . ." Whatever follows these two statements narrows the choices right there. It gets the vision right down close to the ground so that you don't see anything happening outside. Humans tend not to see over a long range. Now we are required, in these generations, to have a longer range view of what we inflict on the world around us. This is where, I think, science fiction is helping. I don't think that the mere writing of such a book as Brave New World or 1984 prevents those things which are portrayed in those books from happening. But I do think they alert us to that possibility and make that possibility less likely. They make us aware that we may be going in that direction.

Edit - I almost forgot about this quote from the same wiki article: "Frank Herbert carefully refrained from offering his readers formulaic answers to many of the questions he explored." That is also INTJ.
 
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