# If type didn't matter...



## Animal (May 29, 2012)

Entropic said:


> EDIT
> I see that you edited your post, so let me address that one too since you are taking that post extremely out of context; I actually left that thread and I have not since challenged or brought type in relation to the typee except the one thread where she actually explicitly mentioned me and I left my opinion and I did not really interact with her further. In addition, what actually occurred was that I was asked to type the typee by a third party and I suggested an Fe ego type (I had no prior relationship with the typee and did not know who they were) and I did so very casually because I had little interest in the subject which is why my first post in the thread is actually a oneliner.
> 
> She took it very negatively as evidenced here.
> ...


Again this is irrelevant, and not quite true. I read the whole thread, plus another one in which you were forcefully typing her at ESFJ. I have seen you forcefully type people on both enneagram and socionics forums, whether it be through forcefully debunking claims or telling them you don't care about their opinions about themselves because they don't understand the system... or whether it be by dissecting their posts and typing them directly. Yet you have the gall to tell other people not to type third parties and that you can't tell someone's type from the outside. *This is hypocritical*. People might argue with you about your interpretation of either system, too, when it comes to your own type or those you are defending, but still, you continuously insist that it's wrong to type other people who know themselves best, or celebrities, or whoever, whenever it suits you, while continuing to do exactly that, yourself. Your understanding of the system is just as subjective as anyone's, so "debunking myths" and telling people they don't understand the system if they type at X type, is still disagreeing with their type, which is exactly what you claim people should not do. You can't have it both ways. Either stop typing people, and just make threads about debunking myths without bringing anyone's type (even your own) into it, or stop telling other people when you think it's ok for them to type people. Likewise, either stop talking about any type that isn't your own, or stop telling other people they have no right to comment on types that aren't their own.


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## birdsintrees (Aug 20, 2012)

Temp close for review \0/


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## birdsintrees (Aug 20, 2012)

*Thread reopened. Please refrain from any further arguing and derailing and keep this thread on topic. Thank you in advance.*


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## birdsintrees (Aug 20, 2012)

(Actually reopening the thread is helpful probably.. please see above post.)


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## Ace Face (Nov 13, 2011)

Coburn said:


> I wasn't aware type actually mattered...


Exactly. I suppose my biggest questions would be: "Why does it matter to some people?" "What exactly are they getting out of it?" 
I can't foresee an answer that doesn't in a roundabout way condone judging others in some way, shape, or form.


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## enneathusiast (Dec 15, 2012)

Ace Face said:


> Exactly. I suppose my biggest questions would be: "Why does it matter to some people?" "What exactly are they getting out of it?"
> I can't foresee an answer that doesn't in a roundabout way condone judging others in some way, shape, or form.


For me it mostly does two things.

It identifies different aspects of myself that generally lie outside my awareness. Becoming aware of them gives me more flexibility in how I respond to and approach life and also gives me alternatives to move to when I become too stuck in or limited by my habits.

It lets me know just how different people are from me. I've used the term psychological diversity in the past to describe it in the sense of valuing or respecting diversity in others. It helps me to more easily accept and understand where people are coming from by seeing them in terms of the reality their coming from instead of seeing them in terms of the reality I'm coming from. In other words, seeing them as they are to themselves instead of as I think they should be.


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## Ace Face (Nov 13, 2011)

enneathusiast said:


> For me it mostly does two things.
> 
> It identifies different aspects of myself that generally lie outside my awareness. Becoming aware of them gives me more flexibility in how I respond to and approach life and also gives me alternatives to move to when I become too stuck in or limited by my habits.


Right. The enneagram can certainly be used in this way, but how does this correlate to the reason type matters to you?



> It lets me know just how different people are from me. I've used the term psychological diversity in the past to describe it in the sense of valuing or respecting diversity in others. It helps me to more easily accept and understand where people are coming from by seeing them in terms of the reality their coming from instead of seeing them in terms of the reality I'm coming from. In other words, seeing them as they are to themselves instead of as I think they should be.


If this is the case, then you're one of few who seems to be using the enneagram in a productive manner in terms of the lens through which you see others.


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## 1000BugsNightSky (May 8, 2014)

I don't get the question


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## Swordsman of Mana (Jan 7, 2011)

Coburn said:


> I wasn't aware type actually mattered...


type affects your behaviors, thoughts and feelings on a visceral level and explains different was of thinking that other people are likely to engage in. how could it not matter? that would be like training to become an opera singer and being like "it doesn't really matter if I'm a tenor or a bass"


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## enneathusiast (Dec 15, 2012)

Ace Face said:


> Right. The enneagram can certainly be used in this way, but how does this correlate to the reason type matters to you?


Enneagram type for me doesn't describe personality. It describes a focus used to organize experience and reality that leads to a certain way of approaching life. Type helps me find that within myself by identifying the various ways to do that.



Ace Face said:


> If this is the case, then you're one of few who seems to be using the enneagram in a productive manner in terms of the lens through which you see others.


There are a lot of people who are serious about using the Enneagram types in a productive manner. Many are involved with one of the various schools or organizations though. People just learning it off the Internet or reading some books often see it as just another personality typology though and may not get deeper into it than that. 

This board isn't really a good representation of people using the Enneagram. It's a good representation of people that haven't had any guidance in understanding and using it.


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## Coburn (Sep 3, 2010)

Swordsman of Mana said:


> type affects your behaviors, thoughts and feelings on a visceral level and explains different was of thinking that other people are likely to engage in. how could it not matter? that would be like training to become an opera singer and being like "it doesn't really matter if I'm a tenor or a bass"


Typology is a lens. It doesn't affect how a person functions in and of itself. It just attempts to reorganize a person's actions and thoughts through a particular perspective.

A person might choose to change themselves as a result of the new perspective, but they aren't affected by type just because the theory exists.

To understand what I mean, look at enneagram as if it were a religion. To you, a believer, my disbelief doesn't change the "truth" of the system. I am simply ignorant of its influence. To me, a non-believer, it's not truth. Just a mode of thinking that can be shed like clothes and traded for a new perspective. 

It tells me more when someone actually buys into this theory than when they give themselves a number in it.


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## enneathusiast (Dec 15, 2012)

Coburn said:


> It tells me more when someone actually buys into this theory than when they give themselves a number in it.


What does that tell you?


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## Brains (Jul 22, 2015)

enneathusiast said:


> It lets me know just how different people are from me. I've used the term psychological diversity in the past to describe it in the sense of valuing or respecting diversity in others. It helps me to more easily accept and understand where people are coming from by seeing them in terms of the reality their coming from instead of seeing them in terms of the reality I'm coming from. In other words, seeing them as they are to themselves instead of as I think they should be.


This has been a really helpful part of learning typology for me - fully realizing just how different, even alien, other people's experiences are from mine. It's done wonders for understanding and patience, plus given wonderful (=lame) trolling opportunities >


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## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

Mordred Phantom said:


> Dunno, but claiming that one can type and be completely devoid of the influence of personal feelings while doing this is rather delusional. You can try to reduce it and focus on the evidence, but still only a robot would be really able to be 'objective'. If you dislike someone then it's easier to label them as some type that isn't compatible with yours than to be unbiased. Maybe one way would be to ignore the username while reading posts or a questionnaire, kinda like those blind stuff done for reading papers.


Really. The arrogance of that. The lack of self-awareness too. But above all things, the arrogance of it.


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## Ace Face (Nov 13, 2011)

Swordsman of Mana said:


> type affects your behaviors, thoughts and feelings on a visceral level and explains different was of thinking that other people are likely to engage in. how could it not matter? that would be like training to become an opera singer and being like "it doesn't really matter if I'm a tenor or a bass"


Type isn't anything at all, lol. It's a desperate attempt to explain what makes people tick and why. "Type" wasn't even really a thing until recently. How ever did people get along without typing descriptions in the dark ages? I guess I'll never know.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Ace Face said:


> Type isn't anything at all, lol. It's a desperate attempt to explain what makes people tick and why. "Type" wasn't even really a thing until recently. How ever did people get along without typing descriptions in the dark ages? I guess I'll never know.


To be fair, type has existed for quite a long time. In a western context, the original four temperaments based on the elements would be one example thereof, and they date all the way back to Ancient Greece. We find similar train of thoughts in the east where type is regarded so highly that there are academic disciplines dedicated to studying it as a subject. In Korea, typology is heavily based off of acupuncture and chakra, which makes it a very old tradition as well.

So clearly there has been a strong need for humans to categorize our differences and why some people are the way they are which I do not see as an inherent evil in and of itself; the problem is when that categorization becomes a way to leverage against people e.g. the holocaust. Racism could arguably be seen as a form of typology for example, since it attributes value and differing personality traits (even if illegitimate) to an entire group of people based on an externally observed common denominator that people within the group is seen to share with each other.


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## Ace Face (Nov 13, 2011)

Entropic said:


> To be fair, type has existed for quite a long time. In a western context, the original four temperaments based on the elements would be one example thereof, and they date all the way back to Ancient Greece. We find similar train of thoughts in the east where type is regarded so highly that there are academic disciplines dedicated to studying it as a subject. In Korea, typology is heavily based off of acupuncture and chakra, which makes it a very old tradition as well.
> 
> So clearly there has been a strong need for humans to categorize our differences and why some people are the way they are which I do not see as an inherent evil in and of itself; the problem is when that categorization becomes a way to leverage against people e.g. the holocaust. Racism could arguably be seen as a form of typology for example, since it attributes value and differing personality traits (even if illegitimate) to an entire group of people based on an externally observed common denominator that people within the group is seen to share with each other.


What makes the enneagram so different from all of these other systems? Have these other systems accurately described what makes us who we are, and if they did that and did it well, then why feel the need to create another system that can easily be equally as faulty? What makes enneagram more relevant than these systems that have been in place for all of this time? The bottom line is that people will get all weird with their beliefs using just about any type of shit system.


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## Grandmaster Yoda (Jan 18, 2014)

Ace Face said:


> Type isn't anything at all, lol. It's a desperate attempt to explain what makes people tick and why. "Type" wasn't even really a thing until recently. How ever did people get along without typing descriptions in the dark ages? I guess I'll never know.


You seem to have spent far too much time around people who talk in types.
More imprecise people will talk about how different they are in a more general, yet vague way. The difference being nothing.


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## Kintsugi (May 17, 2011)

Oh wow...

I forgot about this thread.

I'm not really sure what to add. 

EDIT (actually read the thread this time ): Also going to add that it's kinda frustrating and boring how the SAME old arguments are being hashed out, again AND again...

I think it's because of this that people tend to not take Enneagram or typology seriously.

It doesn't matter what your opinion is or what school of thought you subscribe to, regardless, it turns me off when subjective opinions are stated as facts.

How hard is it to have an insightful and intellectually honest and open conversation about Enneagram these days? It's too easy to threaten fragile world views and unintentionally create shit storms.

Both sides are as bad as each other, imo.

Meh. Rant over.


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## Donovan (Nov 3, 2009)

i mean honestly, so far everything in this thread would technically be "correct". you're dealing with human perception and of course, human minds (interesting thread). 


what i mean is this: take a rock for example. we will never see the rock as it actually exists, but that does not mean that we devalue our perception of the rock as a fact of reality in and of itself--meaning that we have to at once acknowledge that the rock may exist in a fashion we cannot recognize, but at the same time, we have to give enough meaning to how it appears to us to be able to function in our own human experience, which throws up the chance that we have recreated a meaning for what "rock" actually is that can and most likely will, deviate from those slowly thrumming molecules ("proof"--if anything can be called that--exists in the difference of the "fact or reality" that is spawned between two peoples' perceptions). 

still early going on donovan-hours, and this may not be laid out all that clearly, but i'll continue: if we move on from the idea that we can never truly glimpse something as it is outside of our own experience (and therefore never see it _fully_, which would equate then to "truth", but only see the truth in what our perception will allow us to view), and then look at the idea that we have taken something that has always existed and have now attempted to reorder it to fit more seamlessly with our--again--perception of life and reality, then we have to also acknowledge that our "reordering" may not be _perfect_.
(and i mean, that's really all we've done: nothing truly new has be discovered, this is more of a synthesis from pieces of old theories, with certain pieces given more weight and some restructuring added in. it's still an attempt to pull from the same fodder, hoping that a different order will yield new insight) 
(and, honestly, the above means then that our perception and the value that we then add to said perception can give things meaning and validity for long as our perception holds. so, in a way, for all intents and purposes: both true and untrue, and only as long as we collectively add our belief into such a thing, because tomorrow it may change and we may latch onto this new "something", and if used correctly, it might as well be true for the good or bad it does us)


i think the only way type is important, is that it brings to light that we are all "out of balance", and makes it clear that above all the only thing of importance is to regain that balance--_not_ the specific path to regaining said balance, as too great a focus on said path seems to lock those squarely in the place they are trying to escape. 

might say more later.


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