Monday, May 12, 2008

The Intolerant Hemisphere

Jung observed that human behavious is non-random, from this observation and a lot of work came the MYERS-BRIGGS personality profile, and later the DiSC model that is simpler and more effective. It devides the world up into hemispheres, namely the Think/Feel hemisphere, and the Intravert/Extravert hemisphere which creates the 4 quadrants that are essentially the same as MBs and Jung were getting at anyway.
Which isn't to say people with feelings don't think they just seem to favor emotion and how people feel for decision making over tangibles and blah bah blah I don't want to get into it.
What I do want to get into is how if you walk into a book store books teaching creativity (generally the domain of people on the end of the feel side of the spectrum) are outnumbered ten to one by books on how to be organised and/or achieve more (the domain of people on the think end of the spectrum). This is because the revelation that creativity was not an inborn gift (necessarily) but can be taught, can be taught just as good organizational talents can be taught.
But there had to be a reason why, and the answer came through a random discussion with Janice one day when I realised as Janice vented why nobody else in our family ever put in effort to tidy up the house, vacuum and so fourth that the reason was that nobody in our family actually valued living in a tidy house anywhere near as much as Janice did.
In short Janice was always bound to lose the 'who can stand it game' but that was just it, for reasons I don't understand it seems creative people can somehow for somereason seem to tolerate organised tidy people to a greater degree than organised people can tolerate their haphazard ways.
Thus the direction of conversion flows heavily in favour of organised, tidy, anal retentives. Infact only crazy movies like patch adams and films starring Pauly Shore seem to encourage people to 'loosen up'.
But then is their a corresponding direction of pressure for the other hemisphere, the partying extraverts vs the quiet homebody intraverts. Surely the need for quiet, polite reservedness would be what wins out? no from my experience the pressure is on to people to be social, to enjoy nightclubs and trips to the beach, to be energised by meeting new people.
And fuck, I'm a loser in two hemispheres, sort of like France.

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