Functional Spirituality

There is a fascinating trend in western societies that I refer to as "functional spirituality": using techniques from religions and spiritual traditions to achieve specific psychological results in the absence of religious faith.

Functional spirituality has become possible due to advances in neuroscience and accumulating research on mental, physical, and emotional well-being. Today there is an increasing number of exercises one can perform to improve one's well-being in specific ways that have been proven to work:

• calm anxiety through meditation, visualization exercises such as "responsibility transfer," and body language manipulation
• feel connectedness to other people through visualization exercises that activate oxytocin production 
• improve outlook and mood through gratitude and other mental exercises and through manipulation of facial expressions and body language 
• recover from illnesses by applying proven placebo methods

Thanks to science, it is now possible to isolate the specific benefits and techniques of various spiritual practices and reduce them to their essential components. Pareto's Law can now be applied to obtain 80% of the benefits from 20% of the effort. This was possible in the past to a degree, before anyone knew anything about neurochemicals and brain waves, but it required a great degree of experience and intuition.

Furthermore, it was very difficult to test different approaches and determine which was better. Few people went from religion to religion to test the efficacy of different prayer and meditation techniques. There was so much "other stuff" that came along with religions that one could not easily isolate the techniques from the dogmas and the social conventions.

Today, with more and more knowledge of the effects of different practices on human well-being, one can theoretically put together an effective, individualized spiritual practice based on one's personal needs and life situation. For those with a degree of conscious control over their lives, it would seem we are entering a golden age of personal spirituality.

Today it is conceivable to establish social groups that perform certain rituals together for the express purpose of obtaining the psychological benefits associated with religious activity — without any religious subtext. However, if the group espoused a particular ideology that they discussed in the context of their practice — such as "we follow the best practices offered by science" — then over time it could certainly develop into a quasi-religious organization.

But one does not have to believe in anything supernatural to do any of this. If science demonstrates that belief in the supernatural is psychologically beneficial due to "responsibility transfer," then one can simply engage in "benevolent Universe" or "benevolent supernatural Being" visualizations to obtain those benefits. One might even say, "I practice belief in order to lower my anxiety levels." The triumph of Reason over Faith is now so complete that virtually all the advantages of faith can be incorporated into a reason-based existence.

Interesting Video about Jungian Types and Math Learning

A link to this TEDx presentation was recently posted by Jonathan in the comments of my "Fooled by Socionics" post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH9Zn7Glf3E

My critique of this video will be similar to what I've been saying about typology for a long time.

It's really interesting to hear about individual differences that affect learning, and I will be excited to hear more about this. On the surface it would seem that the research conducted supports Jungian typology. Students are divided into types, and far-reaching differences in learning processes are discovered.

What this proves is that whatever algorithm was used to divide the students into groups (types) was to some degree predictive of their behavior when learning math. What is not clear is:

• The relationship between the algorithm used and the theory of Jungian typology. In other words, what assumptions were made in producing the algorithm that do not necessarily directly derive from the theory?
  
  What I'm hinting at here is that the researchers' explanations of types may differ from those of other Jungian typologists, because the theory is basically unquantifiable. Different researchers might therefore end up with different divisions of schoolchildren with higher or lower predictive value.
  
  
• Is the algorithm used by the researchers actually the best possible one for the purposes of this study? In other words, is there another way of dividing up the children that would be even more predictive of their behavior when learning math?

Occasionally socionists in Ukraine and Russia produce similar kinds of studies which are often tantalizing, but always inconclusive. For typologists in general, the focus is to generate empirical support for the theory rather than the best possible predictive outcome. I don't have much respect for this approach anymore. Maybe it's okay for the early investigation stage of new hypotheses, but it's not okay for a mature theory.

What I mean is that if we have a method "A" that we suppose influences outcome "B," then what typologists always do is — "let's apply our A and see what B we get." They never focus on maximizing the outcome! That would be — "let's see what A will maximize B."

This is probably the single most important idea to take away from my recent posts about why I have left socionics behind. This is what science is all about, and typologists — some bluntly, others more subtly — resist it for whatever reason (laziness and boredom, overconfidence, lack of acceptance of such research among their reference group, lack of research funds, etc.).

Going back to the TEDx video, let's imagine the research was not to "see what this way of applying Jungian Typology can predict" but to "see what method we can find for grouping children into learning groups with the greatest predictive power."

They could even start off using their existing typological method just to get things going. Then, they would look at how these children responded to different math learning methods and environments. Then they would consider whether they might move some children from one group to another based on their observed behavior, or whether there were large enough differences within a single group to justify dividing it further. Then they would try to formulate the key characteristics separating one group from another. They would have to decide whether these characteristics were more discrete or continuous and at what threshold level a person might be switched from one group to another. Finally, they would work on developing the most effective method for dividing children into these learning groups.

At some point, they would have to deal with the problem of the 99 percentile and 1 percentile math students who learn so much faster or slower than the other people with their supposed learning style that it is simply impractical to leave them in the same group.

The method produced might be a 5-minute test instead of a hours-long talking session on the differences between types. Or it might be a brain scan or physiological test done while performing different tasks. Maybe the behavior of interest is so complex that, for now, the only way to confidently identify it is in the classroom, over a longer time span. This might even lead researchers to say — "let's just use our talking session on Jungian types plus the following additional tweaks."

At any rate, the method would be optimized for enhancing math learning and would not necessarily predict any of the other things that Jungian typology is supposed to predict. But it would be rock-solid and other researchers could take it and build upon it.

"Personality and Individual Differences" Journal

As I've stated before, I'm interested in finding physiological mechanisms behind personality differences and relationship choices.

Here's the link to abstracts of the journal Personality and Individual Differences since it first came out in 1980: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01918869

Readers may find it interesting to browse through the abstracts and take in the refreshingly empirical approach, though it usually produces mundane results.

If anyone knows of better sources in this field -- perhaps something that separates the wheat from the chaff -- please post a link.

Perhaps somewhere between the plodding, generally unenlightening empirical research machine that is modern academic science and the intuitive, oversimplified, and semantics dependent philosophizing of socionics and other typologies a connection can be made that spawns a new and better theory of personality and relationships.

The Energy Descent Future; Visionaries and their Types

During the past year I have spent a lot of time studying and thinking about the issues of energy, climate change, environmental issues in general (soil degradation, deforestation, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, etc. etc.), and the prospects of industrial civilization. I am now familiar with the ideas of a number of influential thinkers and have solidified my own views on the subject. In this essay I'll discuss energy descent visionaries -- people who have recognized underlying trends much earlier than the general populace -- different typical responses to these realities, and the types of changes that are likely to take place in society, from a socionics perspective.

Background
It is very likely that peak world oil production (so-called Peak Oil) occurred in July 2008 at 74.82 million barrels/day, when prices also reached a historical peak of $145 a barrel. This probably triggered the world financial crisis. From now on production will fall because the remaining oil is increasingly costly to extract, and the economy flounders when oil prices rise above a certain level, since oil consumption is an integral part of every significant production process.

What next?
There are 4 basic lines of thinking on what will happen next, among those who are aware that something significant has happened. These were described by David Holmgren and are portrayed in the following graph.

1. "Techno-Explosion" - Human inventiveness, technological progress, and the invisible hand of the market will ensure us continued progress, economic growth, and new sources of cheap energy.
2. "Green-Tech Stability" - We may experience a small drop in economic output as we transition to a more sustainable economic model where alternative sources of energy come to replace fossil fuels and ultimately allow us to continue our modern lifestyle and current level of societal and technological complexity.
3. "Creative Descent" - As the economics of production and distribution fundamentally change, incremental decisions will be made at the individual level, resulting in a gradual retrofitting of much of our existing infrastructure for useful purposes in a new, increasingly sustainable society with ever less energy at its disposal.
4. "Collapse" - The end of economic growth will trigger financial collapse, followed by economic collapse, political collapse, and the disintegration of society.

Predispositions to various viewpoints

It seems that one's views on this subject tend to be heavily influenced by 1) one's position in society and 2) one's temperamental disposition (personality). Views #1 and #2 are prevalent among those who control capital. After all, scenarios #3 and #4 leave little role for big capital. The vested interests of those who have political power and financial capital predispose them to see the future as either scenario #1 (Libertarians and Republicans) or #2 (Democrats and Independents). Even if these people have personal doubts about the possibility of these scenarios, their practical interests lead them to publicly promote one or the other.

Vast disinformation campaigns are funded by groups with vested interests in scenario #1 to discredit destabilizing information such as climate change research, Peak Oil, and the environmental movement. The mainstream environmental movement is also well-funded and generally fights scenario #1 and promotes #2, while making use of science that actually suggests #3 or #4. Almost no one is interested in funding campaigns related to #3 and #4 (for the reason stated above), so they stay out of the mass media, out of the public eye, and out of political debate.

People who are at the fringes of society and are part of various subcultures may be predisposed to views #3 and #4. They have already internally rejected mass culture and lifestyle in some way or another, and so it is hardly a leap for them to suppose that the powers-that-be will not be in power for long, and that people with lifestyles and views more like their own will prevail. In general, people tend to paint a picture of the future where people like themselves are more successful than average.

From a type perspective, it seems to me from my limited observations that types with may tend to support scenario #1 or #2, possibly because it is often hard for them to imagine a life much different from what they have now, their active nature often puts them in a position of material influence where they derive gain from the status quo, and because they tend to be somewhat more territorial about their current position and possessions.

Types with tend to place a lot of stock in technological progress and can't imagine that people would choose to give up technological advancements. They tend to be experts about one or two things related to energy and technology and are absorbed by the trends in those areas alone. I find a lot of people with views #1 or #2 among them.

Types with tend to see situations holistically (and often, but not always, superficially), change their expectations of the future quickly, and are less psychologically attached to the current socioeconomic system. Therefore, upon learning some facts about the situation, they easily jump to view #3 or #4. If optimism dominates melancholy in their temperament, then #3.

Types with seem to naturally be aware of problems; telling them that things may get worse is hardly news. Many seem predisposed to think that everything is going down the tubes and that nothing can be done about it (view #4). However, some have a strong contrarian streak that leads them to debunk whatever views they perceive to be dominant.

Types with tend to feel at the sidelines of society more often than those with . Criticism of modern civilization among these types is common, since industrial society devalues their natural strengths in many ways. These types seem predisposed to views #2 and #3, but not to the extreme pessimism of #4, which requires a great degree of imagination.

I have nothing to say at the moment about other socionics functions and how they may predispose one to a particular view of the situation. Of course, it is not only one's personality that influences one's views, but also one's position in society (what, if anything, is at stake), as well as cultural factors that are perhaps too diverse to classify.

Some energy descent visionaries and their types

As to be expected, when we talk of the trends of the future we find that more intuitive types have influential and well-articulated views on the topic. Take these typings, as always, with a grain of salt. Many of them are open to discussion. This is just a sampling of those who hold influential views and is not meant to be exhaustive. Representative videos are provided where possible.

Joseph Tainter (ILI) authored an influential book, Collapse of Complex Societies, where he hypothesized that societies collapse when they obtain smaller and smaller benefits from additional investments in complexity. I would not categorize him as an activist of any kind, but rather a scholar and theorist on the subject of complexity and collapse. He focuses on history and economics much more than environmental issues.
Tainter answers some questions

Jared Diamond (IEE), geographer and ecologist, authored the other well-known book on collapse, called Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Here he examines how societies respond to environmental problems that inevitably arise as a result of population growth and habitat exploitation. Diamond is outspoken on the environmental problems that modern society must solve over the next few decades in order to avoid collapse. His books and numerous public lectures have a human touch and tend to inspire activism.
"Why Societies Collapse" TED presentation

Ted Kaczynski (SLI), aka the "Unabomber," was a math whiz who severed his ties with modern industrial society to live a peaceful life in the Montana woods. When his peace was disturbed, he began a terrorist mail-bomb campaign against people who he felt represented the "Establishment." His manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future, published in 1995, contains many psychological insights relating to industrial society's negative influence on the individual, but it shows a lack of awareness of numerous objective issues, notably the myriad environmental problems of our time, and Peak Oil.
Industrial Society and Its Future

According to another viewpoint, Kaczynski could be a paranoid LSI who believed sweeping revolutionary change can be effected by attacking basically random people who are representative in some way or another of negative societal forces.

Dmitry Orlov (ILI), a popular blogger and author, compares the collapse of the Soviet Union with the impending collapse of the U.S. He lays bare the foolishness of U.S. leadership and the folly of mankind in general.
Explaining why America will collapse

Richard Heinberg (IEE), ecologist and author, focuses on Peak Oil and how society must change to deal with it. He focuses on societal paradigms and adaptation to a post-Peak Oil future. His presentations have a human touch and suggest personal and community applications.
On our post-carbon future (note his criticism of Schwarzenegger's (LSE) faith in technological progress)

Bill Mollison (ILE), naturalist and co-originator of the concept of permaculture. Developed a design system for land use that is fully sustainable and can improve degraded land in a matter of years. Spent years traveling around the world helping set up permaculture systems and spread knowledge. Permaculture is a whole new system of living, not just a new agriculture method.
Permaculture in the tropics

David Holmgren (LII), ecologist and co-originator (with Mollison) of the concept of permaculture.
Permaculture & Peak Oil: Beyond Sustainability

Geoff Lawton (IEE), prominent permaculture designer and consultant. Has a warmer and more personal touch than, say, Mollison, while at the same time seeming somewhat less scientific and more enthusiastic.
At the Permaculture Research Institute

Al Gore (LII), politician, businessman, and climate change educator. Gore's type may predispose him to scenario #3, but his financial and political interests probably influence his promotion of a scenario that looks more like #2.
Gore's new thinking on the climate crisis

Bill Gates (LIE), business magnate and philanthropist, is wedded by wealth to scenarios #1 or #2. Any proposed solutions must therefore involve big business and centralized government. Furthermore, his personality leads him to focus on technology development and logistics, problems which seem entirely solvable.
Bill Gates on energy and climate


Afterthought: my personal views
My personal views are along the lines of the permaculturalists -- a dominated field (even though it focuses heavily on food production!). In my opinion, these thinkers have best been able to lay bare and tie together all the different factors and problems facing society and propose a realistic solution. They seem to have the best scientific support (and little industry support). Scenario #3 seems the most realistic and, at the same time, is sufficiently positive to inspire individual action. Proponents of scenario #4 have less to offer and seem to have less understanding of agriculture and ecology. Scenario #1 is impossible; if it were possible, it would already be happening, because all the economic incentives are in favor of taking that direction. Scenario #2 is potentially inspiring, but naive. See, for instance, Richard Heinberg's detailed report on the limitations of all important forms of energy. It will quickly become apparent that there is no complete replacement for fossil fuels.

The future - from a socionics standpoint

Cheap energy and ease of transportation promotes the concentration of capital and the growth of centralized power. Using abstract socionics language, this favors over . As oil becomes scarce, some trends of the past few centuries will be reversed. Instead of being drawn into a complex economic system where each person has a narrow function and only 1 or 2% of people produce food, people will retreat from the global integrated economy and begin producing more and more of their own food. There is no way to avoid the re-localization of agriculture and economic decentralization in the U.S. and other countries. This will favor a value shift towards . Whether society takes a more "Alpha" or "Delta" direction is hard to say. If existing societal institutions are basically preserved, then we might have a Delta situation. If not, then probably Alpha. Those who stand to lose most from this turn of events are large corporate and power structures who run our lives today. If these power structures collapse, new ones will eventually appear (the blind spot of today's permaculturalists). Permaculture philosophy is terrific for establishing sustainable human activity, but it gives little attention to the possibility of nomad raiders and the eventual establishment of a feudal system of governance where individual farmers and tradesmen must pay tribute and suffer some degree of servitude.

Brain Chemistry and Typology

Evolution of typologies and thought systems in general

It seems that brain chemistry is the current typological fashion, somewhat like the concepts of "information" and "information processing" in the mid-20th century. The idea of personality types is ancient, but with each new period of philosophical or scientific development it seems that the types are reformulated in contemporary terms, leading to an evolution and inevitable drift of the types themselves through cumulative subtle changes in descriptions and emphasis. 

Today a dominant philosophical/cultural trend is the increasing scientific understanding of how the brain functions. More and more, you hear words like "serotonin" over the church pulpit and in everyday conversation. Typologists realize that in order to remain culturally relevant, they need to somehow respond to the dominant trends in psychology and philosophy, much like the Pope feels pressure to formulate some sort of official stance on issues such as AIDS and climate change. 

An important effect of the need to remain culturally relevant is that thought systems evolve to encompass ever more phenomena. For instance, sects founded on a few narrow doctrinal principles over time expound views on virtually all culturally relevant matters. Or, limited typologies such as the forerunner to the Enneagram gradually evolve into general typologies of personality. If there's a greater market for a system of general personality types than for a system of, say, vices and how Christian hermits can overcome them, then why not try to break into that market? If other typologies offer relationship descriptions, then why don't we add some on, too? These are classic examples of memetic competition among overlapping thought systems. 

Personally, I am most sympathetic to science and less so to thought systems based on imagination and mental constructs. I feel that science memes are more lasting and tend to build on each other and generate permanent, tangible progress, whereas other kinds of thought systems basically run around in circles with a periodicity of 10 years, 100 years, 1000 years, or whatever with almost no innovation. When innovations in thought systems do occur, it seems to often be the result of an "injection" of scientific, or factual knowledge. But I digress... 

Typological applications of brain chemistry

If any readers are aware of other typologies that have attempted to link brain chemistry to personality types, please leave me a note. 

1. Helen Fisher's types (discussed in depth in previous post) -- based on neuroscience from the outset, but with the choice of four types possibly influenced by millenia-long typological traditions. Uses 2 neurotransmitters (dopamine and serotonin) and 2 hormones (testosterone and estrogen).

2. Enneatypes. See article "The Enneagram and Brain Chemistry" which links the 9 enneatypes to 3 different neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin, and norepinepherine) and 3 different levels thereof, which technically produces 27 types, but only 9 are given. 

3. Keirsey Temperaments. According to a poster at the enneagraminstitute.com forum, the book The Edge Effect "ties in neurotransmitters in the brain with the four Keirseyan temperaments (NF, NT, SP, SJ). Naturally, that means he focuses on four neurotransmitters: acetylcholine, dopamine, seratonin, and GABA."

To further quote this poster ("Patrick"), "I did a little Googling, and it seems there are actually ten or more known neurotransmitters. But of course fans of four-type systems will pick four, and enneagram fans will go for three or nine." Exactly my thoughts. While we like the idea of there being 2 x 2 (4) or 3 x 3 (9) or 4 x 4 (16) combinations because it makes for much easier subcategorization, it is unclear whether nature actually needs us to have such a tidy number of important neurotransmitters rather than, say, 6, 11, 17, or 26. 

The attempts to link the Enneagram and Keirsey temperaments strike me as amateurish, and the article linking Enneagram to neurotransmitters seems to suffer from trying to immediately relate new entities (neurotransmitters) to existing thought structures (Enneatypes) without learning about the new entities in sufficient detail first. Lofty language such as "We hereby propose a theory of personality whereby high, medium, and low activity of each of these three neurotransmitters systems are distributed in an enneagrammitically logical way" only serves to cement that impression. But this is, of course, just a hypothesis, and hypotheses are often like that. 

In any event, attempts to link type and brain chemistry will probably grow more sophisticated as more information from research becomes available. 

Prospects

Right now, many people are testing the waters by suggesting hypotheses about the correlation between brain chemistry and personality types. Based on my experience studying religions and the history of their interaction with science, I would predict that either the neuroscience ends up radically changing the typology, or the typology abandons attempts to correlate types with brain chemistry altogether. Ultimately, typology and neuroscience are driven by different and often incompatible approaches; one has a system in mind and needs "meat" to put on the bones of that system, whereas the other has no system in mind, just a collection of observed facts, and begs some systematic explanation. In practice, it seems, typologies are rarely willing to give up their systems, nor science -- its facts. 

For a perfect illustration of this quandary, read the article "Enneagram and Science" at wagele.com.

Experiments in Socionics

In previous posts I have discussed the pervasive lack of scientific method in socionics. All socionic studies conducted so far have been one of two types:

1. Studies of type-related behavior that accepted as a given that participants' types had been identified correctly.
2. Studies of socionists' opinions regarding socionics and socionic types.

Neither of these types of studies is of much use to researchers outside the socionics community. None prove the existence of types, intertype relations, or other concepts, or demonstrate the precise physiological or mental characteristics associated with socionic categories. I know of no ways of proving any of socionics experimentally. If you do, please leave a comment after the article. 

However, if we broaden our interests to include psychological compatibility, personality differences, and perception, then we can potentially create lots of good studies with real  scientific value that would touch on -- but not prove -- theoretical elements of socionics. Here are some ideas for such experiments. 

Does psychological compatibility exist?

Purpose

Try to determine whether different combinations of people living or working together closely experience significantly different levels of compatibility, and whether these levels are dependent upon particular pairings of people. 

Measures

"Compatibility" could be measured physiologically (levels of hormones in the blood associated with stress, contentment, irritation, etc.) verbally (using questionnaires), or through observation (how much time people spend talking, characteristics of conversation, etc.). A combination of the three would be most informative, but if the subjects knew that the object of the study was to measure psychological compatibility, that might color their responses to the different people they are paired with. To avoid this, questionnaires could be about subject's general emotional state, mood level, and well-being in order to not give hints about the real purpose of the study. Subjects would be told the purpose of the study was to find out more about their physiological responses to living conditions, for instance. Questionnaires and blood tests should be administered once daily at the same time each day. Daily routine would be the same each day. Observation would be conducted through hidden microphones that would record the amount of time each day that the people spend talking. If other patterns are discovered, researchers could analyze conversations for other parameters as well, such as the amount of laughter, emotional tone, or range of topics discussed.

Necessary conditions

To allow for compatibility to be clearly felt, subjects would ideally need to spend at least one week together in an isolated setting. They should have some kind of work to do, but nothing that would involve anyone other than each other. 

Setting

Possible settings include:

- a prison where inmates spend most of their waking time in their cells without external contact

- a hospital ward or sanatorium where people are recovering from long-term illnesses in a stationary setting

- an artificial setting, such as a summer camp in the woods specifically for the experiment

Process

Participants of a single sex and heterosexual orientation (to rule out confounding sexual factors) are paired randomly multiple times (say, 4 times over 4 weeks) and made to spend most or all of their time together. Blood tests and questionnaires are given daily at the same time each day. Participants may be given tasks that require them to interact more closely with their roommate. A hidden microphone tracks the amount of time each day that roommates spend talking, and can be used to analyze conversation content. At the end of each week, participants are abruptly moved to a different location (room) where they are paired with another person they have never met before. 

Variation 1: Participants could be reunited with one or more previous roommate at some point in the experiment. Researchers would be checking to see whether compatibility levels are the same as the first time together. 

Variation 2: Pair partners with people of the opposite sex (if they are both heterosexual) to see how results change when gender factors are introduced. This could make things complicated. 

Variation 3: The study could be duplicated for both sexes to allow for comparison of results between the sexes. 

Possible findings

Such a study would produce a large and very interesting body of data with a myriad of possible conclusions. Here are some questions that might be answered:

• Do people have stable compatibility levels with others? Or do levels (as measured in the experiment) fluctuate?
• If they are stable, how quickly are those levels achieved? Within one day? Five days?
• Are all people equally susceptible to compatibility? Or are there people who tend to be compatible, or incompatible, with everyone or nearly everyone?
• How widely do compatibility levels fluctuate? Is the fluctuation the same or different for different participants? 
• How well do people's self-reports correlate with blood test results? Is their perception of their own state correct?
• How does audio data from hidden microphones correlate with blood tests and self-reporting? Do more compatible partners always talk more? What, if anything, is different about their audible interaction? What about incompatible partners?
• When people are paired repeatedly with the same person, how closely do the results of the second period together match those of the first? Are there any patterns, such as that incompatible partners get even worse, or compatible ones get even better?

Most likely, many other things would be discovered that aren't on the list. 

Implications for socionics

Such a study could support or refute some of socionics' basic claims and assumptions about intertype relations and compatibility.  

The Evolution of Love

Socionics founder Aushra Augusta was not an expert on matters of love and romance, despite having written a paper titled "The Nature of Erotic Feelings." She wrote of her own type, ILE, as basically a helpless victim of love, and the system she engendered was intended to explain how love would develop between two people independently of their intentions or efforts. While some hard-nosed determinism provides a much-needed counterbalance to the popular view that "you can make it work with nearly anyone if you just try," the extreme determined-from-the-cradle view is ultimately just as incorrect as its antipode. 

Augusta's view of romantic feelings was characteristically one-dimensional and idealized. She focused, in essence, on only psychological intimacy -- just one aspect of the romantic experience. She discussed how well types in different intertype relations were able to satisfy each other's deep psychological yearnings. Certainly, psychological intimacy is an important aspect of relationships, but it is not the only one. Let's take a broader, evolutionary look at the phenomenon of love and see what we can learn about it beyond the framework of socionics. 

Helen Fisher is a well-known anthropologist who has been studying the phenomenon of romantic love for many years and has written a number of books about her findings. She divides love into three stages or components: the sex drive, romantic love, and attachment. Here's an excerpt about them:

Humans have evolved three distinctly different brain systems for mating and reproduction, according to Fisher — sex drive, romantic love, and attachment.

She believes that the sex drive evolved to motivate individuals to look at a whole range of partners. Romantic love — the obsessive fascination and elation associated with the early part of a relationship — developed to enable a person to focus mating energy on one partner at a time, thereby conserving time and energy.

Attachment, or the feeling of comfort and security that develops in long-term relationships, evolved to enable an individual to tolerate that person long enough to rear a child together, as a team, according to Fisher.

Fisher is not convinced that romantic love is evolutionarily designed to last forever. Once a couple was expecting a child, it would've been much more adaptive to move into the attachment phase, to raise children in a more calm, stable, rational state, Fisher says. Romantic love is not rational, it's an enormous energy expenditure that is metabolically expensive. You're walking all night, talking till dawn — we'd all die of sexual exhaustion, if romantic love lasted continually.

(Source: "Love: What's Science Got To Do With It?")

I'm inclined to agree with Fisher's division of love. Different hormones and different brain states have been found that are associated with each of these stages, or components of love. For instance, oxytocin in women or vasopressin in men is released after making love and contributes to feelings of emotional attachment to one's sexual partner. 

Now let's examine the three kinds of love more thoroughly. Importantly, Fisher states that things do not always start with a sexual attraction. A relationship can start off with a kind of friendly attachment and progress to the other stages. Or, one can experience a lengthy period of romantic love with no sexual consummation. I think most adults have had experience with relationships that started in different ways. For convenience we'll describe things in the order Fisher has given.

1. First, the sex drive motivates one to look at a range of partners. Anyone who looks and acts like a good bundle of genes is attractive. Quirky individual preferences also begin to play a role, such as particular kinds of look, facial or body features, mannerisms, and expressions. These tastes can evolve over time. Some "objects" appear immediately attractive, while others become attractive with time. Likewise, objects can lose their attractiveness if other traits are discovered that diminish the person's positive qualities. 

Generally, a person is not either "attractive" or "unattractive," but somewhere along a continuum between the two. Often, conditions are attached to the effect of, "I could sleep with him/her if..." This is where the crude Russian expression "she'll be good enough for me if I have some beer" comes from. 

The more time people are given to observe an "object," the more -- I think -- their individual personality preferences affect perceived attractiveness. For instance, signs of a sharp temper may appear to be a character defect to one observer, making that person lose his attractiveness, while the same sharp temper may appear to be a positive sign of passion and vitality to another observer, increasing the attractiveness of that person. So, at some stage in the evaluation of sexual attractiveness, personality traits are factored into the equation. Already, people are subconsciously estimating how well they will mesh with the other person in terms of tastes, values, interests, beliefs and allegiances, etc. 

If a person is more focused on sex itself than love, however, the calculations may be different -- less focused on personality qualities, for instance, and more on the actual mating ritual and how well it is progressing. Many species -- and I think this clearly includes humans -- have a number of mating strategies ever present in the population. One such strategy is promiscuity -- actively pursuing and preferring short-term sexual encounters, presumably with the expectation that the child will be reared by others. This strategy provides dividends as long as a large majority of the population pursues a longer-term mating strategy and can be counted on to help with child rearing. If nearly everyone were promiscuous, however, a couple that happened to be faithful and oriented toward the long term would reap the dividends of being much better able to provide for their young, thanks to teamwork. 

2. Through superficial interaction with prospective partners, the individual begins to focus energy on a single object, which expresses itself as romantic love, or infatuation. One's choice appears to be the result of subconscious calculations -- basically, how genetically desirable each "object" is, multipled by an estimate of one's chances of acquiring each of them. Inexperienced lovers often incorrectly assess their chances, leading to premature or misplaced infatuation and more frequent rejection, while more seasoned lovers are able to make more accurate predictions of whom they will actually be able to seduce and hold on to, and hence enjoy better luck. This skill is not necessarily a function of age, but more of positive programming through successful love experiences, good role models, and hands-on experience. 

Romantic love is a goal-oriented state directed towards acquiring a single person and being as close to them as possible (to crowd out any competitors and ensure that the person becomes attached to you). It is a state of constant anticipation. If the goal is placed tantalizingly in front of you but never quite achieved, romantic love can rage on for quite a long time, as long as the object still seems to be attainable. If, instead, the object is acquired swiftly and in its entirety, romantic love can actually quickly subside to a more manageable level, as the body understands that the object is now "in the bag," and the person can safely direct its energies towards more productive things, such as building a roof over the couple's head that doesn't leak, or otherwise preparing for their future together. Romantic love ultimately lays the groundwork for building an environment where offspring have a good chance of survival. 

3. Once the object of love is securely "in the bag" and one's longings for emotional oneness have been satisfied, romantic love subsides, and the couple's attention turns to more pragmatic tasks.  Since our complex brains are so big and take years to grow and develop after birth, child rearing requires years of sustained effort. A lengthy period of cooperation between parents is one of the things that best ensures childrens' survival. Another is close cooperation with other people in the community -- particularly those of one's own gender -- to procure food, ensure defense, and divide chores. What mechanism motivates a couple to stick together at this point, especially given the sex drive's inclination to notice a multitude of other potential partners around? Feelings of emotional attachment, a sense of security and dependability.

Just as subconscious calculations underlie our brain's "choice" to start the mechanism of romantic love rolling, I believe calculations are at work in deciding to stay with a long-term partner or break things off. Things like proof of effective teamwork, sufficient and pleasurable sex, shared experience, and especially the presence of children tip the odds in favor of staying together, while difficulties working together, sexual problems, and a lack of shared experiences can tip the odds towards breaking up. Of course, if other prospects appear on the horizon, that will influence the equation as well. One has to weigh the costs and benefits of staying together versus moving on. 

Purely material interests play a considerable role as well -- in some cases, the defining role. The prospect of losing property or financial security in the event of a breakup keeps some couples together who might separate in other circumstances. If children are involved, all the more so. Rather than fester under these conditions, our brains actually adapt to them, and our attitudes to our partners change as the result of material considerations. If a person is providing important material benefits, most likely their partner will be more patient and forgiving with them -- to a point, of course. 

Perhaps a good deal of the "calculations" taking place is nothing more than the buildup of certain chemicals in the area of the brain dedicated to that relationship or person. Maybe that sounds naive. However, if each orgasm together releases a hormone related to feelings of attachment, maybe other positive experiences do as well. Presumably, those hormones would have a cumulative effect resulting in an overall attitude towards the relationship, sort of like a long string of "+1" and "-1" that adds up to a final positive or a negative number. In addition, the newer "pluses" and "minuses" have greater weight attached; a great orgasm, successful cooperation on a project, or an expensive new piece of jewelry can temporarily outweigh a previous string of minuses -- at least until its effects fade, too, with the passing of time. In effect, each partner seems to keep tabs on both the relationship as a whole and the current development of the relationship. Could that "tally count" be expressed as a buildup of a certain hormone in an area of the brain? I don't know.

While it may seem that feelings of romantic love in a long-term relationship are destined to inexorably fade away into a low-level "attachment" or communal living habit, all is not lost, says Fisher:

Fisher cited the studies of Elaine Hatfield, who found that people in good, long-term relationships reported not only a deep sense of attachment to their partners, but also low-grade feelings of romantic love. This emotion comes back, at various times when a couple is on vacation, before or after they make love, even when one partner says something funny.

According to Fisher, there are two keys to making love last.

First, couples need to do new things together — novelty and variety has been shown to drive up the activity of dopamine and norepinephrine, both chemicals that are associated with feelings of romantic love. Go swimming after dark, go to a different restaurant for dinner, says Fisher. Even the smallest change of pace can reignite passion.

Second, and more obviously, according to Fisher, it's important to pick the right person from the get-go. The chemistry between two people is what causes the feeling of romantic love in the first place, and helps to keep it percolating.

(Source: "Love: What's Science Got To Do With It?")

"Low-grade feelings of romantic love," I guess, are a nice treat from nature to allow us to "live happily ever after." The end.

Further reading

Love and Relationships "knol" - learn all about the different chemicals involved in love, and research relating to love and attraction. Try not to get depressed upon reading it. 

Announcement 2

This blog will continue to be developed, but the emphasis will likely change to conform to my evolving interests. I am just as interested in personality, interaction, compatibility, and society as I always have been and will continue to write about these things, but approaching these topics from a primarily socionic standpoint is losing its attraction for me. Socionics trains one to learn to recognize and put a name to important distinctions between things, but ultimately, a socionic explanation is not really an explanation in the scientific sense. 

Furthermore, socionically expressed "conclusions" cannot be proven, which makes rational dialogue problematic. Without a body of empirical data, the only way to convey "truth" is to express views in as logical and understandable a form as possible. Yet, even the most logically conveyed view in socionics has no hard and fast data to support it. As a result, it becomes very hard to distinguish between correct and incorrect views. Instead, people gravitate towards the views that they can understand and relate to rather than to the ones that are best supported by evidence. With no one able to counter false ideas with sound data, crackpots and ideologues flourish. Even those who are more "right" than others have no real means to prove their points, and are easily embroiled in personal attacks and counterattacks to defend their position. The personality of the socionist becomes more important than his professional competency, which is impossible to objectively ascertain anyways. 

In light of this, developing socionics in the traditional vein, using conventional socionic terms and practices, is becoming something of a dead-end for me. I dislike being able to counter opposing views or lack of understanding only with carefully chosen words. I would prefer to have a more real and tangible object of study that speaks for itself, rather than having to rely so heavily on semantics. As anyone with much experience at socionics forums can attest, semantic misunderstandings are the bane of socionics as an object of study and discussion. I tire of the dependence upon semantics, of the need to constantly rephrase things to make them more understandable and overcome people's objections. 

So, at least in the foreseeable future, this blog will contain much more information about scientific research in the area of mental and psychological differences between people and why these differences might be significant. This blog will no longer be about teaching socionics to people.

Roots of Typology

Personality typologies are often accused of being "unscientific," as if everything that is unscientific is not worthwhile. Yes, typologies are unscientific - in the sense of applying qualitative, not quantitative categories to people (with all the ensuing complications). And yet typologies keep cropping up in many different areas of human activity as a practical necessity. Let's look at some of the contexts that have produced typologies.

Firstly, people spontaneously generate simplistic typologies all the time in everyday conversation with other people, most often with just two types but sometimes with three or four:

- "There are two kinds of people: those who... etc."
- "I've noticed there are big differences between first, second, and third-generation Asian immigrants in the U.S...."
- "Our school was full of jocks. Nerds like me avoided them at all cost."
- "I think people who do drugs have a fundamentally different brain chemistry."

None of these "typologies" is "scientific," since they imply qualitative "type diagnosis," and much of their apparent unambiguity breaks down when you try to type every single person. But their purpose is to generate an awareness of significant differences between people for the sake of personal understanding.

Secondly, somewhat more complex typologies are applied in business, sports, health, and other fields. In these cases up to five types may be used, but not much more than that. In health, there are Hippocrates' "four temperaments" or "humors." In sports there are people with predominantly fast-twitch muscles and those with predominantly slow-twist muscles. (I'm not very well-read in sports, so I can't recall other examples, but I know I have come across a few of them.) In business there are many fairly simple typologies of leaders, typologies of employees, and typologies of clients. The purpose of these is to predict general behavior within the context of your activity for the purpose of maximizing effectiveness.

Finally, there are the most complex typologies usually associated with mysticism and spiritual growth. Here I would include Jung's typology (since he was interested in understanding the process of individual growth in different people). The "four temperaments" of Hippocrates might go here as well. Spiritual teacher Gurdjieff taught that many esoteric teachings divided people into types - "twelve or maybe more." Aldous Huxley, in his book Perennial Philosophy, relates Sheldon's somatotypes to preferred spiritual paths. Tibetan buddhists and other eastern religions and western monastic orders appear to demonstrate an awareness of types and allow for somewhat different spiritual paths for different disciples (as opposed to mass religion, which does not differentiate). In a more bastardized form, some of these typologies are marketed in the West on the self-help market. Your Temperament: Discover Its Potential is a typical title. The purpose of all these typologies is to facilitate personal development by discovering innate characteristics and developing individuality.

Basically, typologies of this last category tend to arise whenever complex skills are systematically handed down from teacher to disciple, usually within some sort of spiritual or quasi-spiritual discipline. In this highly demanding context, individual differences between people become obvious, a lot of attention is directed at each individual disciple or apprentice, and it is paramount to have disciples choose the right approach within the discipline early on to avoid discouragement and failure. So some sort of typology is a practical necessity here as well, even if it is not fully elucidated and exists in the form of collective know-how.

To summarize, we can see that the creation of typologies - whether mundane or complex - is a natural human tendency that increases understanding and effectiveness by helping to recognize and take advantage of significant differences between people. The implied purpose of socionics - like other development-oriented typologies - is to contribute to individuals' self-realization and to effectiveness and wisdom in interpersonal interaction.

An Integrated Social Science

One of the topics I think about a lot is the nature and workings of human society and the role of different kinds of people in society. Science seems to have an insufficient understanding of these things at the moment. Sociology studies society at a whole, minimizing the role of the individual or of different kinds of individuals. Psychology studies the individual, but doesn't look at the implications of differing personalities on society as a whole. Personality psychology studies individual differences, but not the results of these differences. Social psychology examines the mechanisms of social relations, but not the differences between individuals. Economics describes production-related behavior on the micro and macro scale, but doesn't consider how production niches are pursued on an individual scale, or the psychological and biological basis for choosing different niches. Political science tries to understand the nature of power structures, but not the role of different kinds of people within them. And so on. (Please correct me if you are competent in any of the fields I have listed and believe I am misrepresenting them.)

Do you sense that the picture is incomplete - that the social sciences lack an overarching philosophical framework? I certainly do. Basically, what is missing today is an integral approach that would put each of these separate fields in their proper perspective and show how individual differences between people play out on the psychological, interpersonal, societal, economic, and political level - in addition to recognizing the commonalities between people that are already described well by these fields.

An integrated social science would show how the societal level reflects upon the individual and how the individual level reflects upon the societal. We would know what kind of people rise to power in different circumstances and different kinds of power systems, as well as the psychological effects on the individual of living under different power systems. We would know what kinds of people are responsible for generating different kinds of social relations and movements and would understand which economic and political conditions bring which tendencies to the forefront.

I'll bet some readers might think I'm going to suggest that socionics can provide this framework. More zealous socionists indeed see socionics as precisely this kind of overarching philosophical framework. However, I am skeptical, because of the underdeveloped empirical basis of socionics. I don't think modern social science will accept a philosophical framework that introduces arbitrary new categories without demonstrating that they are essential to an understanding of phenomena. This would go against Occam's razor. Socionics as a discipline, however, can be very useful to the individual, even if a lack of empiricism often makes dialogue difficult between socionists. At the very least, it has opened my eyes to a lot of very interesting phenomena. If socionics develops an empirical backing, it may be able to provide very valuable insights to contribute to an integral social science.

I personally know of two approaches which are working towards an integral social science. One is Ken Wilber's "integral psychology," which attempts to integrate worldwide esoteric teachings regarding different states of consciousness and developmental stages with modern psychology and sociology. This is very interesting, but so far Wilber seems to have barely touched on such fields as economics and political science. Also, he focuses at the subjective experience of individuals much more than things that can be objectively measured, which may lead to problems with future scientific research in the field. Nonetheless, this approach seems promising.

The other approach is the ever-expanding paradigm of Darwinian evolution and natural selection. Evolution has been successfully applied to physiology and - as of the mid-20th century - to human behavior (via evolutionary psychology). In the late 1970s a new field of inquiry - "memetics" - was born that attempted to apply the concept of replicators to social phenomena (mainly trends, fads, belief systems, ideas), as well as the development of the brain.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett has described the theory of evolution as "universal acid" - a substance that eats through anything, even the container that holds it or the ground that it drops onto. Dennett and others have tried to show how evolution brings us to a new understanding of value systems and morality - areas far removed from what natural selection was originally intended to explain. Incrementally, Darwinism is being applied to more and more of the social sciences.

In my opinion, evolution by natural selection is the concept that is most likely to establish a common framework for understanding the social sciences and the interrelations between them. This process seems to be well underway. In psychology (especially in the West) non-empiric approaches are gradually being marginalized (Freudian psychoanalysis, transpersonal psychology, humanistic psychology, and others), despite their intuitive appeal. As more and more empirical instruments are being developed - primarily through the use of computers and information technologies - it is becoming easier and easier to test hypotheses in the social sciences. And evolution is the theory with the firmest empirical basis in probably all of modern science.

Despite the lack of genuinely empirical studies and fundamental research in socionics, I believe its basic principles actually fit very well into the evolutionary paradigm. I have explained how in a separate article that is all about socionic phenomena but makes no mention of socionics itself. Evolution can help explain why there are differences between people and why there are different varieties of personal relationships.

As socionics and personality psychology develop more clever and effective tools for empirical research, it should become easier to detect defining differences between people. For example, height and weight might be very easier to measure, but they probably play a much less definitive role in interpersonal relationships than other, externally invisible factors. Some people today say of personality typologies that they are unsupported by scientific research and thus are "baloney," but they are wrong. Science has not yet developed the tools to detect definitive personality differences that have been evident to people for thousands of years who have observed these differences in the course of their day-to-day interaction with others. The fact that these differences have been described in different words using different systems does not mean that they do not exist objectively.

Evolution is also helping out the social sciences by highlighting parallels between the animal world and humans' social relations that allow us to look at our species from without and gain a wider perspective. Those who research wild dogs, primates, lions, and other animals which are genetically not far removed from humans find a wide span of personalities, social relationships ranging from altruistic friendship to domination and submission, and social structures that share close similarities to those we find in our own species. Research in genetics and neurobiology, now part of the evolutionary framework, is constantly adding new pieces to the puzzle.

Natural selection - which raises our understanding of competition to a whole new level - can help us understand what's really going on behind the scenes of economic interaction and production. The concepts of comparative advantage and production niches - which are fundamentally Darwinian - apply just as much to human relationships as they do to national economies, as some economists have suggested (I wish I could cite something here).

A consideration of evolutionary factors affecting personal relationships would also help flesh out socionics, which currently suffers from its appearance of maximalism. Socionics seems to simplify some aspects of personality and relationships and has a hard time accounting for characteristics that depart from what is described by its model. Many socionists would disagree with me, saying that by introducing such concepts as "accented functions," one can add flexibility to the socionics model. However, socionics cannot explain why some people's functions would be "accented" in the first place (except by assuming some previous intertype influence on the person that led to a continual emphasis of that function). Economics, psychology, and social psychology - underpinned by evolution - on the other hand, can provide simpler explanations for departures from socionic patterns.

Obviously, a lot of research remains to be done, and it is unlikely that socionics would become part of any integral social science without undergoing some sort of metamorphosis in order to become more like a natural science. The same can probably be said of other social sciences. But this is what might well happen in the future as our technology and scientific understanding advances.

Three Kinds of Knowledge Interchange in Socionics

These general models of sharing knowledge apply to any field of knowledge or skill.

1. "Forum": Each person does his own study and shares his personal views and findings with others.
Pros: Free interchange of ideas. Free discussion of possible routes of inquiry. Generation of ideas.
Cons: Problems of semantics and accurately conveying personal experience to others. Difficult to judge quality or validity of individuals' research. Very difficult to unify individuals' experience into a single system.

2. "Tutelage": Someone temporarily suspends his independent study to absorb the experience and thinking of another.
Pros: Most effective for learning quickly and thoroughly. Key non-verbal information can be conveyed.
Cons: Difficult to judge the quality of the teacher's system beforehand. Requires faith in teacher (initially).

3. "Research Teams": People form task-oriented teams to work on a problem or area together. Group results and methodology are shared with others.
Pros: Semantic problems are overcome (within team, at least). Greatest chance of obtaining results that can be formulated objectively.
Cons: Material interest usually required to motivate team.

Tacit Knowledge in Socionics

Tacit knowledge - or poorly verbalizable, experience-based knowledge - is an essential part of socionics and other fields that do not fully qualify as "sciences." For better or for worse, this is the way things are, and it does not look like they are going to change any time soon.

Often in my typings of famous people I make what appears to be an unexplained leap from direct observations to type identification. Why, for example, is a "cold, logical stare" related to being a Logical Intuitive Introtim (LII)?

I am well aware that I have not laid out all the links in the logical chain of thought that leads me from observation to type identification. Some links in the chain may be difficult at first to substantiate, yet it is the job of the conscientious socionist to explain himself as much as possible. I plan to attempt to do this in upcoming posts.

The importance of experience and proper perspective is one of the inherent limitations of socionics and contrasts sharply with the exact sciences, where a much higher percentage of information can be conveyed using the exact, unambiguous language of numbers, quantities, and mathematics. However, if we limited ourselves to the language of exact science when studying human phenomena, today we would know extremely little about people, relationships, and society.