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.

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. 

Faith in Socionics: How to Take Someone Else's Word for It

When I was 23, I abandoned the faith-based worldview of my youth and began to subject everything I thought I knew to rational standards of knowledge, such as how do I know that? and what hard evidence exists to support that belief?, and if I would find a belief to be untenable, I would ask myself where the belief had come from and why it existed in the first place if it were untrue. 

When I got into socionics, I found both answers to personal questions that had (in my opinion) a rational and supportable basis, and also elements of faith that I found disturbing. I thought the faith-based elements were the doings of individual teachers of socionics rather than something inherent to socionics itself. For instance, my teacher insinuated to me that his group's method of typing was the only accurate one, that they were better than everyone else, and that there were grave risks to be had if one got involved with socionists who did not have their unique skills. I had no way of knowing whether that was actually true or not, and my teacher assured me that over the course of time I would realize all these things for myself. That all smacked of the religious worldview from whence I had come, and I would challenge him on these points for several years, to no avail. 

As I got to know more socionists and learned of different groups in the community (in the Russian speaking world), I eventually gained an accurate, and quite different perspective: I had been studying with people who were peripheral members of the community and viewed as semi-authoritarian quacks by other socionists who had dealt with them. It took a long time for me to overcome the negative programming I had been given regarding the socionic mainstream, and see that the mainstream was actually moving along in a healthier, more rational direction than those I had studied with. 

The group I speak of was not unique. Similarly dogmatic socionists with a siege mentality could be found in many places, and some were quite prominent on the web. Their concept of socionics was always significantly different than that of the mainstream. I don't mean to suggest that the mainstream view is necessarily the correct one; however, my experience showed that peripheral socionists with authoritarian tendencies had less rational and more idealized or illogical views of socionics. A certain charisma to these socionists helped them instill in their followers the faith necessary to overcome the doubts that would naturally arise. Those that lacked charisma or other necessary qualities simply had no followers, but wished they had.

To illustrate how a dogmatic, faith-based mentality develops, imagine you believe that 90% of people are intuiters, and that the holy grail of duality is accessible to only a tiny minority of the population. This would require a modification in practice of how the intuition/sensing dichotomy is applied, and members of your school would inevitably encounter opposing views on the matter when exposed to other schools of thought. So, you instill them with the belief that other schools are "way off," that they have "no practical experience, just empty philosophizing," etc. This creates an "us versus them" mentality for those who stay in your school (those who disagree, leave). Your unusual views place you in constant opposition to stray outsiders who decide to come and argue with you a bit. When asking for proof of your typing method, you say, "well, first you have to learn it; once you begin to apply it, you'll see for yourself that it works. I'm not here to prove anything; try it for yourself." If they continue to criticize, but never try to learn the method, you simply call them closeminded and other bad words, and the feeling grows within your community that everyone else is "dogmatic," thus bonding the community even tighter in the face of a hostile environment.  

People can grow up in these environments and take years to come to see that they were falsely programmed. In many cases, that realization never comes. When it does, it creates a strong backlash. 

So, we find many teachers of socionics invoking -- overtly or covertly -- faith among their audiences. Is this the problem of those individuals, or of the field as a whole? 

I'm inclined to believe it's characteristic of the field as a whole. Really, nothing in socionics is provable in the scientific sense of the word. Only the most basic of observations are indisputable, such as the fact that relationships tend to differ quite a bit, that getting close with certain people tends to bring negative consequences, while with others you experience positive changes. Also, people with whom you may have difficulty interacting often have positive relationships with others. Finally, the mundane observation that people are very different and have different natural inclinations. 

None of socionics' original constructs, however, are indisputable (this does not imply they are incorrect). Nothing about types, dichotomies, or the socionic model of the psyche can be demonstrated scientifically. This means that people must accept the constructs because they seem to make sense, rather than because they have been proven. 

As a result, people find themselves believing (assuming to be true without having adequately tested it) that relations between certain types will have certain characteristics, that dual relations will be the best, that they will get along better with certain kinds of people, etc. Having just a bit of experience that appears to confirm parts of the theory, they will take other people's word for the rest of it. They will say to other people, "there's this theory that describes relationships between types. It says that... ", thus passing on the socionics meme without having submitted it to rigorous testing. Because of the difficulty of objectively determining types, rigorous testing can only take place on an individual basis and takes years and years of experience. Meanwhile, the socionics meme marches on, passed along by people who think it makes sense, but are unable to confirm or disprove it. 

There are many people in the socionics community, such as myself, for whom socionics has answered many questions about personal relationships. For us, socionics provided an explanation for our actual experience. For many others with less experience, however, socionics is received as a "neat system to learn more about myself and others." For the first group, there's not too much faith tied up in their study of socionics, but there is for the second. The assurances of the first group that "it works" then stimulate belief among the second group, who don't have enough experience of their own to know either way. 

Whether or not socionics phenomena actually "work" or not is irrelevant in a way; I think putting yourself in a position where you are taking other people's word for something can weaken you psychologically, especially if you are taking people's word for something as intimate as your own personality, potential, and relationships. Basing personal choices on unproven psychological theories rather than personal experience and impressions can narrow your possibilities. Also, such an environment can easily give rise to authoritarian leaders who tell weaker individuals what to think about themselves, their potential and relationships, and about other people. 

I wish I could say there were some easy trick to avoiding placing faith in socionics, but I don't know of any. Perhaps with this and subsequent posts I can help sow some seeds of healthy skepticism. 

Partner Selection in Tribal Communities

I would like to continue the theme of my previous post in a more speculative vein.

With the low probabilities of finding an ideal partner I showed in the previous post, one might wonder how people in small tribal communities of approximately 150 people* ever experienced emotional intimacy... And these are the conditions where human psychology evolved in the first place.

First of all, with a shorter life expectancy, we can suppose that not 1 in 4, but 1 in 2 people were of the right age range for an intimate relationship. But wait... due to the large number of children in tribal societies compared to our own, the proportion would actually be about the same as it is today, so we'll leave it at 1 in 4.

Next, because of the small size of communities and the inbreeding that was bound to occur, the IQ range present in any one community was almost certainly such that almost everyone was within "reach" of almost everyone else.

If we stop at this point, we have a chance of 1 in 256 for finding an ideal partner for members of tribal communities. This would mean that about every other person could find a potential ideal partner within his own community; the rest would have to settle for "next best" or look for a partner among neighboring communities. This is still assuming, of course, that every "ideal partner" is also available! We have not yet addressed the issue of eligibility ("marital status").

However, type distribution was almost certainly not uniform in tribal communities, which would have tended to develop a dominant quadra or set of types in order to remain stable. This non-uniformity would tend to be more pronounced in smaller communities. This means that for most people in the community, the chance of finding an ideal partner within the community would be higher, and for a minority the chances would be lower. Such people would be more likely to leave the community to find an ideal match or to remain single, which would perpetuate the quadra or type dominance already in place in the community.

So, what we get is a situation where a majority of people in the tribal community can find an ideal intimate partner within their community of roughly 150 people (whether or not that person is available for a relationship), whereas the rest must look outside their community for a satisfying intimate relationship.

We know that tribal communities were (are) never completely isolated, but had considerable contact with neighboring communities, just like any animal community. This increased the "dating pool," so to speak. However, it is safe to assume that most people's closest relationships were with other people in their own community; otherwise, these communities would have ceased to exist as a distinct entity. Most likely, a large portion (40-80%) of people also chose mates from among their own communities, while the rest "spread their genes."

As shown here, the search for psychological compatibility could have been one of the factors contributing to the interchange of genes between tribe, in addition to already recognized traits such as the "explorer instinct."

This may be even more speculative than the above, but it seems to me that the number of psychological types was limited by the size of human communities. If psychological compatibility is at all an important factor for survival and success, evolution could not have produced a situation where, due to the large number of psychological types (say, 256 instead of 16), only a small minority of people were able to experience it.

The size of communities was, in turn, determined by the economics of food consumption and cooperation. These "economics" determined the degree of psychological differentiation possible within human communities, as well as the minimum average number of compatible partners available to members of human communities. That average number cannot be much below 1 if compatibility matters at all to evolution.

* Note: read this article to learn where the number 150 comes from when estimating typical community size.

The Socionics 'Game'

I would like to continue the ironic tone of my previous post and talk about what involvement in the socionics sociopsychological realm does to participants. I have a very low level of group affinity, so taking a detached look at the socionics community and comparing it to others out there comes easily to me.

In essence, I see the socionics community as a game or training ground where participants practice being ILEs. As I have already written, ILE is the integral type of socionics as a sociopsychological realm. Socionics "culture" is passed along through interpersonal interaction much more than through books and articles on the subject. If one simply stumbled across some writings on socionics and took no part in the socionics community, one might easily take the ideas or descriptive framework of socionics and inject one's own cultural values into them.

That is what happened to me. During my first year of studying socionics, I discussed it only with my immediate teacher and perused books and articles about it. I had no idea, for instance, that typing people could be a public event, that different people might have different opinions on people's types, or that there existed socionics based social groups where people gathered to socialize more than to learn or practice socionics. I was in for a shock when I came face to face with the and aspects of socionics culture that I hadn't foreseen at all: specifically, the focus on definitions and classifications and using socionics as a platform for social bonding and group formation.

When one is by oneself, one can apply bits and pieces of socionics or any other systems however they feel like. But when you get together with other socionics enthusiasts, you inadvertently switch to the "group language" -- which is ILE and Alpha quadra based. This means:

• venturing forth any kinds of theories or hypotheses that might explain how things tie together (note: real-world phenomena, so , not )
• writing up your thoughts for peer review and discussion (logical analysis, especially with regards to theories rather than real-world actions/events = )
• sharing observations about "this type" or "that type" (observations are almost always within the context of a category -- -- otherwise, they are not for general discussion)
• bringing up new texts for discussion and to "figure out what it means" -- e.g. "have you read so-and-so's article on thinking styles?" ( and focus, given the nature of the vast majority of socionics articles)
• publicly typing everyone who shows up (putting people into impersonal categories = introverted logic)
• livening up group interaction every now and then with fun and games (compensatory and )

Maybe this all doesn't sound that remarkable. Maybe it applies to any sociopsychological realm? Well, let's imagine socionics had a completely different cultural focus...

1. "Hey, come over to my house tomorrow. I'm going to be performing some socionics work on some people and I need your help. I can't figure out how to do a few things."
   
2. "What does socionics say will match this shirt better? My old stonewashed jeans or these forest green slacks?"


3. "My socionics experience for the day is that I felt angry at my friend for not inviting me to the party, but then I thought of how Gammas and Deltas interact, and I was able to forgive her inside of me." "Thank you. Does anyone else have anything to share?"

Obviously, to hear anything like this would be absurd and laughable to the extreme.

So basically, the socionics community offers us a place where we can practice generating insight and large-scale generalizations, hone our logical and analytical skills, use a bit of academic-like mumbo-jumbo now and then, and gain practice building charts and other graphics. It's pretty darn good mental training -- much like taking a couple college courses in logic or math analysis or something like that.

Conclusion

A common theme of social psychology is that our social behavior is a lot more programmed than we generally suspect. Alas, at times I feel sad that socionics turns people into unwitting ILE drones, me included (at least when I'm "in" socionics). It modifies people's natural tendencies, causing them to argue over things they wouldn't normally care about (as well as find humor in completely new places). If it's any comfort, the same happens in other established sociopsychological realms, so this is hardly unique to socionics.

How to Create a [Socionics] Cult

(or any other, for that matter)

Nearly any psychological, religious, or ideological concept has the potential to form the basis for cult-like groups. To have a cult, you need just four components:

• a belief system that describes the way things ought to be
• the belief - whether explicit or implicit - that there is only one way to arrive at the way things ought to be
• the belief - whether explicit or implicit - that individuals cannot achieve the desired state without leadership
• a leader or hierarchy whose authority is unquestioned

The more literally these four points are taken in a given group, the greater the psychological power and destructiveness of the group. The most controlling cults leave their members unable to function normally among people outside of the group (form relationships, interact comfortably, etc.) and unable to make personal decisions or judgments without consulting cult leadership.

The easiest kind of cult to imagine is a religious cult that believes there is only one specific way to get to heaven, and that only the group's leadership has the authority to guide people along this path.

Other ideologies can also form the basis for cult-like groups. Tightly-knit groups of followers of psychological theories and practices can at times look and act like cults. So can adherents of idea systems. And, of course, totalitarian governments create mass "cults" based on political ideology, nationalism, or adoration of leaders.

Cult genesis

Cults always, or almost always, form around an individual with an unusually high level of personal conviction. This person strives to create a group and become a teacher figure to the group. The teacher's conviction and categorical worldview move him to weed out people who are interested but do not accept all the teachers' views and values. As soon as there is a stable group of adherents who accept the teacher as the ultimate authority, a small cult is born. From here on the group simply needs to replicate itself effectively.

A socionics-based cult?

Unfortunately, there are a number of socionics groups in the former Soviet Union who display marginally cult-like behaviors. Perhaps by writing about this possible "application" of socionics, I can help weaken the influence of such groups in the future.

Socionics itself is not a cult, just as people who get together to read the Bible are not a cult. However, socionics, Bible study, or nearly anything else can provide the context for the emergence of a cult-like group.

One variety in socionics is the authoritarian teacher who possesses a special technology for identifying types that no one else has or is able to use properly. They claim extremely high accuracy in type identification (sometimes 100%) and scoff at all other socionists, who are "completely in the dark." All these socionists seem to have a low convergence rate with other socionists in their typings of famous people.

Often, students of these socionists have no idea that their teacher is a poor representation of socionics as a whole. They are not aware that the socionist's convergence with others is low, that the socionist's approach is criticized by mainstream socionics, and that their teacher has little or no credibility in the professional community of socionists.

Students of these teachers are gradually "infected" with their teacher's views. They believe that the socionics community is "all messed up" and that their teacher has given them the only version of socionics that really works. They feel hostility towards other socionics groups who speak a somewhat different language than their own. They can even acquire the persecution complex of their teacher.

A milder version of cult-like behavior in socionics is the typical socionics "school." When you hear or read the phrase "our school believes..." or "our school considers...", you have probably found one of these groups. These groups are typically somewhat more intelligent than the first kind, but there is still the sense of group beliefs overriding personal ones. Adherents of the school feel and act like spokesmen of the school when interacting with people from other socionics schools or groups.

The views school adherents express are usually not truly their own (or else they would speak in the first person). "So-and-so says..." is not yet cult-like behavior, since the person is simply quoting a recognized authority. Within socionics "schools," people typically have a sense of group belonging and adherence to the common viewpoint that comes through in their speech (e.g. "we believe..." or "our school says..."). They become unwitting spokesmen of the teacher's convictions.

In certain cases this may be quite harmless - particularly when the "spokesman" feels like he is participating in the discovery and formulation of new principles and technologies being developed in the school and is thus truly competent to speak for the group. In most cases, however, this independent view is lacking.

Readers should be aware of this kind of behavior in socionics and in many other spheres of life in order to not be fooled or manipulated.

More Insights on Communities from "The Economics of Religion"

A blog reader gave me this link with an interesting discussion titled "the economics of religion." It's over an hour long, but provides a viewpoint that complements what I have written about religions, teachings, and movements at this blog.

First of all, let me say that economics is basically a view of human behavior. The core assumption of economics is that human behavior is fundamentally rational (i.e. serves a useful purpose). Economics takes a few basic working ideas and discovers many applications, while fields such as socionics have complicated ideas with few applications :)

Generalizing from religions to communities
The speakers demonstrate quite well that from a functional standpoint, religions are not much different from other forms of closely-knit communities. Each long-standing, closely-knit community takes on certain habits, language, and values that distinguish its members from other communities. "In return" for adopting these key features - which often involve sacrifices of some kind - members of the community gain emotional and material rewards. They obtain a social "safety net" that satisfies their need to belong, can count on others' comradery and loyalty, and often even receive much-needed material assistance at crucial moments. This is true not only of religious congregations, but also of closely-knit academic, ideological, and professional communities.

One aspect of religion that an economic approach - as well as my socionic approach - does not address is the specific content of religious and other teachings. In other words, these approaches can say nothing about which religious teachings are better than others, which academic or ideological hypotheses are more correct, etc.

Community superiority
An attribute of all close-knit communities is that their members tend to believe that their community is better than others. This can be a feeling of intellectual superiority, a sense that one's group is more emotionally cohesive or more powerful than other groups, or a belief that one's community provides the single possibly way to heaven/good health/a drug-free life/an optimal psychological state/etc.. Community members, having "chosen" their group over competing groups, must establish some rationale for their choice. No one wants to feel like they're members of a random community. Fanatical communities simply take this feeling of superiority to a greater level than the average group.

Transcendent community experience
The speakers mention the "transcendent" aspect of religions and many other communities - for example, sports fans. People often have a transcendent ("trans-personal," or "supra-individual") experience at sporting events as they watch the game. For some reason, people have a need to be a part of something greater than themselves.

Some people might add that one can experience transcendent feelings without belonging to any community - as a result of personal religious practice or other personal experiences. In this case, you're experiencing not oneness with other members of the community, but with the divine, with nature, with the universe, etc. I can't argue with this, but it seems that most people are drawn to experience oneness with other people more than with these other things. Such people form the core of nearly every community.

Competition between communities
In the case of most communities and religions, if my team wins, yours loses (or, if my religion is true, yours is false). This is called a "zero-sum game." In addition to serving members' needs, communities are also units of external competition that try to withstand the pressure of competing communities and maintain and extend their own influence. We can probably assume that if for some reason humans did not believe in God, they would still form communities of adherence, commitment, and mutual assistance that would functionally differ little from religions.

I found the hypothesis interesting that a free society - where people are allowed to establish communities as they please - spawns "more competitive" religions (and by analogy, communities of other types) than closed societies where communities are established by the state. This seems intuitively to be the case, and it is clear that western religions have been much more successful in entering the post-Soviet and Asian markets than have Asian and Eastern European religions in opening up the American market.

Communities' different routes (or information aspects?)
Another interesting statement in the discussion is that all these communities provide similar "services" to their members, but use different means to do so. It's like filling the stomach: some people do it through complex hunting rituals, some people carefully grow different kinds of plants, and some people practice medicine in exchange for food. Religious and other closely-knit communities also differ markedly in the way they satisfy members' needs to belong, be provided for, and transcend the limits of their own ego. I think my descriptions of the socionic aspects of religions and spiritual teachings reflect these different routes pretty well. The economists mentioned different routes, but they did not describe them in any kind of structured way as socionics can.

Community founders and leaders
Another important aspect is the role of the community founder or leader that I discussed in a previous post. Founders of communities such as religions, teachings, or movements seem to have a more incessant need to do things their own way than other people. The need is strong enough that these people are able to do and say things differently even if they are the only ones doing it. Perhaps they have less fear of ostracism, are less considerate of others, or are more self-absorbed than the average person. These leaders draw others who like the way he or she does things, but might not have dared to do it, or wouldn't have thought of doing it, on their own. Some of the followers are leader types themselves who drop by to learn before continuing on their way.

This kind of leadership I'm referring to isn't necessarily a quality that society looks up to or even approves of. A "leader" in the common, positive sense of the word is not the same thing as a person who creates a new community. Nice folks like Carl Rogers and Mother Teresa were founders or leaders of communities, but so were hard nuts like Ayn Rand and Stalin. Each of these people ignored the status quo and did their own thing, taking away territory from existing communities in the process.

Your average manager at work is probably not a person who founds a new community after his own image and likeness. Communities can be of any size, and he might lead a community of friends who gets together to fish on Sundays, but here we're talking about larger-scale communities that bring together strangers. The stronger one's need to do things one's own way, the larger the community one creates.

Speaking of "incessant needs," we're obviously referring to qualities related to one's leading functions. These are the areas where one is most likely to insist on satisfying one's needs in original ways. Try finding a type who is conservative in and insistently creative with to the point of creating a based community. It doesn't happen. A type with a strong interest in or talent for typically things might create a niche in a community, but he won't create the community in the first place.

For an example from socionics, we can look at Gulenko's "Humanitarian Socionics" community. Gulenko himself is LII, but his community seems like it would be centered on ethics, but that's just the name of his school. In reality, the whole spirit of the community is .

I'm beginning to ramble, so I'll end here.

Evolution of Religions and Movements

A fascinating aspect of religions and movements is their evolution. Often, within just a few generations, religions and other movements metamorphosize into something with an "energy" quite different from the original teaching. Most often, it seems to me, the greatest changes take place in the first few decades after the death of the founder, with evolution becoming very gradual after that (but still accumulating dramatic changes when viewed over long periods of time).

The movements I am aware of all had charismatic founders who were intensely focused on their work and leadership and had a profound effect on followers. What seems to happen is that after the founder's passing, a vacuum suddenly forms and the movement undergoes a crisis of existence: "what next?" The teaching had been so intertwined with the personality of the founder himself that followers feel lost and rudderless. As a rule, founders of teachings do not leave behind successors of their own stature, since people of their stature tend to form their own teachings rather than follow in others' footsteps. Early high-stature followers seem to splinter off and create individualized versions of the teaching or movement, leaving mostly people with a follower mentality around the original founder.

With the memory of the founder still fresh in everyone's minds, people begin to compile everything that he or she said, did, and wrote. A period of canonization begins where followers try to be as true as possible to the teachings of the founder and follow his instructions - whether explicit or implicit - as closely as possible. At the same time, they look for a logical new direction for the movement to take. After a period of searching, the movement finds a stable configuration and gradually settles down for the long term - if it has survived the crisis. Depending on the vitality of the original movement, there may be periodic "spikes" of energy and change, and disturbances in society, such as wars and calamities, can give the movement a completely new impulse. Otherwise, the trend seems to be towards greater conservatism, traditionalism, and stability over time.

It is interesting that movements often attract many creative, talented, and charismatic individuals during the early stages. These people are attracted to the chance to learn and be involved in something new and unique. And no, not all of them are types! They are people of all kinds of types who are passionate about learning and development. And they are also quite competitive. Many want to be teachers and leaders. These people contribute a lot to the movement early on but then create splinter groups or leave the movement altogether if they are not able to find a position of sufficient influence within the movement.

This creates a paradox. Spiritual movements are created by charismatic individuals who tell others of their own path to God, enlightenment, or success, but their movements are made up almost exclusively of people who, for various reasons, cannot repeat their teacher's spiritual path. The ones whose paths are in fact similar to the founder's leave the movement and start their own. To put it simply, the spiritual leader is teaching people who are followers by nature about becoming spiritual leaders. The real peers of spiritual leaders are not their followers, but the spiritual leaders of other teachings.

The natural evolution and loss of relevance of religions and other movements over time ensures that there is always demand for new ones that are full of vigor and fresh ideas and approaches. In a coming post or posts I will discuss a number of religions and teachings and their evolution and socionic emphases.

Religions and Teachings through a Socionics Prism

Religion is a fascinating topic and far too broad for one article, and I expect to write more on the subject in the future. This article will be a somewhat disorganized introduction to the subject.

"Typing" a religion or teaching involves making a subjective assessment of the most important characteristics of the teaching. It's not enough to study the written works of the teaching; you have to have some experience interacting with adherents of the teaching to see where the real emphasis is placed. For instance, there are hundreds of churches that claim to be based on the Bible, but you would have little idea of what modern Christianity is like if you only read the Bible. Each church places emphasis on slightly different things and has unique traditions that are at least as important to defining the overall atmosphere and message of the faith than the actual holy writ. Thus, an analysis of a religion or teaching from a socionic or other standpoint requires looking at lifestyle, interaction, and cultural traditions as well as the written teachings themselves.

Many different Christian churches can be grouped together because of their basic similarities, but you will still find very fundamental differences between Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism, and a number of other subgroups. Religious groups that are geographically separated, take root in different countries, and coexist with different political regimes always evolve differently, even if they were originally based on the same writings. As I have already said, only a small part of the lifestyle and practice of any religious group is derived directly from its scripture. This is why one holy book can give rise to hundreds or thousands of religious groups, each with their slightly different interpretation of scripture. Even religious movements that began as an attempt to correct errors and return to the "pure" religion eventually splinter into dozens of denominations themselves. For example, look at this "family tree" of Baptist denominations in the United States.

To illustrate the importance of tradition over scripture, let's look at the use of the cross in Christianity. The practice of using crosses in Christian architecture, wearing them on one's body, and using the cross as a symbol of one's faith is outlined nowhere in the Bible. These traditions evolved over the centuries in complex ways. Yet these practices are an integral part of modern Christianity, and one's acceptance in a Christian community may well depend in part on whether one accepts traditions having to do with the use of the cross and other things that aren't derived from the Bible. But I digress...