I’m over a month late on this, and the big clue was the CRI e-mail about the question of whether president Hank Hanegraaf “left the faith” http://www.equip.org/article/left-christian-faith. I get these in a side-email that I only read on the phone, usually on breaks at work. For some reason, I brushed it off, thinking maybe it was some late April Fool’s joke, or perhaps some radical movement saying he’s gotten too soft on some point of doctrine or morality or something (like IFB’s have long said CRI was too soft on Catholics and “separation”; the “psychoheresy” critics say he has “compromised” in the issue of “counseling”; the KJVO’s of course will think he errs on translations, etc). I was still getting CRI/Equip e-mails from him, so he wasn’t ousted from that organization. I think I did actually glance at that article, and all it was, was him reaffirming the universal doctrines of the “historic Church” that he always championed: The deity of Christ, original sin, the Church and the scriptures, the Trinity, Jesus as incarnate savior, salvation by “grace through faith”, making one a “new creation”, and the resurrection of the dead and the life to come.
So on that same side e-mail, today, where I also get notifications from the old Baptistboard about ongoing threads, I see a new one saying directly, “Hank Hanegraaff Converts to Greek Orthodox”. In it, someone points out the topic was already covered, in a month old thread matching his own blog article, “Has Hank Hanagraaf left the faith?”. (Both of these were in “Baptist only” sections which always seem to have the most interesting topics, but non-Baptists are not allowed to post there). Now, I find on CRI his direct Q&A about Orthodoxy: http://www.equip.org/questions-answers-orthodoxy/ There was a link to this on the other page, but I thought “Ask Hank: Questions and Answers About Orthodoxy” meant what he formerly considered “orthodoxy”: evangelical Protestant “orthodoxy”!
Wow!
It was right there on the BB, over a decade ago, where I had heavily debated several Eastern Orthodox believers, and some Catholics. (One EOC “catechumen” was for some reason rejected from admission, and ended up Anglican instead. There was another Anglican as well, and they argued on the side of “catholicism” on most of the points, especially Eucharist and “tradition”). For a time, they had swarmed the board, and gotten pretty aggressive, until the admins began cracking down on it. This is what led me to put up a page answering “Catholic” arguments, and consisting in part (the second half) of the key points copied from those very debates: http://www.erictb.info/tradition.html
To reprint the opening text:
I myself always looked with interest at the Eastern Orthoodox Church, since becoming acquainted with the claims of an “original true Church” through the literature of the Church of Christ years ago, and then finding similar claims by the Worldwide Church of God (Armstrongism), Jehovah’s Witnesses, and even some Baptists use it. I always found the claims of those groups being preserved through such small sects as the Waldensians, Catharii, and Anabaptists to be farfetched, as those groups were vastly different from these modern groups. I quickly realized that the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches had more of a stake to that claim, since they were the historical “Church” stemming from the original Churches planted by the Apostles. And I further figured out that the EOC has an even greater claim than the RCC, because the latter was actually one single patriarchate of the original five of the Church, which broke off because it was continuing to add new doctrines the other four patriarchates did not accept.
Still, I do not believe that the EOC of the 11th century and after was the same as the first century Church either, as is assumed by EOC advocates. However, some have now begun to become aggressive in claiming to be the true Church, and condemning Protestantism and “sola Scriptura”, “with its thousands of splinter groups”, instead of “just following the [oral, apostolic] traditions of the Church”. Many of those groups that claim to be the original Church had a point in pointing out that the Church rapidly began changing after the death of the apostles. You can even see the warnings of apostasy in the writings of the apostles themselves.
This reflects a time just before I started moving toward the Fulfilled View, and so still believing the “end” was future, and that the “falling away” was something starting in the first century, and continuing down through all of Church history, to our time and beyond. It was these debates, including the point that was mentioned, of all the “thousands of splinter groups”, that made me finally grow weary of futurism. Yes, that fit into the so-called “falling away” it was plugged into, but it fell so far away that nobody can really agree on much of anything regarding what the truth of scripture is; everyone just claims to be scriptural and reads their doctrines into scripture, and it seemed anyone could make scripture say anything they wanted. There’s no longer any central [spiritual] body representing the original truth like there was under the apostles, though some organizations are claiming to be that body; again, reading their doctrines and institutional structures into scripture.
So it seemed like that “body” was never designed to go on through centuries of changing leadership and political influence, and without the supernaturally guided original apostles. It was only designed to last a “short time”, —which is precisely what we see promised by Jesus Himself and the apostles!
So when the preterists next began to turn the volume up on their doctrine on the board, I likewise fought hard against that, but later found the “pantelist” variation or “Fulfilled view”, and it all finally clicked. It’s the only thing that explains why God would allow “His Church” to spiral out of control like this, as the watching world takes it as the ultimate evidence that the whole religion is just a human fabrication.
I still thought about the EOC in the back of my mind, passing the St. Demetrios Cathedral in Astoria every day right next to the elevated N and W trains I worked back then, and feeling the pull of and “ancientness” of a cathedral that leads many others to “catholic” churches, I then decided to scout out the EOC’s counterpart to the RCC’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral (the head of the denomination for the NYC area), and find it’s the Holy Trinity Cathedral, which is a rather small, modest basilica wedged sideways in the middle of the block on E 74th St. between a row of old Civil War era tenements and a newer highrise and with a Presbyterian Church on the other side of that. I swing by at the end of a service, to get a sense of what it’s like (would be much easier to get to now, being near the brand new Second Avenue line), but the people seemed rather distant and just into their own little cliques.
Anyways, Hanegraaf’s move would mean he no longer believes in at least two of the “core essentials” he once defended, of Grace alone through faith alone, and “sola scriptura”. (Even though he did claim to still believe in the former). The “Catholic/Orthodox” position on the role of “works” in “faith” is similar to that of several of the “cults”, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, radical sabbatarians such as Armstrongism, and the Church of Christ.
As he was the de-facto number one “apologist” for the general body of evangelical “orthodoxy” (as understood in the “Protestant” form), this is very surprising. So the perhaps next leading evangelical apologist, James White of Alpha & Omega ministries, quickly began commenting on it.
https://youtu.be/ezaECk7cBQs (this video even shows the tweet of Hanegraaf being received into the Church via chrismation!)
You would think the two ministries would be pretty much in lockstep agreement on most doctrines; since they uphold the “basics” of evangelical doctrine, but apparently, there was a bit of a light “falling out” between the two fourteen years ago, when White realized it would be his last invitation to the Bible Answer Man, as he described what he calls a pre-planned “ambush” to promote “synergism” (which is basically the technical term for “free-will” cooperation in salvation), which he says “backfired” on the hosts. White is of course, solidly Calvinist (monergistic), where Hanegraaf always seemed to be more neutral on that dispute. (I can remember him describing a “racist” attack, when some hyper-charismatic “revival” leader whom he had denounced fired back something about him being an “intellectual Calvinist” or something like that, which was assumed simply from him having a Dutch background).
White addresses the issue of the “catholic” definition of “faith” in this second video on the subject: https://youtu.be/F5EPs9EqIsc He points out how the single word “alone”, as in “grace/faith alone” makes a big difference. Removing it and substituting something like “faith working through love” (taking from Paul in Galatians, but using it differently from what he originally meant), as a Catholic he cites does, “opens the door” to the entire sacrificial system of Rome, and all the doctrines that go with that (baptismal regeneration, different kinds of sin, etc. Already, Hanegraaf can be heard in a clip talking about how [canonized] saints pray for us, though he says we can’t pray to them. White shows how the still professed “sola scriptura” is actually redefined, and around 20 minutes in excellently points out how the EOC “traditions” were “frozen” or “fossilized” in the 6th, 7th and 8th centuries [and not the 1st, 2nd or 3rd], by the threat of the rise and rule of Islam, which forced them to maintain “this is what we believe and we must defend it”; where the Western Church had the freedom and increased power to continue developing its doctrine).
I’m actually not as totally surprised as you think I would be. He is so into the “historic” aspect of the “faith”; “historicity” seemed to always be the ultimate arbiter of doctrinal matters, including how to interpret scripture, which is of course the official final authority, but as we see all too often, does get interpreted differently by nearly everyone. I always pictured him having a soft spot for some form of “catholicity” (which again, he was always criticized for not being hard enough on. He does have articles on “Catholicism” http://www.equip.org/category/catholicism, but these seem to be more focused on the specific Roman branch of catholicism. Again, the EOC doesn’t have quite the same stigma as the RCC; as it didn’t add some of the really bad doctrines like purgatory, indulgences, etc. Also, it not being as familiar here in the West. It was the RCC that Protestantism broke away from).
This is truly a major shift in evangelicalism!
The Iceman Inheritance Micael Bradley
©1978 Michael Bradley; originally published by Dorset Publishing, Inc.; reading 1991 Kayode Publications (New York) 1st printing
Figured I should finally read this and review it, since I have thought of and mentioned its premise a lot over the years. I first saw this IIRC in the 90’s. My family had it, and my father was talking about it, IIRC. It was a printing I can’t find now, where the cover showed an actual man made of ice, displaying a very aggressive looking expression.
The premise was that the rough environment of Ice Age Europe is what led “Western” civilizations to be overall “aggressive”, leading to their conquest of much of the world. The very first words; the “contention” (also the title of Part One), “This book is racist!” The irony being that the race being critiqued (“I will attempt to show that racism is a predisposition of but once race of Mankind…”) is the white race, and and by a white Canadian author!
Already hearing so much of what’s now called “dog whistling” rhetoric for over a decade back then, which extolled the virtues of the White Western Christian civilization, contrasted with the “laziness” of the black race (now encoded as “Western/American exceptionalism”), and developing a presentation of the Gospel as teaching all men are equal (made in God’s image), but “fallen” into being “sinful” (though in different manifestations often), it made sense as an a great proof of the Bible teaching.
But when I glanced at it, I found it full of discussion of prehistory and particularly evolutionary theory, such as frequent mention of the “Neanderthals”. While I was never a solid [young earth] “Creationist”, I at that point did not know what to make of either theory, and while opposing the conspiratorial rhetoric and rigid literalism of the more fundamentalistic creationists; I still was not ready to really deal with taking the problem as far back as neanderthals (pre-homosapiens or “mankind” proper; think: “cavemen” who are seemingly half-ape). I wanted something that placed man’s problems with “the Fall” into sin, that occurred in our current homo-sapiens state.
So I basically put it aside, and eventually gave the book away.
My mother later is given another one; the copy I have now, with the standard cover showing a hand smashing something with a rock. (This could also be found on Afrocentric book tables on the street). One time, later, when she was giving away books, including this one, I this time decided to keep it. So it sat on my shelf for years.
Forward to today’s political climate, where the more radical racists are coming out into the open, dubbed the “alt-right” (even to the point of denouncing the old dog-whistlers for their indirect language, which they call “cuckery”), and boldly pitching white supremacy in contrast to black “pathology”. They dress down all of our “problems”, and put together patterns of bad character, as I have cited in Makers-Takers and think nothing of how they could happen to end up in the “good” group. It’s just “fact” and “truth”, supported by statistics. As far back as the old writings on the Right Wing, I had cited the premise of the book, and pointed out that what is being pointed at in the black community is basically the same effect on a smaller scale. The rough environments we’ve been placed in have made us more aggressive; hence all the much touted “crime” in the cities. So we’re proven to be essentially all the same, just like the Gospel teaches!
This is basically the liberal response to everything, from crime, to even the genetic “bell curve” hypothesis, which had actually reared its head again in that mid 90’s period. But the alt-right just dismisses this, and focuses on what’s seen now, in the statistics, deeming the blacks “insoluble”, and going as far as to criticize the nation and its founders for bringing us here in the first place, and even dismissing the Constitution. (So the other conservatives who uphold those things are seen as betraying the race in favor of country, hence the likening it to “cuckolding”!)
Meanwhile, life seems to be getting rougher and rougher (for the average person), both economically, and organizationally (like how litigiousness causes agencies like mine to pile more and more rules and harsher penalties for breaking them), with those on the top (in power) gaining more and more, exponentially!
And all of this is justified with the rhetoric of “rugged individualism”, where this is just the way “nature” is; basically Darwinism’s “natural selection” being true socio-economically, (even to the staunch Creationists who blamed “Darwinism” for the fall of the nation!) and the poor and weak are always to blame for not “pulling their bootstraps”. Those who make it to the top are uncritically assumed to have an almost blameless character (and thus, the only ones who have “earned” their “freedom”, and thus should have almost no regulation in how they rule over others).
I kept finding myself more and more saying how they are creating a practical “Ice Age”, where it’s “dog eat dog” and survival of the fittest. This came to mind especially when watching Zeitgeist, with its discussion of the illusion of “scarcity” presented while there’s really an “abundance” being hoarded away. This is basically the survival instinct of an environment like a frozen wilderness, where you have to keep taking, storing, taking, storing… etc.; not because you necessarily really need all of it right now, but just in case you run out and can’t get any more. That is how the corporate world is geared, and passing it down to everyone else. And the aggression used to acquire stuff, and the “rugged individualism” used to justify it all, are just apart of the mindset.
All of this, in total irony given the right’s claim of how “exceptional” this society is. (Or, when they acknowledge what they think is wrong with it, it’s always other groups’ fault; whether the blacks, the Jews, or just the compromising “cucks” of either left or right. This, in the same breath of accusing blacks of “never accepting responsibility for anything”).
So this had me thinking more and more about this premise, and I figured I should finally sit down and read it, to see what it really says. Whether evolutionary or not, there must be something to it.
The 1990 foreword mentions an unpublished manuscript by Sigmund Freud (published as “A Phylogenetic Fantasy”) that suggested that Western man’s psychosexual aggressions were produced by glacial evolution during the last European Ice Age, as Bradley had first argued seven years earlier.
The introduction, by John Henrik Clarke of Hunter College summarizes the history of race. “There was no Europe in ancient times. The geographical area that would later be called Europe was not a functioning entity in world affairs when early civilizations were being developed in the Nile Valley and other river valleys in Africa and later in Western Asia (now mistakenly called the Middle East) and in mainland Asia in countries like India, China and later, Japan”. The first real show of European literacy began around 1250BC, with Homer’s Odyssey and the Iliad. They then “soon made a glaring discovery – Europe could not furnish them with enough food to properly feed them or enough material to properly clothe them. They began to look with covetous eyes at the more developed parts of the world”. What followed were the invasions of parts of Africa and Asia by the Greeks, Assyrians and Iranians (Persians).
The racism that plagues us today would have its origins in the 15th and 16th centuries, when Europe was stricken by poverty and established the slave trade to begin its economic recovery. The “official rationale of the Atlantic slave trade” started with a papal-sanctioned authorization of Spain and Portugal to reduce to servitude “infidels”, who had held Europe at bay since the age of the Crusades. While Europeans did enslave other Europeans for a much longer time than they enslaved Africans, this did not give birth to racism, but did lay the basis for feudalism.
They also at the time began colonization of the world, and what they call “colonization” of the Bible and the image of God. This created a contradiction, where they portrayed God as loving mankind and “no respecter” of men, but also who favored them over other people. Meanwhile, “The Europeans who were successful in Europe generally stayed in Europe”, so the New World became established by “a large number of people who were failures at home”. So, “Many of these Europeans felt called upon to make non-Europeans feel inferior so they they could convince themselves that they were a superior people”.
In the 20th century, with the rise of the “Yellow Peril” of Japan, this was when pseudoscientific racism began, and the propagation of the Teutonic origin theory.
Chapter 1 is on the “Greek gift” of Western technology and discusses medicine, nuclear war and the affect on the climate (greenhouse gas, etc), done in the name of “progress”, the “grain of truth” which “we” brought to “them“.
Chapter 2 is the “Greek gifts” of Western psychology and philosophy.
“Paradoxes” become “conflicts” (struggle between the spiritual and material, “free world” vs communism etc). “This weakness is alienation“, either from one truth of the paradox, or the other. We have to separate things.”
(Within Western religion, “paradox” is only used as a last resort to cover up incoherencies in doctrine, to silence questions when they have no further explanations. Examples are many arguments for the Trinity, God’s “love” versus “hatred”, free will vs election, and salvation or “sanctification” by “grace” (and imparted “power”) versus our own efforts. So in practice, they have become “conflicts” that have done what else, but cause “alienation” and division in the Church, into hundreds of denominations, many loudly denouncing others for “rejecting truth”, that to them is embodied in these “paradoxes” that they see as only becoming “conflicts” because of their opponents’ obstinance).
He then introduces the concept of “The Cronos Complex“; the title of his earlier book. That is that we differ from other species by our conception of time as a “territory”. Animals of course have “territories” that are spatial. I define space as a set of coordinates that are randomly accessible. You can go back and forth from one point to another. Time is sequential; about causation, and where we can’t go back to already passed points. This, animals can’t comprehend. So if you think of it, they really do not think in terms of time. They, with their “instincts” are totally in the “here and now”. Something happens, and they instinctively react. They do have memory, including things learned through stimulus-response. But they do not have the ability to preserve the past or plan for the future. Man has institutions like burial and religion, which is “past-present communication”, where writing is a “present-future communication”.
So just like with spatial territory, “we brought with us into the new dimension means of asserting and defending our territory” (p.16). This right away reminds me of conservative Christians’ polemics on the downfall of America, or even the West or white race in general. Clearly, they are defending “territory” (from the past) they see as being taken from them (in the present and future). So this territorialism actually ends up holding back further “progress”, where we feel threatened by the future. (p17f). So, “Man is a biological creature attempting to inhabit an environment that is non-biological. This is the paradox of human existence.” (p.18-9).
But he still got the sense that the Cronos complex didn’t tell the whole story; there was a second level of understanding, which was racial. This leads to chapter 3, “Child of Fire and Ice”. He starts off going into different mythologies, such as the Nazis’ “fourth cycle” the legend of Niord, the first hunter, who defeated the Worm Oroubourous by the use of fire, and deep in the earth, he became encased in ice, and Neitzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, about the Persian prophet trying to keep the Iranian religion pure in the Caucasus and other middle eastern mountains. So most European peoples preserved some memory of coming from the east and originating in the Caucasus-Pamir chain of mountains.
Basically, it was during the “ice age”, called Würm I, where we had the cave fires amidst all the ice. Hence, “fire and ice”.
So (p.26), it is right away pointed out that out of this geological backdrop, “Not intelligence, nor morality, not ‘spirit’, but aggression, is responsible for the white man’s superiority. Aggression is responsible for the expansion of Caucasoids, both geographically and culturally, at the expense of other races.” As far as psychosexual matters, “We have a low frustration level because glacial adaptation robbed us of sufficiently effective sexual displacement activities. Our philosophical and religious conflicts are the result of a glacial distortion of primate behavior-patterns”.
This would explain the sexual repression in historic Christianity, where sexual mores were so meticulous and obsessively focused on and the “morality” of nations, and “holiness” of individuals were primarily judged based on, while other evils were OK if not championed. The one the most notable to me, being racism.
He then points out there is nothing innate or external about “superiority”, for in an earlier epoch, the ape-tending pongids were “superior” to hominids in adapting to the forests covering much of the earth. But it was the change of the earth’s climate, from Miocene to Pliocene, where the earth entered a drought millions of years long, “hominid liabilities in the Miocene became assets during the Pliocene”. The failure to adapt to the forests left adaptational options open for the new environmental conditions. Neither the pongids nor the hominids had the least responsibility for this. It was basically “fate”, or the matter of timing, even over talent and temperament. This is something today’s “rugged individualists” refuse to comprehend.
Not intelligence, morality, nor ‘spirit’, but aggression, is responsible for the white man’s “superiority”, meaning their expansion at the expense of other races. There is nothing innate or external about this
Part Two is where we get into the Neanderthal-Caucasoids.
Chapter 4 “The Concept of Race” starts off discussing the viewpoints of two writers, Lother Tirala, a Nazi proponent of “Race”, and Ashley Montagu, an liberal proponent of “non-race”. Linnaeus (1785) was an early includer of man in the animal world, recognizing only one species, divided along the continental masses, into “europaeus”, “asiaticus”, “americanus” and “afer”. Buffon (1749) introduced the term “race” to mean “variety”.
Montagu had shown that modern racism stems from two separate fonts: a justification of slave economics, and inherent ans erroneous assumptions in systems of classification in evolutionary constructs. So, “It is ironic that both religion and Darwinism were used to justify racism, since each system vehemently opposed the other” (p.34). Both have used it against each other, down to the present. (I remember being so irritated to see racism mentioned in creationist Henry Morris’ Revelation Record; the first time I had ever seen it addressed in a fundamentalist apologetic work; but only to be blamed on evolution —along with every other evil in the world! What about all the Genesis-believing Christians who [erroneously] said that God cursed “Ham”, the supposed father of the black race?)
At this point is introduced another name used frequently, C.S. Coon, who divided the blacks between the “Congoids” or contemporary black “negroes”, and the “Capoids”, who were the Bushmen and Hottentots, who differed from the [Congoid] Bantu they were enslaved by. This became one instance of race-based slavery the medieval world would know about. So, “what the blacks imposed on the Capoids was soon to be imposed upon the blacks by white Europeans”. (Coon’s full racial classification consists of “Caucasoid”, “Mongoloid”, “Australoid”, “Congoid” and “Capoid”. I believe the official system now narrows it down to Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid).
Yet, the natives of Africa and the Americas would actually be described by explorers (such as Vasco da Gama and Columbus) as superior in some ways (especially morally) to Europe’s peasants! Yet only a century later was when they would suddenly be characterized as “filthy, lazy pagans, of bestial morals, no better than dogs, and only fit for slavery” (which is what we are more familiar with in our history today). This was because medieval Europe considered slavery a circumstance rather than a mark of moral inferiority, and so, enslavement would be justified purely by the technological ability to do so. But it was the Church that aimed to provide a rationale for the circumstances, which was, regardless of how moral and intelligent they were, they were not yet Christians, and so slavery offered an opportunity for their conversion and the saving of their souls! (We see here how the Gospel was changed into purely a political tool, and no longer had anything to do with scripture. And the Christian world would later wonder why so many people reject it as “irrelevant”. What’s not covered, and you don’t really hear about anymore, is the earlier period of slavery, where they tried to forbid the converting of slaves. This probably connected with them not being seen as human. Eventually, of course, conversion became a handy tool to dominate over them).
So we see the origins of the debate that rages on today, as to whether the poor (and the minority “community” in general) are suffering from a series of bad circumstances, or their own moral inferiority.
There was also a division in both Europe and America, between North and South, where in both cases, the North was the first to oppose slavery. The north, because of the climate, became more industrial (through steam power), where the south remained more agricultural, and the large numbers of Africans and Amerinds were easy to exploit (p.37).
Where “Generations of slavery and lack of social and educational opportunities for black and Amerind fulfillment had inevitably resulted in poor development of these people and their offspring in comparison with the whites”, nature began to be appealed to as creating this inferiority, and by extension, “the order that God established”, and on the other front, notions of “less evolved” races, perhaps held by Darwin. He surmises the “sobering thought” that if Origin of Species had been published a decade earlier, the US might still be afflicted by slavery today! (p.40).
Basically, from here, much of the book gets into the origins of all men, rather than just the Caucasoids, especially when comparing Coon’s and the other anthropologists’ theories. He says he agrees with Coon’s theories of the races having different pre-human (Homo-erectus) ancestors, the Australoid-Pithecanthropus and Mongoloid-Sinoanthropus lines who crossed the ‘sapiens threshold’ separately (p47ff); but questions his objectivity in certain areas of the origins of races, where they lend to racist doctrines; like the Caucasoid and Mongoloid passing the sapiens threshold the earliest and thus being the most highly evolved, some Australoids straddling the threshold, and the Congoids being the newest and “mysterious”. Africa was the cradle of civilization, but only in the sense of being a “kindergarten”; “Europe and Asia were our principal schools”.
So ironically, I’ve seen where the alt-right, also accepting Neanderthal origins, uses it as more evidence of their supremacy, rather than any maladaptation. This would probably represent the strain of Coon’s theory.
P52-3 is a discussion and illustration of how all the major continents are cone shaped, narrowing toward the south, and so southern groups of people, such as the Bushmen (Capoids) and Australoids, were trapped, and easily conquered, or having to flee the continent (as in the case of the Australoids).
Chapter 5 is now on the Neanderthal-Caucasoids, which starts off on the “Heidelberg jaw” and other fossils. Coon tries to argue for a 300,000 or 400,000 year antiquity of sapience in Europe, against the disagreement of other experts.
The “Neanderthals” were named after Joachim Neander, originally “Neumann”; both meaning “new man”, which then was used by Dr. H. Schaaffhausen for a skull found in Neander’s Valley two centuries later.
The last glacial period; Würm, began 100,000 years ago, deepened into intense cold which then moderated 40,000 years ago in what’s called the Göttweig Interstadial, and then became savagely cold again until 8-10,000 BC with the last retreat of the glaciers. The Neanderthals died out with the warmer weather of the Göttweig Interstadial, when more modern men migrated to Europe. So the last Würmian cold snap was endured by modern men who were the ancestors of modern Europeans today.
I would have thought these peoples’ maladaptation to that climate would be the premise, but it seems this book focuses more on the Neanderthals. Mentioned (p.70) is that some scientists are divided in their opinion of the Neanderthals, and that they may have moved to Eurasia from elsewhere as the advancing Würmian glaciers drove more modern men out (so they were from the European-Caucasoid stock mixing with the Sinanthropus-Mongoloid), but there is some evidence some Neanderthal traits developed in Europe itself.
We next get into descriptions of the Neanderthals, beginning from the skull of LaChapelle aux Saints. They had the low broad skulls, with foreheads sloping back from large brow ridges and the prognathous jaw. You know, the typical “caveman” image. Eventually, Cro-Magnon was discovered and upheld, while Neanderthal came to be despised. Neanderthal did have some culture (awareness of the “past-present-future” continuum) though, with evidences of burial and religious sophistication.
Chapter 6 returns to the theme of “Fire and Ice: Psychobiology”, which basically continues the previous chapter with physical and cultural descriptions (Neanderthal faces were twice the size of modern ones and their heads an inch bigger in every direction but up, and also their short, stocky bodies likely “absurdly” round). Here, he discusses the Venus figurines and makes the odd suggestion of their wide hips or “hippiness” (larger than the norm for other races), being “typical” of European women (p.93, 107), and thus a holdover from the Neanderthals. That would make sense for them, but among today’s people, the Caucasians are usually slimmer, and blacks and other warm-climate women have the stereotypical “child-bearing hips”. So I’m not sure what this claim is about.
We also get a drawing of their huge feet and the insinuation that surviving remnants may have been the “abominable snowmen” of central Asia north of the Caucasus chain! (p.96, But for some reason, not the “Yeti” of the Himalayas).
In quotes from Montagu and Ivan T. Sanderson (respectively, below), debunked is the myth that Caucasoids are the most refined race, and Negroids are the most primitive; but rather closer to the opposite: “If racists would take the trouble to visit their local zoo and for a moment drop their air of superiority and take a dispassionate look at one of the apes, they would find the hair of these creatures lank, and that their lips are thin, and that their bodies are profusely covered with hair. In these characters the white man stands nearer the apes…”. I remember the Ansaars; the one time Brooklyn-based pseudo-Islamic sect that used to sell all the oils in the subway, had in one of their books a crude illustration making this point. People apparently associate Africans with apes because of the brown color, but for African people it’s their actual skin color. For apes, the color is mostly the fur, and under the fur, as the Ansaar booklet pointed out, is pinkish skin!
“The Negro so-called ‘race’ is apparently the newest and is the least pongid-like of all” (Ironically, Coon had tried to use the Negroes being newer as proof they were more primitive!) Sanderson then points to the same points regarding the lips and hair, as Montagu, and adds that the Mongoloids are very different from both. These primitive characteristics are inherited from the Neanderthal.
Next, he goes back into the cronos complex and territorialism, including through religion, and comparisons of the Congoid and Capoid and sexual dimorphism.
Part Three takes simply the title of the book. We think, finally, he’s going to get more to the central point. Chapter 7 is on “Love and Expression”. “Love is the middle ground between aggression and the ability to reproduce. A pair-bond, ‘love’, is displaced aggression. It is aggression ‘shoved aside’, literally, so that the partners can reproduce without threat.” (p130) “Lovers’ quarrels” and “playful fighting” are examples of this displaced aggression. While all peoples have similar courtship antics, only the West is said here to have a fully developed concept of “love”, as seen in the church-approved ‘courtly love’. A distinction is made between “eros” and “agape” (representing all other forms of love. It ignores the further distinctions, as found in scripture, of “philos“; and also “storge“, which is familial). “Just as the ‘love’ we call eros allows us to reproduce in the face of threat and aggression, so the ‘love’ we call agape allows us to live in the material world while yearning for the relationships awaiting us in eternity. Agape is that place where the needs of material survival are met while the realization of a past-present-future continuity is preserved.” He eventually gets into subjects such as female orgasm in western society and religious groups such as the Catharism/Albigensianism that produced the Troubadours of Provençal (langue-d’oc) fame and were destroyed by the prevailing Catholicism.
(Ironically, the Cathars/Albigenses are appealed to by some Baptists and various sects, in what’s called the “Trail of Blood” theory, where they try to trace their denominational lineage back to the original apostolic church via this persecuted group and others, seen as representing “the true Church through the ages”, in contrast to the powerful Catholics. Most of these modern sects have a heavy pietistic strain, and would probably reject the “romanticism” of the Troubadours as “sensual”, so they really do not know what they are talking about in identifying with this associated religious group, but then some try to say our knowledge of all of them is distorted by the persecutors.)
He along the way points out that the ancient Egyptian civilization was not a Western, Caucasoid achievement, but rather a multi-racial achievement. By 1500BC,
they began to record the invasions of the “sea peoples”. (p141) Rather than them swamping the Egyptian cultural influence (their numbers weren’t yet sufficient enough), they themselves were “Egyptianized”. (Mentioned is George Gurdjieff, a mystic who also created the “Enneagram of personality” concept discussed increasingly it seems, in typology circles. He was influenced by central Asian literacy and regarded Western fiction as “irrelevant”). Our “novels” focus on themes such as “love conquers all”, “love lost”, “love searched for”, or conflicts between eros and agape.
Chapter 8 is “Psychobiology in History and Society”. This discusses man’s control over nature, and defining “progress” in terms of increasing materialism. It then quickly goes back into the history of the different groups, and holds up ancient Egypt and China before the coming of maritime Europeans. Both incorporated progress, but neither were threatened by it, and should be emulated by Caucasoid civilization. Also is a discussion on how these civilizations differed in war. Being a soldier was not something romanticized as a glorious occupation in Egypt or China, and ships were designed differently, with Europeans having multiple levels in order to have more manpower, while Chinese and Egyptians simply made the one deck longer if needed, until materials limitations halted the size. This gets into the Western “frustration with nature”, leading to the urge to control it, through the desire to increase power and output.
Spending so much time on ship design, “we will not have to spend so much time on other progressive achievements which have more relevance to our crises”, so briefly mentioned are affects on health such as acupuncture, color and music (which Gurdjieff claimed the Egyptians used to stimulate plant growth). The orientation of pyramids affected the decomposition of organic substances! Where Westerners turned away from the “excess of sensation of technology and materialism”, then the cure must be the “asceticism” of some eastern philosophies. But the civilizations of China, Egypt and pre-Caucasoid India were not stable (and perhaps more fulfilling) because of asceticism, they were balanced, being highly erotic as well. (All three societies being “obsessed with fashion and cosmetics and jewelry), and had erotic art, yet both men and women were sex objects, rather than just women). So this then goes into western sexual maladaptation (and its resultant aggression) compared to those societies. So “our sexual-sensual behavior is not typical of civilized society but more resembles the sexual-sensual behavior of ‘primitive’ cultures retarded by adverse environmental conditions” (p184). This then uses as examples the dresses that overemphasize (distort) the hips or buttocks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the demand for differentiation in sex, like parents’ complaints not long before the book, of boys wearing long hair.
Chapter 9 is “Ouroubouros Unfettered”
This mainly discusses the possible future outcomes of “the Iceman inheritance” on the world:
1) Western man will destroy all of visible life off of the planet
2) Western man will destroy its own culture and industrialism and the rest of mankind will establish something similar to the ancient Egyptians and Chinese, with perhaps some vestiges of Western technology
3) Extra-terrestial intervention which might impose some new pattern upon us
4) Western Man, through self-examination, can overcome his problem and modify his behavior
5) Western man and the rest of the world can continue to “progress” along the lines already established by contemporary culture and technology
The first and last are right away eliminated as “vanities of power”, as human life is too resilient and adaptable to be destroyed by Western folly, but yet, the environment is too limited and delicate for things to go on as they are. (I’m surprised he didn’t mention the danger of us destroying all human life and possibly all life together, with our nuclear technology).
That leaves the other three. The one he believes is most likely, based on the pattern of history, is Western Civilization collapse on itself. (Looks that way to me as well).
He still then addresses the other two scenarios. So then we get several pages on the possibility of extra-terrestrial life (including UFO sightings, scientific evidence, with Carl Sagan and others mentioned). I myself too have wished, or thought this might be our only hope. Technically, God would fall into this category, hence my believing in a “Second Coming” of Christ when I saw that this was the key message of the Bible. However, since it seems that was something already fulfilled by the events shortly after the scripture canon was closed, it’s back to square one on that front. So likewise, even after all of this, intervention still appears unlikely and that “we will be left alone to solve our own problems”.
So he ends on the final possibility, of consciously changing our behavior. Hope-offering examples are provided of Neanderthal-Caucasians being able to live in relatively gentle and non-expansive communities (with the Celtic-Cathars/Albigenses as the main one), in addition to the other cultures. Drawing upon Cyrano de Bergerac, our main adversary is our vanity. “Instead of denying the existence of biological determinates in our behavior, we must somehow find the courage to look them straight in the mirror. If we can only find the courage that Cyrano lacked, we may yet live. And if we do not find love, we may at least discover compassion for ourselves ad others”.
It is the (often unnecessary) aggression based upon the notion of cultural-religious-moral racial rightness that makes Western behavior unique, over the “comparative aggression” of others. No other people has shared this justification for aggression and expansion
The appendix is “Objections, Counter-arguments and Retorts”. The main one being the complaint we’ve heard a lot in today’s racially charged rhetorical environment, of non-White societies being made into paradise, when they were really full of “Comparative aggression”. When writing Makers-Takers, I ran across a South African White Nationalist site where in the same breath as blacks being portrayed as subhuman monsters, but rebuffing criticism of the white race and western civilization, a commenter asks, incredulously, that according to the “liberals”, “How could one civilization [i.e. whites] be so bad?” (Shouldn’t the question be, how could they think blacks could be so bad, or whites could be so good? If it’s possible for one group to be so bad, then it’s possible for the other one as well).
Now, while just finishing this, someone posts some new video of some cowboy looking person challenging an Indian telling him to get off his land with the “fact” that that Indian’s tribe had moved in and killed off a previous tribe. The point, if it was OK when you did it, then it’s OK for us to do the same to your land. Commenters give their usual tripe about “the losers whining after centuries” and “that’s life, get over it”. Of course, this ignores that those same people, the descendants of the conquerors, are now whining, or no, screaming more than anyone else, that they are being “conquered”, or even destroyed (by the very people they are giving all of this tough talk to; whether the minorities, illegal immigrants, the godless liberals giving everything away to them, etc.) Why is that any different?
Recently, calling this out on a similar FB post, I’m given the whole rationale. Life doesn’t give past losers the right to complain, but it does give people currently under “attack” the right to “defend themselves”. So this means, they can tell others to “stop whining” and to be “thankful” for all the goodness of this society, but they can whine about being destroyed (when others simply oppose them for their aggression), or this nation “no longer” being “great, and thus themselves not be thankful for anything. In other words, they have “rights” to demand better things in life, but not others. It basically corresponds to this division they’ve made between “rights” and “entitlements”, with those criticizing others for “entitlements” being the ones who truly have the “rights”, —based simply on who’s in power now. It’s “Might makes right”, pure and simple. (Some of them, perhaps in the back of their mind realize that the same “nature” or God that allowed them to rise to power can one day allow someone to usurp it from them, but part of their “self-defense” is the blaming of what they fear will happen in the future on those seen as making them weak and giving the birthright away to others; so they can hypothetically lose some day, but it will be the fault of “the forces of evil”, like liberals and moderates, and so they can do all they can to try to prevent this now by vigorously fighting these enemy “others”).
That’s what explains this huge attribution shift; why both can do the same things (Romans 2), but only one is right. Who determined this (i.e. who has the “right” to complain, or what is a “right” or an “entitlement”), we don’t know. (But since there are so many Christians in this movement, then the idea that “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away” still condemns their attitude, since it means they might be fighting God’s will. Also, from this, and even a nontheistic perspective; the neurotic focus on survival of the “race” or “culture”, especially as many of these people, Christian or not, claim to be “post-racial”). It’s “extended ego”, not any concern for the laws of either God or nature, and so the whole premise is mired in pure deceit.
So Bradley denies, saying that examples of non-Western aggression had been offered. “I have not intended to suggest that Neanderthal-Caucasoids have always proved more aggressive than anyone else… but merely that this major group of Mankind has a tendency toward higher aggression and that this has, in the aggregate, affected the pattern of history in obvious ways.
On the other hand, some examples given for exceptional non-Caucasoid aggression do seem to evaporate under closer scrutiny, especially with the quality of the aggression manifested.”
For the Mexican-Indians, he connects their aggression, especially connected to their religion, to Old World ideas and behavior, and hence, “yet another iceman inheritance imposed upon non-Western peoples”. (The Spaniards, for instance, found many religious parallels between Europe and Mexico. The suggestion, apparently, is that some of this had been brought over the Bering Strait by their ancestors). Until more data is analyzed, “the religious wars of Middle America’s populations cannot be used as an argument against this thesis.”
For the Mongol expansions, it’s about the quality of the aggression, meaning it was “normal” aggression, motivated by overpopulation (environmental necessity) rather than psychological motivation. “The West has expanded even when unnecessary…in order to impose Western culture and religion on others. Or from the motivation of sheer greed, or from all these motivations combined in a mutually supportive justification structure. It is this expansion and aggression based upon the notion of cultural-religious-moral racial rightness and intolerance that makes Western behavior unique. I submit that no other people has shared this justification for aggression and expansion…certainly not the Mongols.”
He also presents argument regarding Japan, the Eskimos, and the Capoid and Australoid extinction at the hand of non-Caucasoid people.
This of course ties into the whole “Scriptural” component of the justification. Scripture really condemns the means of “expansion” and also condemns self-justification; we are supposed to admit our own sin and then show the same mercy we believe we have received, toward others. But scripture instead was taken out of context, where conquests or judgments seen in the Old Testament were taken as commands for “Christian” nations thousands of years later who did not receive the actual commands recorded there.
This is part of what Western “Christian” civilization has been held up to, and their validity dismissed for (Romans 2:24). But all conservative defenders can do is point to others; “what about them“? (Even though they know this would never fly, before God; but they are so sure they are right with God, and again, they criticize others as “never accepting responsibility”!) But those “others” are the ones you consider to be “godless heathens”, and yourselves the faithful Christians. You’re supposed to set the example of godliness, as the “light to the nations”, not appeal to them as justification of your own ungodliness in the same breath as condemning their ungodliness! This is why it seems popular culture is so against traditional Western and Christian “values”. (See also, Eph.4:27, John 9:41, Luke 12:48).
So the book does make and support its point, but it goes off into so much other details, it seems more like a general study of anthropology. So it doesn’t seem really hard-hitting enough. (I of course am looking for something that will be a good counter to both mainstream Right “dog whistling”, and alt-Right “supremacy”). It’s too easy to get lost in all the details about human evolution in general. What I had hoped to see was more specific connections with modern behavior and beliefs.
What I find as a cause for concern is the direction the author has seemed to go in the nearly 40 years since publishing the book, and as I saw in researching him for this project, it is possibly anti-semitism. Jews were barely mentioned in the old printing, but this newer publication promotional: http://www.michaelbradley.info/books/iceman/iceman_promo.html is subtitled “A frightening publication history of Jewish media suppression”. It’s compared to the Nation of Islam’s The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews.
So on the page, he covers his history promoting the original publication.
Then, in early 1981, someone figured out the implications for Jews in the book’s presentation of evidence…
I had never considered this myself because it had been a long time since I had taken my own Jewish origins into any account. I had never even thought about any “Jewish implications” of the book. Neither did the Jewish publisher of the original Canadian edition, Larry Goldstein. And, obviously, Dr. Judith Posner had not thought about any “Jewish implications” either when she wrote an Introduction for The Iceman Inheritance – unless, of course, courageous Judy Posner simply had more affinity with all of humanity than with her own ethnic group. Jews were blandly mentioned on half a page in the 226-page book.
After 1981, some bookstores that had formerly carried the book were threatened with boycott and fire-bombing by Jewish pressure groups.
This eventually leads into something called the Khazar theory. I had recently been hearing this, probably from some FB “friends” with some radical “libertarian” or paleo-con leanings (who post things that may ultimately tie into the alt-right). It basically says the common “white” Jews (particularly the Ashkenazis) were actually descended from a Caucasian tribe from the Russian steppe. They “converted en-masse to Judaism about AD 740 in order to avoid religious, cultural and political control by either Moslems in Persia or by Christians in Byzantium. These ‘Jewish’ Khazars, along with Alans, Bulgars, Magyars and other minor steppe tribes, were subsequently dispersed all over Central and Eastern Europe about 500 years later by the Mongol invasion of AD 1218.”
He even points to the common physical traits, such as the faces of people like Barbara Streisand and Julia Roberts. (BTW, Donald Fagen would be a textbook example of that as well).
On one hand, this view was enticing, because I’ve always held the position that the original Israelites of the Bible were people of color, like the modern Palestinians and others, and even some current day Israelis. But it seems when you look at most people called “Jews” today, they are pure “white”, many even with blonde hair and blue eyes. Even though “white supremacists” reject them as part of their race, when growing up, they were always called “white” and identified themselves as such. The Census even considers them “Caucasian”.
So it is so easy to assume, as apparently the entire Church did, that these were what the people of the Bible looked like. Sure enough, nearly every Sunday-school and Bible illustration of Moses, Joseph, Judah, David, all the prophets, and Jesus and the apostles, are all white. It’s then further assumed the Israelites were the original racial stock, so the whiteness is then further projected back to Abraham, Shem (even though most will acknowledge the true Caucasian race as stemming from Japheth along with the Mongoloids), Noah, and the first humans, Adam and Eve.
This went right along with the racism of the Western Church. Whites, whether Israelite or not, were the “chosen” race. Blacks were “cursed” Ham.
(Hislop’s Two Babylons clearly identified Nimrod as “black”. Herbert Armstrong, who I entered the faith through, drawing upon Hislop in Mystery of the Ages, then proclaims all the “chosen” figures, from Adam to Noah and his sons, to “God’s chosen nation Israel”, to Jesus, as “white”, of course taking care to add “not that the white race is in any way superior” ⦅these people, including today’s “dog whistlers”, refuse to understand how innuendo works⦆, and admitting “God does not reveal in the Bible the precise origin of the different races”, but with what Wikipedia would call “weasel words”: “it is evident”, “happened to be”, prefaced with “undoubtedly”, with no evidence!
The point, the main sin in the pre-flood era and the Tower of Babel afterward was intermixing of races, which God had “separated”; and a desire “still inherent in human nature today”, with talk of the “unblemished, perfect lineage”, and an analogy to animal “thoroughbred or pedigreed stock”! (p148. The eternal “Wonderful World of Tommorrow” he concludes the book on, will continue these “boundaries” God has set!)
Also, some white supremacists held black skin as the “Mark of Cain”. Though all of Cain’s descendants were supposed to have perished in the Flood. They’ll probably say Ham’s wife had the genes; just as Armstrong says Eve had the “yellow” and “black” genes, passed through Noah’s son’s wives, though without ever connecting this to Cain.
Armstrong also held to “Anglo-Israelism”, which says that the US and Britain are two of the lost ten tribes of Israel, with other northern European nations being the other tribes. One of the conclusions from this is that all of the conquest and slavery that benefited these nations were fulfillment of the “promise” made to Abraham! He also took the prophecy of Amos 9:9, about the exiled nation “For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth” as proving the race is totally “pure”. They never mixed with any other group; not one single person apparently, so all the “Israelites” you see today: Jews, Anglos, Nordics, etc., are the same exact pure “race” we read about in the Bible!
Anglo-Israelism is one of the main “heresies” evangelical apologetics condemns Armstrongism for, but you really wonder why they would even bother on that point, when it is compatible with, and in actuality, the logical extension of, much of traditional American evangelical preaching on politics and morality! Think, “God is taking away his blessings on our nation and cursing us because of all the sin today!”, as if we are breaking a specific national-divine covenant like the one made with Biblical Israel. Only Armstrongism is fully consistent in that.
Of course, to white supremacists, “Judah” rejected her Messiah, so then it’s their racial “cousins”, the other “chosen” people, the white “Christian” nations, whether linked lineally to Israel or not, who now inherit the “birthright” as the new “chosen” nations!)
So this “Khazar” theory would totally debunk that whole premise, and explain why Jews appear to be Caucasian (aside from trying to argue that it’s purely from mixing). So Bradley is tying it in with his Neanderthal “Iceman” premise, and now claiming they are trying to suppress the theory because of it. You can see more of this here.
So looking up the Khazar theory, I see it is lumped in with “antisemitism”, and also (as it would figure) held by alt-right groups. It’s claimed to have been refuted, as no real genetic evidence connects Jews to this eastern group. So I’m not messing with that theory. (At least not until there is some more solid verification of it, and agreement that it is not simply antisemitic propaganda). There may have been some mixing with that group, but I just don’t trust anything alt-righters say. (Of course, they claim everyone is suppressing their “truths”, and it ultimately becomes more pre-supposed, biased conjecture than anything else).
Interestingly enough, those other “Russian steppe” groups mentioned above are the ones associated with the “Gypsies”, who were already, historically despised by Westerns. So it figures antisemites would benefit by tagging the Jews in with those peoples.
However, the initial basis of antisemitism, that they were the “murderers of Christ”, would then fall flat, as the gentile Khazars, being hundreds of miles away, had nothing to do with the Crucifixion. The modern advocates of this theory don’t seem to be thinking of that.
Of course, alt-righters are also against blacks, while this guy’s original premise seemed to be to admit the error of racism, explaining it anthropologically. So I’m really not sure where he’s coming from. (Him being part Jewish doesn’t necessarily help. Hitler himself apparently was as well. There are self-hating Jews, just as there are self-hating blacks). As mentioned before, some alt-righters even hold the Neanderthal origin theory as proving superiority.
Still, I think there is something to the basic premise, regarding “aggression” (whether it goes all the way back to Neanderthals, or the “modern people” who suffered similar conditions later). This is essentially what’s being held up in the Right as the very “character” others, especially the blacks, lack, and particularly in the whole “rugged individualism” premise of modern politics and economics (drawing upon their heavily romanticized “American frontier” roots).
Again, it feels like this society is becoming a virtual Ice Age, not literally, but politically and economically. They insist it is “exceptional”, but then they appeal to raw “nature” (including, again, the Christians; who largely voted for the unscrupulous Trump), and everything is being run like a frozen cave in the middle of Würm. Everyone just covers themselves and passes the buck to the less powerful, and no one cares. Again, dog-eat-dog; survival of the fittest, in the name of the “market” as justification for unbridled “nature”. Yet, we’re so much above the animals, and other people!
So with the alt-right on the warpath today, with the utter gall to be boldly wielding their views as infallible “truth” as if God shouted it down from Heaven, and never thinking in the least, that it might be “too good to be true” that they are so superior, or having no sense of any negative side to their achievements, this is something they should be checked with, especially since they hold to a central part of the premise, regarding the Neanderthals. Aggression is not really “superiority”. Perhaps in a survivalistic sense, but definitely not in a moral sense! For every “good”, there is a shadow of “bad”, so what is “exceptional” with technology and even religion has also been exceptionally “bad”, in some of what has been done with it. So this is something they should constantly be made aware of. And it’s certainly better than other theories, such as the ones of black “Muslim” and “Hebrew” groups that explain these things by “demonizing” the race, quite literally!
Here I put together a review of both of these final books from David Keirsey. He had obviously decided to completely revamp his theory, and in the process, move further away from mainstream MBTI-based typology concepts.
Brains and Careers was released in 2008, and on the website, it was mentioned that there were now four “roles of interaction”: “Initiator”, “Contender” “Coworker”, “Responder”, which made some of us excited, as these corresponded to Berens’ Interaction styles (she herself seemed interested when I first reported this on a Keirsey temperament list). It was about $20 (and eventually went up to $30), and with money problems, seemed too much to try to buy then.
Nobody else we knew seemed to have gotten it.
Two years later (2010), he released another book called Personology. The term was actually coined in the first book, as a section on “the Nine Personologists” (Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Paraclesus, Adickes, Spränger, Kretschmer, Fromm and Myers) and so now became the title of the followup book.
I got this one right away (and it was cheaper), and seeing how different the concepts were (even some of the new concepts, like two of the roles of interaction, were already changed), had to wonder how different it was from B&C. We began hearing it was just a “rewrite”, which I now see is somewhat true.
I was slow in buying books, and probably not too long before B&C came out had just gotten Berens’ books and wouldn’t get his older books until around this time, two years later. It was actually this new book that raised my interest in Portraits of Temperament, to see if he had actually introduced the interaction roles there, but that book is only where he introduced the factor that would divide the temperaments into eight groups, and then be picked up by Berens first, to create the four new groups, and now in these two books finally picked up by Keirsey, but with a bit of a twist, as we shall explore.
So the basic concepts were set in place in the first book, but now just modified a bit. Still, having not seen the book, and thinking he changed too much in this one, this raised interest in the previous book. I didn’t want to spend so much on it, and it took a while before I could catch one under $10 on Amazon (and even then, on the first several tries, something would always go wrong with the order or shipment and it would be cancelled, or I get the wrong book)
These would be his final books, as three years later (July 30, 2013) he passed away.
The radical changes from before
It seems he has completely dropped all type codes now. He briefly mentions the letters/functions in his description of Myers’ theory as part of the “history of temperament” in the appendix of the first book and the opening chapter of the second. But for the rest of the books, he goes purely by names. And at that, many of them have changed since previous books!
There is a heavy focus on what were known as “skills sets” (Diplomatic, Logistical, Strategic, Tactical), used more than the official temperament names.
Also, an alternative set of descriptive names used with these: Enablers, Safekeepers, Builders, Manipulators.
Keirsey also uses the four card suits to represent the temperaments:
♦ diamonds: Artisans
♥ hearts: Idealists
♠ spades: Guardians
♣ clubs: Rationals
There’s also a temperament/role matrix for each type, with the roles as the horizontal rows and the temperaments as the vertical columns. The type being profiled is in upper left position and is more likely to play the role of the type in the row or column in descending order. INTP “Accomodating Strategist” [again, names are used, not the type code] will more easily play the role of fellow Rational ENTP than the lower down Rationals the NTJ’s. It will be the same for fellow “Accomodators” ISFP, followed by INFP and ISFJ. The type in the far lower right corner will be the ESTJ, the Initiating Logistician.
He also renames several of the key factors.
Cooperative becomes “Compliant” and Pragmatic becomes “Adaptive“. (These are the “keys“)
The handy “role-informative/role-directive” factor introduced in Portraits of Temperament(and formed the basis of Berens’ Interaction Styles, which were the most helpful in my correlation of type with classic temperament) are now renamed “Enterprising” and “Inquiry” (“Role playing”), and again in the second book, “Reactive” and “Proactive“.
This results in four “Frames“, which are 2×2 matrices of:
“Methods” Compliant/Adaptive + Immediate/Remote, yielding the four “Character” skills sets names
“Roles” Enterprise/Inquiry + Interlink/Intersect, yielding the four interaction roles
“Word Use”: Definitive/Normative, + the old “Concrete/Abstract” forming “Pictorial, Factorial, Orthodox and Metaphoric”
“Tool Use” Facility/Mechanism + Simple/Complex; yielding “Storing, Steering, Nurturing and Levering”.
(These last two sets are also alternate terms for the temperament groups; Guardian=”Orthodox” and “Storing”; Rational=”Factorial” and “Levering”, Artisan=”Pictorial” and “Steering”, and Idealist=”Metaphoric” and “Nurturing”).
He even crosses Proactive/Reactive, with Compliant/Adaptive (that is, an “interaction” factor with a temperament factor!) creating four groups comprising of (not using the letters, of course) STJ/NFJ, NTJ/STP, NFP/SFJ, and NTP/SFP.
With all these new names and combinations all over the place, it takes time to remember what’s what.
He for all purposes has completely dropped the four dichotomies of the type code (expressive/reserved; concrete/abstract, toughminded/friendly, and scheduling/probing).. “Concrete/Astract” seem to be mentioned only as part of the alternate “Word Use” frame. E/I is referred to once in each book (p.357 and 321, respectively), as “expressive” vs “attentive”, as part of the “Word usage synonyms of three dimensions of human interaction”.
Replacing it in the interaction role matrix is what corresponds to the “Process/Outcome” cross-factor Berens had introduced for the Interaction Styles, called “Interlinking vs Intersecting“, which ties together I/E—D/Inf “opposites”.
Interlinking: the role of one person is related to the role of another such as to be linked or fit together. Such as when one person directs, and the other does as directed.
Intersecting: When we line up opposite of opponents, and besides proponents, the roles intersect; each person intent upon their own agenda. Such as in any competition where we side with our team mates, and oppose the opposite team.
I find these to be accurate. The first would represent the way the Choleric (expressive/directive; “Initiator”) likes to lead, and the Supine (reserved/informative; “Responder” or “Accomodator”) likes to follow. (In APS, it’s further revealed that the negative side of this is that the Choleric comes to despise those he leads, while the Supine feels unacknowledged and used).
With the second, both sides are doing the same thing (as opposed to one leading and the other following) yet having different (opposing) agendas.
The expressive and responsive (“Coworker” or “Collaborator”) Sanguine will be very social, while the reserved and resistant Melancholy (“Contender”) will tend to want to be left alone. Both are basically “doing their own thing”, rather than following or leading.
They may clash, if the expressive (Sanguine) approaches the reserved (Melancholy), and the latter resists.
(So the three dimensions appear together in this one table of lists, but the rest of the time, only Interlinking/Intersecting and Enterprise/Inquire or Proactive/Reactive are used.
Also, while these are being used for the “affective” groups or “Inclusion area” only; I believe the dynamics also work for the conative temperaments or “Control area” so that the SP and SJ will “intersect” and the NT and NF will “interlink”. Strategy and Diplomacy will interlink as the strategist takes the lead in action, and the Diplomat likes to move others to action, and likewise Tactics and Logistics will intersect. These would simply map onto S-intersect/N-interlink. In Schutz’s original FIRO-B theory, this “interlinking” dynamic is called “Reciprocal compatibility”).
Here I compare the names of type factors and groups that have changed from before, and between the two books.
“Roles of Interaction” and factors:
| Previous | Brains and Careers | Personology |
| N/A (EST/ENJ) | Initiator | |
| N/A (IST/INJ) | Contender | |
| N/A (ESF/ENP) | Coworker | Collaborator* |
| N/A (ISF/INP) | Responder | Accomodator* |
| Cooperative | Compliant (with norms) | |
| Pragmatic | Adaptive (to Circumstances) | |
| Role Directive | Enterpriser (Assert) | Proactive (Tell) |
| Role Informative | Inquire(r) | Reactive (Ask) |
| N/A (Berens “Outcome) | Interlinking | |
| N/A (Berens “Process” | Intersecting | |
| N/A (Berens “Structure”) | “annoying” | |
| NA (Berens “Motive”) | “contagious” | |
| Expressive/reserved (E/I) | Expressive/attentive (deprecated) | |
*(These now match the corresponding Thomas-Kilmann [TKI] Conflict Modes)
“Intelligence Variants” (now called “Careers“)
| Previous | Brains and Careers | Personology |
| Conservator (SFJ) | Provider | |
| Administrator (STJ) | Monitor | |
| Entertainer (SFP) | Improvisor | |
| Operator (STP) | Expeditor | |
| Advocate (NFP) | Interceder | Mediator |
| Mentor (NFJ) | ||
| Engineer (NTP) | Structurer | Constructor |
| Coordinator (NTJ) | Stratifier | Coordinator |
Types (“career niches“):
| Previous | Brains and Careers | Personology |
| Provider (ESFJ) | Supplier | |
| Protector (ISFJ) | ||
| Supervisor (ESTJ) | ||
| Inspector (ISTJ) | ||
| Performer (ESFP) | ||
| Composer (ISFP) | ||
| Promoter (ESTP) | ||
| Crafter (ISTP) | ||
| Champion (ENFP) | Advocator | Advocate* |
| Healer (INFP) | Conciliator | Reconciler |
| Teacher (ENFJ) | Educator | |
| Counselor (INFJ) | ||
| Inventor (ENTP) | Engineer | Modeler |
| Architect (INTP) | Designer* | |
| Fieldmarshal (ENTJ) | Mobilizer* | |
| Mastermind (INTJ) | Planner | Arranger |
*(Similar to Berens)
Further comparison of two books:
The books are outlined a bit differently, with the first one having standard chapters on the basic concepts covering the first 90 pages
Then, “Temperament Revisited”, chronicling his earlier three books on the subject, and the evolution of the temperament names. Following this, are the four “books”, containing the lengthy profiles of each of the the temperaments. Then, the Appendix, containing the end note, bibliography, etc. The second book is still similar, but drops the “books” format, but nevertheless begins on “Personology” (the theorists through history, then goes into sections breaking down type into “complying”, “adapting”, “proactive” and “inquiry”.
Tables I see in the first book that were not in the second are “Framing and Keying” (“Overview”, p.10-14), framed around “Compliance” and “adaptation” division of the temperaments (the Plato-based old names are actually “Characters”, drawing from Kretschmer, while “Temperament” in the second row is represented by the descriptions “Enthusiastic, Serious, Tranquil and Excited”), and “Roles—Methods—Careers—Niches” on p.26, which consist of four tetramerous circles; “roles” are the four “interaction” groups; “Methods” are the four “skills sets” representing the temperaments; “Careers” is “Builders, “Enablers” “Savers” and “Handlers”, and “Niches” is “Laboratory”, “Institution”, “storehouse” and “Court”.
Tables and graphs similar in both books show which temperaments, roles, the eight “brain types” are suited to careers or niches.
The colorful “Playing Roles” table on p60 of the first book, showing the eight groups introduced in Portraits of Temperament as “Intelligence Variants” (Now known as the “careers”; corresponding to the last three letters of type), divided into the two types making up each, and divided by lines representing “Compliant/adaptive” and “enterprise/inquiry”. This leads into the profiles of each type based on a “tree” of “Role Playing” that breaks down into “Enterprise” vs “Inquiry”, which themselves break down into the four roles: “Preemptive” (Initiator), “Competitive” (Contender), “Cooperative” (Coworker) and “Accomodative” (Responder), which then divide between “Compliant” and “Adaptive”, which the divide into the 16 types.
In Personology, the tree is “Role Enactment”, which breaks down into Compliant and adaptive first, then the four temperament skills sets, then the eight “Variants” or “Careers”, and then the 16 types. (This reminds me of the “rings” his son had produced on one of the online sites and was picked up by Wikipedia).
Conclusion:
As others have also felt, it seems to me like he is just rehashing the theories. (and then trying to further refine them, which is introverted Thinking —though he doesn’t believe in functions; and yet, as I myself have seen, can be carried too far and lose readers). Again, all the new names did make it a bit confusing, because I had to remember what type they are referring to (especially since he doesn’t use the code anymore).
His theory would have hit its peak (in my view) if he had just adopted the Interaction Style groups (“roles of interaction”), and including the new Interlinking/Intersecting. That was the improvement over the PUM’s, and the completion of the ideas he introduced in Portraits of Temperament (which is where he introduced the 8 intelligence variants, based on directive/informative). Instead, he seems to have pushed things too far with all the renaming and reconfiguring.
Someone wondered what will come of these last works; like if this will be forgotten, and it seems like it already has, as it was not even known about by most people to begin with. His basic four temperaments are pretty much established in online type discussions (Even though he rejected the functions, and on the other side, MBTI class jokingly warned us not to talk about temperaments, which are not accepted in official MBTI usage). So even though I had created the review threads on a few boards (that ultimately became this post), there still wasn’t a lot of interest from the getgo, and so the type community has already moved on like it never existed, and holding to the old concepts only.
What I have always said, is that since he really wanted his theory to be separate from MBTI (I originally thought it was all the same thing, since they used the same type codes), then perhaps this is what he should have come up with originally, from his first Please Understand Me book. (And then it would be a matter of us drawing the correlations to MBTI type). He has truly moved further away from the popular typology.
(Originally posted as two separate comments here https://erictb.wordpress.com/2014/09/06/various-typological-and-life-experience-thoughts/#comment-4107 where I had gotten Personology when it came out, but not the earlier Brains and Careers until just recently, and so compared them).
I had considered doing a followup to the Roxanne War (https://erictb.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/the-roxanne-war-complete-chronology-of-hip-hops-greatest-saga/#comment-4278), on “The Bridge War” which basically superseded it, with all the relevant videos, but didn’t bother as I never liked the outcome of that one (though I did contribute heavily to the Wikipedia article). Also, for one, rap at the end of the Roxanne war entered the transition where in those few years inbetween it had become much more vulgar and violent, which I was against. Plus, there are’t nearly as many entries in the Bridge war, so all the relevant videos can easily be found, but here is the list of them:
Basic Players:
1985:
(“12:41” aka Scott La Rock and crew including KRS, “Success Is The Word”, record dissed by Mr. Magic leading to retaliation)
1985-6:
MC Shan–“The Bridge”
1986:
Boogie Down Productions–“South Bronx”
MC Shan–“Kill That Noise”
1987:
Boogie Down Productions–“The Bridge Is Over”
Rockwell Noel & The Poet:
–“Beat You Down”
(When I first heard this one, his voice being much higher back then, I actually thought it was Shan‘s answer to “The Bridge Is Over”, and that “poet” was just a description and not his name; and I was like YEAH! Now THAT’s more like it!”)
1988:
—“Taking U Out”
(Even stronger followup, though I thought was way too hard on Ms. Melody, who did not seem to be involved in the war. It’s really baffling that KRS never responded to that part of it. They were together until ’92, so it wasn’t that they had broken up or anything like that. It seems he was too busy extolling his own self anyway).
MC Butchy B—“Beat Down KRS”, mocks the whole reggae theme of “The Bridge is Over”
Boogie Down Productions–“Still No. 1 (Numero Uno mix)”. A remake of his popular “Still No. 1” that starts off adding who he’s not down with (Poet and the other “Juice Crew” members), in addition to who he is down with, and then does a whole new rap against Poet.
Related records: the radio DJ’s and one-shots (mostly ca.1988):
Roxanne Shanté–“Have A Nice Day” (ends on a quick shot at the BDP crew; ’87-8)
MC Shan–“Juice Crew Law” (some believe also contains shots at KRS)
Cool C–“Juice Crew Diss” (mocks “Juice Crew Law”)
MC Mitchski–“Brooklyn Blew Up The Bridge” (made fun of Shan’s on-stage appearances)
Craig G–“Duck Alert” (About rival KISS-FM’s DJ Red Alert)
Butchy B–“Go Magic” (Mentions “Juice Crew Diss”, and then attacks the “lipstick” of the KISS-FM logo).
Deuces Wild—[Chuck Chillout KISS ID] (Samples “South Bronx”, “…Chuck Chillout on the mix…“, and includes lines, “you turn the volume up, 107.what?…” [i.e. WBLS=107.5], and, apparently aimed at Magic: “You ain’t smackin’ no lipstick, you can just kiss this; you’re just an old man, finished in this business“, and ends with the ad libs “Let’s dis Magic”—”Madame Tragic!” and “Marley Moo Moo!”
Aftermath reference raps:
1989:
Kool Rock Steady— “You Ain’t Nobody” (Disses KRS-1 for dissing “hip-house” music. Contrasts himself with Shan and Poet; “whatever I say on the wax, I can show it”).
1990:
Boogie Down Productions–“Black Man In Effect” (Discusses the concept of “juice” and reiterates “I’m not down with a juice-crew”)
1990-1:
Poet + Hot Day—“Without Warning” (contains samples of “Numero Uno” and briefly answers one of them, but otherwise is general ‘ego’ rap)
Screwball (later Poet crew):
2000:
“You Love To Hear The Stories” (a followup to the original “The Bridge”, featuring MC Shan. Poet protests “Nobody said it started there. But some playa hater tried to end a party there. Niggas didn’t care they burned it, put it in the air. I took it personal, readied up for warfare. But time passed by, s___ died out, But niggas got paid off my hood no doubt“)
2001:
“Bio” (anonymous reference with the citing of Doug. E. Fresh’s “You Ain’t Nothin” from “The Bridge is Over”)
Nas “Destroy & Rebuild” (Plays off of the whole “The Bridge is Over” premise, with the line repeated in the chorus, but then answered in they are rebuilding it, and “gotta have unity”. Actually blamed fellow QB rappers such as Cormega and Prodigy, for “killing” it, rather than the Bridge War. This rift would apparently be healed that same year [next])
QB’s Finest (showcase of Queensbridge hip hop artists) —”Da Bridge 2001” (Another followup to the original. Shan quips: “The Bridge was never over, we left our mark. The jam is dedicated to you and your boys, I brought my Queensbridge thugs to kill that noise”).
2007:
KRS One With Marley Marl, Hip Hop Lives album:
“Rising“: (KRS recounts the whole story from his perspective)
“The Victory“: featuring [by then, “Blaq”] Poet; (quashes their part of the beef)
History of rap leading up to the War, and how I chose sides
It seemed 9 [almost 10] years ago (wow, that long already) that battle was officially resolved by KRS teaming up with archenemy Marley Marl on an album, which included his strongest opponent, Poet in a duet rap.
However, I was always disturbed by what I would now call the “archetypal” implications of the original aftermath, of the obviously “strong” bass-voiced rapper “taking out” the weaker looking higher pitched voice rapper, which was the official narrative. And the latter is now beginning to react to this as well.
How I got to this position in this war: As I chronicle in my essay on the gradual downfall of rap http://www.erictb.info/rap.html I did not see Run-DMC in a favorable light, because of the fierce in-your-face aggressiveness and braggadocio of the “ego” style they introduced with “Sucker MC’s”, which quickly took over rap, and began transforming it, basically into the negative “gangsta” style in just a few years, where it had started out more positive, as party, talent and then “message” oriented.
Run, with rap pioneer Kurtis Blow (who also went from a message style to pure ego, dubbing himself the “King of rap”), and the others surrounding Run’s brother Russell Simmons (aka “Rush”) then formed a “mainstream” inner circle of rap, all dominated by ego-bragging, and culminating with their 1985 film Krush Groove.
(And “Krush/Crush” seemed to be a name that figured prominently in a thematic way. Run-DMC’s “Sucker MC’s” series of tracks were subtitled “Krush Groove I”, “Krush Groove II”, etc. even before the movie came out. These were named after an “Orange Krush” singing group produced by Simmons and headed by “Larry Laa [Smith]” whom the Run rap series drew beats from, and were mentioned in the first one. The early influence of these rappers were the “Cold Crush Brothers”.
So these figures seemed to mark in part, what I’m calling the rap “mainstream”. It seems the center of it all was “Rush” [Simmons] himself, whom those names were likely based on).
Major Rap Division begins
A sort of “counter”-movement began with Roxanne Shanté, who of course started off dissing UTFO, but then would later take shots at Run and Kurtis Blow. Her DJ, Marley Marl would later introduce MC Shan and others, who would go after LL Cool J and even Run-DMC. (Shanté protegé Steady B’s “Take Your Radio” Shan now claims to have ghost-written).
As stated in the Roxanne article, I first began to become sympathetic to Shanté when I thought Sparky D’s (and later, UTFO’s own final) response to the Roxanne War was “unfair”. (I really got into the whole “story”, treating it as an audio “soap opera”!)
I of course knew Marley was associated with Shanté, as she praises him in her raps, just as all other MC’s did for their DJ’s back then (and this was the MC’s original function!) I didn’t know he was associated with Mr. Magic (not initially, that is. There was a clue in Shanté mentioning Magic “saving the day” in “The Queen of Rox”, but I didn’t know what exactly she was talking about).
They both discovered her together, in fact. (I later find out this latter point from the internet, telling how long I was in the dark on that!)
Back then, I just knew Marley always seemed to be involved with a lot of these dissident rappers coming out, several associated with the small Pop Art record label Shanté debuted on, who were independent from the mainstream.
So I came to associate Magic with the “mainstream” rappers because of his DJ album he put out c.1985, which had Run, Kurtis Blow, LL, Fat Boys, etc. (Not sure if it was part of the Mr. Magic’s Rap Attack series, as what I’m seeing now looks different. The one I think I remember is the one where he wore the white magician suit, and Vol. 1 looks different, though has a similar lineup).
This makes it funny how Magic could promote these rappers, but then also raise up these two others, to dis them.
If it seems strange that I didn’t know that Magic and Marley were such a big team, it’s because I never listened to their station, WBLS. I, as it is, was already on the “other side” of the radio battle going on at the time, with rival “KISS-FM” (98.7; WRKS), which I listened to (switching over from the old WKTU three years earlier, because they played Stevie’s “Do I Do” to death! I liked them so much, when I was in VA, I found an apparent sister station, “Kiss 96”, WQKS out of Williamsburg, but could only get the distant station from the opposite side of the dorm from my room).
Also, Shan would never appear in the “Rap Attack” series, and Shanté would not appear until vol.3, with “Have A Nice Day”. (Her entry in the Bridge War, several years later. I don’t even think Marley was mentioned on them either). Inasmuch as Shan and Shanté mentioned Marley on the records more than Magic, it was easy to miss the connection between them.
This series, I can now see, was a showcase of whoever was popular (and thus playing a lot), and not who he was necessarily “down” with.
I also knew nothing about the dispute between Magic and UTFO which led to Shanté’s introduction in the first place (something about some show they were supposed to do or something). So I saw UTFO as on the “mainstream” side. For one, they were associated with Whodini, who seemed pretty mainstream, and were even managed by Rush! Also, again, that “The Real Roxanne” was actually produced by their producers, Full Force, (to counter Shanté), and she would mention that “Larry Laa” person (of “Sucker MC’s” fame) in a favorable light, as if they were all “down”. Then Sparky D came to defend them from Shanté, and she was associated with a “Spyder D” who was on Profile, which was Run-DMC’s long time label.
(The Rap Attack albums were also on Profile, perhaps partly explaining the selections on them.
So record labels also figured in my assumptions of who was “down” with who. I much more recently find out that she had a spat with Pebblee Poo, who was also on Profile and made a name dissing the Boogie Boys “Fly Girl”, and both she and Spyder were also on the aforementioned Mr. Magic album. Edit: watching her story on a video, she said she was close to Rush, and even wondered why she wasn’t invited to be in Krush Groove. Hearing the battle rap with Shanté again, she does have that same style and egotistical attitude as Run and all the other mainstreamers of the time. So I wasn’t imagining her being on “their side” after all!)
You also had Doug E Fresh, who seemed to be mainstream (and was in earlier “mainstream” film, Beat Street), who would be dissed by Salt & Pepa’s debut, on Pop Art, and then Shanté would spoof “LaDiDaDi”, as mentioned in the Roxanne article.
The mainstream “Fat Boys” seemed be be countered by this new group called “The Skinny Boys” (and I think there was also a “Fat Girls” as well).
The even earlier pioneers, such as Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambataa, Spoonie Gee, etc. as mentioned in Kurtis Blow’s “AJ Scratch”, were of course respected by the mainstream, and thus could be seen as on the same side of the spectrum.
(Rush was said to be the person you had to go through to get “in” back then, but those who came before Rush were of course already in.
A YouTuber named Karceno4life, who seemed to be some sort of old time hip hop insider, recounts a “legend” that a rapper named “Swan Love” was who Run’s “Sucker MC’s” was actually aimed at, and I can’t find that info anywhere else. This was someone who was going to start a group called “the Force” with Run, but Rush and others thought his rhymes were “wack”, and so when Run-DMC finally came together, they thought this guy was bitter at them for not getting a deal; so Run took his style and mocked him by calling himself “Run Love” in the rap. That would actually make this the first “diss record” of hip hop and not “Roxanne’s Revenge”!)
So I, in my typical Ti “categorizing”—Ne “imagining” sort of way imagined rap divided into two camps, the “Krush Groovers” and the “Pop Artists”. (Perhaps I listened to too much politics, which I was becoming well aware of in that age of Reagan and the Moral Majority, with its clearly defined “Right and “Left”. So Kurtis Blow and allies were like the “right” wing ⦅”conservative”, gatekeepers of “the old guard”⦆, and Shanté and friends were the “left” wing ⦅”liberal”, progressive⦆).
I figured if Magic was down with the Krush Groovers, then I imagined the Pop Artists being featured on a similar DJ album by rival Chuck Chillout or Red Alert. IIRC, one actually did surface sometime afterward, and I clearly remember coming home from college one summer, winter or spring, and hearing Shanté actually doing a promotional for KISS! (Which further added to my ongoing homesickness when I went back. Trying to remember whether she mentioned Red or Chuck in that promo. This, well before the Bridge War, which became solidly centered around the two stations and their DJ’s. Sparky would later do a promo for Red, i.e. “Red! Where’s the beef? DJ Red Alert, gone berserk!“, around the era of the Bridge War).
Where the crew that would actually form around Magic was said to be the first “rap collective” (like the ones that began developing in the 90’s, most notably, Wu-Tang), in reality, all the Rush-associated acts (featured in Krush Groove) were in practice such a “collective” as well, but just did not name themselves as such.
So the whole point of all of this is, I came to like Shan, Shanté and the others they associated with because of their “countercultural” stance against the rap mainstream, whose egos had become way too bloated by 1986.
(You also then had Kool Moe Dee, having gone solo after coming out of the old Treacherous Three, going after LL, who had really hit big by then).
From “old” to “new”: Rap further divides
This ‘binary’ appearance of rap all changed with the Bridge War. First, what I called “Krush Groovers”, as the previous “mainstream”, was now starting to be called “the Old School” (a term I previously heard applied to older generations, particularly grandparents and before. Like Dad saying someone from his parents’ generation “…is from the old school. They believed children should be ‘seen and not heard'”, for instance). The exception was LL, who was on the later end of that wave, and was called “mid”-school.
And now, a whole new crop of rappers coming out were called “the New School”. However, this time-like division began to break away from the old apparent divisions of rap. (Like Moe Dee was technically “old school”, even anonymously dissed as such in LL’s “Jack the Ripper”, in response to him having blasted LL as a “new jack” in “How Ya Like Me Now”, but in his solo career at least, was clearly estranged from what had by then become the mainstream “core” of the “old school” [i.e Rush, et.al] which LL was apart of; and was in some ways more like some of the new school rappers).
So KRS-One on one hand was also going against the mainstream, even putting down the whole notion of “kings” that defined the ego-style of the “Krush Groovers” or old schoolers, along with the rampant commercialism. But then he actually defended LL from Shan! He took a swipe at Run DMC and “Adidas”, but otherwise seemed to respect them. The rest of the “new school” emerging then—Eric B & Rakim, etc. also seemed to be counter-mainstream, but still respecting it. (They, to my surprise, were actually associated with Marley, but were not in the crew with Shan and the others, and were among those KRS would say he was “down” with). Public Enemy was even produced by Russell Simmons. While LL himself would eventually go on to hook up with Marley!
So this lends credence to the claim that KRS and Scott La Rock at one point wanted to be in what by then came to be known as the “Juice Crew”, centered around Shanté, Marley, Magic and Shan. (Basically, arising from the core of the old “Pop Artists”; now centered around Magic, aka “Sir Juice”, and having left Pop Art and moving to a new label, Cold Chillin’).
I would have loved that. I think they would have been so good together on the same side, for they were all against the mainstream (save Magic). I would have loved to have all that intellectual lyrical genius on the “side” I favored, in contrast to the ego-tripping, “suped up” sellouts! I even imagine what it would have been like if they had been “down”, and perhaps “South Bronx” could have still been released, but not dissing the Bridge. It would just be like a compliment to it, like Cutmaster DC throwing Brooklyn into the mix in a followup referencing the Bridge war, and another group adding a rap about “Uptown”.* (Only a few lines of “South Bronx” are actually directed specifically at The Bridge, and no names are even mentioned in that one).
*(Cannot find this anywhere, and I might be thinking of Uptown Crew “Uptown’s Kickin’ It”, which was a Marley Marl produced group of rappers including an emerging Heavy D & the Boys. However, the “Uptown” chant used in this one is simply “Uptown! Uptown!” in the style of Cutmaster’s “Brooklyn! Brooklyn!” So this is likely what Cutmaster was referring to in his followup. But I thought for sure I remembered it instead copying the “South Bronx” chant, as “Uptown…Up-uptown!” Perhaps a remix or something? Or maybe I misheard/misremembered it somehow, or maybe hearing someone else chanting that and not on a record?)
I imagine, if this happened, then KRS might have directed all that energy, perhaps in unison with Shan, Moe Dee and the others, toward Run, LL and the rest of the so-called “kings”. THAT would have been a BOMB rap war! (KRS always did seem poised to potentially go after LL, like when asked, or more recently, actually say something and then apologize. LL may have been less likely to survive BOTH KRS and Moe Dee on his hide!)
I imagine a counterfactual version of “The Bridge Is Over” even, which could have actually been similar, and even go as far as to still maintain the Bronx vs Queens premise, but directed at the OTHER end of Queens (“Hollis is Over”? “…Can’t sound like LL, or Run DMC…”? and then twist one of their lines to claim they said hip hop stated in Hollis).
That then would have been much more suited, as Shan and the Bridge were not the ones “posing as ‘kings'” and claiming to be the center of hip hop, which was KRS’ whole premise in his message beyond the battle. (And not even the “juice” moniker necessarily implies that, outside of their connection to Magic, who as it happens, was the real perpetrator in the whole affair, as we shall see next). Shan is not the one who said he was the “baddest rapper in the history of rap itself” like LL did (which is one of the things that drew Moe Dee’s ire).
Karceno has another video on a small beef between Shan and Run-DMC, where he points out that eastern Queens (Hollis, etc.) was basically more bourgeois and actually looked down on the poorer southern Queens and the Bridge (on the extreme western end of Queens, next to Manhattan). He points out that many of the Juice Crew members weren’t even from Queens (some were from Brooklyn, etc.)
By all accounts, Queensbridge (representing the “inner city” just as much as the Bronx), should have been on the same side as the South Bronx against eastern Queens!
It should be mentioned, that at the time, I knew nothing about the real reason KRS launched his war against the Juice Crew, which was Magic dissing an earlier record. Scott LaRock (with KRS already by his side) had begun with a pair of good “message” raps, “Success Is the Word”, and “Advance”. By that time, these types of raps were very rare and basically out of fashion, and neither of them did well at all. It was when “Success” was slammed by Magic, that they eventually formed Boogie Down Productions, aligned themselves with Kiss and Red Alert, and began the attack on Queensbridge. (And Marley claims to not have even known about this at first, see https://www.npr.org/sections/microphonecheck/2013/09/11/221440934/marley-marl-on-the-bridge-wars-ll-cool-j-and-discovering-sampling).
But to me, only hearing the records coming out on the radio, it just looked like a tough guy randomly picking on a weaker guy just to be “bad”. This is why I was totally put off by KRS, and never appreciated his messages and ingenuity back then. (If I knew the whole story, then I would have been more sympathetic, since the arrogance of the rap “mainstream” represented by Magic is precisely what I had been annoyed by; but still wish he hadn’t taken it out on Shan and the crew —and with all the others who would follow him in that. They weren’t the ones who were too puffed up and needed to be taken down a notch or two. He could have just focused on Magic. Even one of these diss followers, Mitch Ski pointed out that it was all falling on Shan: “you’re down with Magic and the whole Juice Crew, but the one they’re dissing homeboy is you”. This blog https://blackceezar.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/10-reasons-why-krs-one-didn%E2%80%99t-diss-everyone-in-the-juice-crew-but-mc-shan/ covers this point as well).
Marley says in an interview that KRS singled out “Magic, Marley, Shan, Shanté”, because that’s who Magic said “is hip hop” when calling Scott’s demo “wack”. So KRS, in defiance then retorted or thought “MC Shan is wack!” (Now imagine if Magic had pointed to the more popular “LL, Run DMC, etc.” Then we may have seen something more like the alignment I had wished! ⦅aside from Magic⦆. And though I haven’t seen it directly said anywhere, since Run, LL and the others were way bigger than Shan and even Shante, the Juice Crew was perhaps easier to go after. ⦅He then basically went for the “weakest link”, but if that’s so, then it also means he was not as all-powerful as he put himself out there to be⦆.
And it almost seems, Magic threw them under the bus by putting them out there like that, rather than the obviously bigger stars. Sensing a sort of betrayal of some sorts even back then, I actually used to think that the “Bridge Is Over” line “Magic’s mouth is used for sucking” was “Magic counted you for sucking”, following “Instead of helping you out, he gets the same thing I gave you”, which I thought was “…he gives [you] the same thing…”; meaning took advantage of them! ⦅And that’s certainly how Shan feels now! So hearing it that way, the rap didn’t even sound like much of a dis on Magic at all! [Being that was the only mention of him]. This further made me think “what the hell is wrong with this guy? Why would he rap something like this?”⦆
Also, BTW, KRS says in an in interview that the term “the monument sitting right in your face” is specifically what he reacted to as implying hip hop started in the Bridge).
So rap was sort of now splintered into at least three main factions; the “Rush & friends” former “old school” mainstreamers, KRS and those other “new schoolers” he mentions as being “down” with him (Just Ice, Jungle Brothers, Rakim, etc.) and the Juice Crew collective. Even on the Kiss side of things, there was apparently rivalry between those closer to Chuck (such as the Dismasters), and those closer to Red (Jungle Brothers, etc).
Public Enemy was sort of inbetween, being associated with the “Old School” Rush, but clearly apart of the emerging “New School”. Arising legend Big Daddy Kane was Juice Crew, but also in the same category as Rakim and the other respected new-schoolers.
The small Philly-based rap circle that remained centered around Pop Art would turn against Shan and Shanté in the war. Steady B would hook up with Cool C (himself actually on another label) and co-write his raps, including “Juice Crew Diss” (mocking Shan and slut-shaming Shanté), and then even do collaborations with KRS! (Though having likely nothing to do with the battle. Pop Art for while became an imprint of the Jive-RCA label KRS was on).
In fact, in a video interview of Kane, he reveals that he and [other Shanté protegé] Biz Markie, were actually down with KRS, partly explaining likely why he did not get involved with the Shan battle, aside from ghost-writing Shanté’s entry, with one closing line of “Have A Nice Day” taking (at that) a relatively weak shot at Kris/Scott (especially considering what the rap it was answering had said about her!) I had heard rumors of some level of kinship somewhere between the two sides, as well. It was so hard to believe or imagine! Even more clear, the later rap “Wrath Of Kane” would say “Juice Crew’s the family, Slick Rick’s a friend of me; and Doug E Fresh, Stet, KRS and Public enemy”! (So again, they should have all been completely down with each other!)
Though Kane is also cited in a video as saying KRS was “the battle he wanted”. He would have been a much better match for KRS, being in that same class of more respected, popular, clever and tougher sounding rappers.
Biz and Kane and a couple others had become sort of a separate faction within the Juice Crew. Which may have also figured in their abandonment in the battle and eventual breakup, as Shan and Shanté were the “inner circle” with Magic and Marley, and Shan was said to speak down to Kane at times, so he and Biz were like the distant members. Biz even went as far as to do Red Alert promos for KISS right in the middle of this whole period!
(He also actually did a rap with Sparky Dee of all people, and about the last thing you ever heard from her.
In passing, the soon-to-emerge West Coast, and later Wu-Tang collective and others would further splinter rap, and the notion of large factions would be irrelevant).
The record battle escalates, and then fizzles out
In both of the battles that ensued; KRS vs Shan, and the similar-to-KRS Moe Dee vs the similar-to-Shan LL, you had these tougher deep voiced rappers going against skinny higher pitched guys (who often tried to seemingly compensate by showing off their bare chests, as both Moe Dee and Mitch Ski would snap on). Only, the outcomes were very different.
Shan responded to “South Bronx” with “Kill That Noise”, but after KRS followed up with “The Bridge is Over” (which triumphalistically ended with the ad-lib “That’s it; no more battling; been taken out! Slaying in ’87, you suckas!”), Shan seemed to let it drop. Poet then took the reins (and occasionally others, such as Butchy B, who did mainly Mr Magic promos, but then added “Beat Down KRS”), but then it died down, and the final answer seemed to be KRS’s “Numero Uno rap”, which was a special version of “Still Number One” aimed at Poet.
There was so much that could have been said in a response, especially the way KRS was simultaneously claiming to be such a “unifier” and even peacemaker of rap (from the first “Still #1”: “I try to tell them, we’re all in this together…“; [I’m like “HUH?!”], “Stop the Violence”, etc.) yet causing such beef, and adding violence to the lyrics (and even the whole image on the album covers).
And the rap pushed the self-glorifying egotism to the hilt, far beyond anything even Run and the other old-schoolers had done; now claiming to be even greater than the “kings” themselves (“I throw them down to the floor, they stare up at me in awe…”. Remember, he, in the original version of this track, and “My Philosophy” broke down for us how “ruling” [in hip hop] was futile; but here, even by the title of the track, he is claiming to rule over the “rulers”!
Other lines included “Do not interrupt when I’m teaching; do not speak when grownups are speaking“, “I’m criminal minded, you’re soft minded; just like a dog, here’s a lyric go find it“, “WE ARE, without a doubt, THE STAR”, “What possessed you boy, to go freestyle? What are you stupid? You must be senile! Poor child, I’ll pull that card and smile…”. and “I haven’t heard a decent thing from you yet; creativity is something hard to get” [Edit: more in comment below]).
Don’t know how anybody could ever swallow all of that and not answer! He is ingenious, but it just seemed to be increasingly going to his head, and he really needed to be taken down a notch or two, —or three, or a hundred or a thousand!
But, (listening in vain on the Friday and Saturday night DJ shows, including even switching to Magic/Marley at times) nothing ever surfaced. Shan made a couple more albums that didn’t seem to include any responses to it (at least not direct ones), but then dropped out, and Poet seemed to just disappear as quickly as he appeared.
As we enter the 90’s, the whole setup dissolves, as Magic and Marley have left BLS, and are eventually replaced by DJ Premier, where I first heard his name on the rap shows. Being mainly a producer, it’s hard to find info on his run on the radio show; like it’s not mentioned on Wikipedia, though several broadcasts or albums produced from the shows are on YouTube. He would become very big, and get involved with a lot of acts, including both KRS and Poet, ultimately producing the “Victory” track featuring both. So he sort of brought back together a large chunk of hip hop, where the main division now became East vs West coast.
Inbetween, Chuck Chillout reportedly went to WBLS for a couple of years, but I didn’t remember that. Red Alert stayed at Kiss until ’94, then they were bought out and became R&B only, and Red and the rap all moved to new sister station HOT97.
Of note; I find that there was shortly after the Bridge War, a strong diss track against KRS by another “KRS”, Kool Rock Steady: “You Ain’t Nobody”. This was the guy who pioneered “hip house” (that mix of hip hop and house music best embodied by “It Takes Two” and his own “Turn Up The Bass”), and was Bronx rap pioneer Afrika Bambataa’s cousin, though himself from Chicago. He took offense at KRS-1 apparently dissing hip-house, and completely dressed down his claim to “rule the party” and claim to have such “knowledge”; speaking “like you did ten years of college”. (You wonder why KRS1 would be against hip house, when Bambataa’s “Planet Rock” and subsequent hits are what sparked off “house music” to begin with, and so were the first blends of rap with that electronic sound).
I never knew anything about this until now. I wish I had heard it back then, as he mentions the Bridge war, contrasting himself “I’m not MC Shan, or King Poet…”. I would have felt much more satisfied with that as the “final word” of that battle era. (Not able to find whether KRS-1 answered it or not. One might think his mention of “It seems you want to be KRS-2”; but that’s from “Poetry”, and way before this). I wonder why Magic and the others never played this! Or, maybe they did, and it was when I was in the Air Force. I didn’t know where the rap-playing stations were in TX, CO and CA, and so had fallen out of the rap circuit during ’89).
The other main battle going on simultaneously, and its opposite outcome
Even though Moe Dee was clearly slamming LL, far harder than what KRS ever said to Shan; LL managed to “win” that one, by in essence “tiring him out”, where Moe Dee was the one whose career faltered, and he just dropped it after a while. The same with Ice T, and Hammer, who had also joined in making snaps at LL, which he would respond to in a later*[see track list, below] record (after they had already quit the record business. Basically, as we see these days, “winning a battle” is now defined by “making the last diss record”; i.e. “having the last word”, just as much as it is for winning an actual battle on stage. And that was how I saw it.
It’s basically a more upgraded and poetic version of the old “ranking out” game we used to do in the street ⦅where “your mama” often got called out. An early rap had even been done cautioning about this, back in the halcyon days of the “message” style⦆. So to “win”, they just needed to not give up, but then since the goal is now selling the records, that might make it more difficult to hang in there and devote so much time to a back-and-forth battle like that and have a company publish it).
LL, while looking and sounding a lot like Shan in the beginning, at one point deepened his voice and developed a lot of muscles, and became basically a sex symbol, especially with some of the sexual-but-in-a-more-‘romantic’-way raps he started doing. So this is what I believe saved him (in addition to being so connected to Rush anyway, whose enterprise expanded into a big multimedia empire). So he of course continued to “blow up” as a famous rapper and then screen star, and now is basically an “all-around” Hollywood celebrity. (Where Ice T and others also became bigger on screen, but not making raps as much anymore).
So in this instance, the “lighter”, higher pitched guy actually won for a change, but he was also apart of the highly commercialized “mainstream” (which I, again, never cared for, and was precisely part of Moe Dee’s whole issue with him in the first place).
So while not physical or especially lyrical “strength”, it was still “power” that prevailed; only in this case, commercial power. Which is really the greatest power in this country anyway, beyond the street environment hip hop is centered on.
Here is the list for their battle:
MD How Ya Like Me Now (1987 “dissing LL Cool J for some behind-the-scenes offenses”)
LL Jack The Ripper (1989; “Jingling Baby” also said to contain indirect shots at Moe Dee)
MD Let’s Go (1989)
LL To Da Break of Dawn (1990; indirect but clear shots, and also Hammer and Ice T).
LL Mama Said Knock You Out (1990-1 “BLAAAOW, how ya like me now?“)
MD Death Blow (1991, answers/mocks both previous raps; “‘Star Trek shades’?; Man cut the joke!“)
LL I Shot Ya [Remix] (1995; “Crushed Moe Dee, Ice T and Hammer’s girls“…).
Article breaking down the whole feud:
https://genius.com/discussions/14965-Rap-beef-review-kool-more-dee-vs-ll-cool-j-who-won-with-poll
(And the poster and most commenters say Moe Dee won, lyrically. “Even if Moe Dee replied only with Let’s Go, he still would’ve won”)
The bad “narrative” forming down to the present
So the natural narrative that arose was that KRS “took out Shan”, and even “took Queensbridge off the map” as others bragged for him. The remaining “Juice Crew” rappers, who were having better success— Biz, Kane, Kool G Rap, etc., just seemed to go their own separate ways. Shanté would increasingly launch an all out crusade against all other female rappers and then suddenly drop out (as they all responded, and she was dead silent in all these new simultaneous “wars” she started, and never came back. I was frustrated on how hard she was on them, who never did anything to her, compared to how relatively soft she had been with KRS and Sparky, who actually had started with her. This actually became the occasion for KRS to take another shot at her, as he even opened Lyte’s response, which also looped a sample of his harsh dis of her in “The Bridge Is Over”).
A new generation of rappers would eventually revive the “QB” name, most notably Nas. But by that time, I was so disgusted by the way rap had gone (of which the KRS hard core style “victory” was the par-for-the-course travesty), I no longer followed anyone (other than the Christian rappers appearing at Big Splash, particularly the Bronx-bred “Storytellas”, and would otherwise only know of the most popular secular raps you heard everywhere. I at times did watch Video Music Box or Yo! MTV Raps to keep up to date in the rap scene for awhile, in addition to hearing my brother’s stuff that he played or recited parts of, but gradually lost interest).
This was the age where the aggression and violence rapped about were starting to spread to real life, and the whole image embraced the worst stereotypes of blacks and criminality, which were at the same time, festering virtually unanswered across the tracks in the white conservative sphere, which is figuring heavily in their now being able to rise up to elect a rather bizarre choice for president, with clear racist connections, and now their voice becoming more loud and radically blatant in what’s being called the “alt-right”, as a major rash of police, steadily taking out blacks in the streets occurs, and blacks criticized for complaining about it, because “look at all your thuggery and murders in the cities”!
(I just now find another good “allstar” positive message rap, from ’91, “Heal Yourself” from the H.E.A.L. Human Education Against Lies – Civilization Vs. Technology album, featuring KRS, Run DMC, Kane, Salt & Pepa, etc. I of course knew about “Stop The Violence”/Self-Destruction”, and West Coast’s “All in the Same Gang”, but these messages fell on deaf ears, while the whole “gangsta” theme it was speaking against, and were supported by many of the same acts, was what was taking over).
As late as almost 10 years ago (until the Marley/Poet collaboration), reflecting how KRS “won” over Queensbridge (after discovering and contributing to the Wiki article, and then KRS claiming to be “Hip Hop incarnate” and talking about creating a hip hop nation), and how it figured archetypally with all the life issues I was ruminating over in my own midlife battles (where the “strong” always “win” in this world), I was imagining, wishing I could go back in time and write the much needed response to “Numero Uno” and send it to Poet or someone. I would have taken an intellectual approach to match KRS’ (us being the same [Keirsey] “Intelligence Variant”; NTP “Engineer”, see below), which I believe was the real key to matching wits with him. (I would have gone [practically] line-by-line, responding to all those big swelling words and claims!)
Shan fought with a more defensive stance (though titled “Kill That Noise”), while Poet took the opposite extreme, of almost pure aggression (especially in the second record). It was intellect KRS had the final word with in “Numero Uno”, which the rap rubbed in their faces; with the aggressive tone only adding the further “street cred”.
Poet would say in an interview somewhere, he initially gave up, because KRS was becoming too big. There actually was another record after the second KRS diss, c.’89, which should have been the response to “Numero Uno”; that was called “Massacre”, and is typically battle themed, but is very general (as common at that time), and does not mention any names or rap line references.
I find this out not too long before the Marley-produced reconciliation, through internet resources where I would follow Poet’s career and see that he afterward joined other groups off and on, and would occasionally take little retrospective (though anonymous) shots at KRS (bearing that same latent old resentment as Shan, who guest starred in one of these raps), up into the 2000’s. “The Bridge was never over, we left our mark”, one of these went. But that’s not how it looked! What it looked like (as KRS is retelling it now) is that an all new “QB” was effectively created by Nas! It’s actually not so much about “Queensbridge”, which is a place; a housing project that will probably always be there. It was really about the “Juice Crew”, which was “over” after all that, and Nas and the new QB rappers are not considered apart of.
When reading of these little-known responses, it was like the whole thing was so foul. KRS “won”; his victory narrative firmly established, and by now pretty big, he could brag about it in a “matter-of-fact” way, and the presumed “taken-out” losers seemed to give up in ’88, and can now only make these passive-aggressive little “ancient history” references up to over a decade later when everyone else and all of rap had long moved on and no one else was even thinking about that battle anymore.
Just now, in getting the above list of entries from the Wiki article, in converting this from a comment (on the Roxanne article) to its own post, I find that an earlier one of these raps, called “Without Warning” (performed as “PHD”) was a more direct response, sampling two bits of “Numero Uno”, but was otherwise similar to “Massacre” in being very general (i.e. addressing “rappers/MC’s” rather than naming one in particular. He does respond to one of the samples at the end, with “You called me soft? What are you, bassin’?” and “Did I serve those punks? [yes]”. It was also ’91, which was three years after Numero Uno already. ⦅The rap is so clean in language though, compared to what was by then popular, and even his other stuff on the same album; with only one “N” word, and so seems older than that⦆).
I would never hear of this or any of the others.
This ended when KRS put out the album with Marley which included a track with Blaq Poet. In the main track, “Rising”, he even spoke well of Shan, in explaining in the rap why a diss record was the only way he could get into the industry back then.
You didn’t hear much from Shan, who seemed to have retired completely from the industry. When you did hear from him in interviews, you could detect this long-standing old resentment. (In total contrast, Blaq Poet would two years later do an interview saying, regarding working with KRS, “What we did back in the day was real hip-hop. We didn’t really battle face-to-face but we got s___ out. Go back to making your songs because you’re going to waste the whole rest of your career talking about this nigga? Nah. Get it over with. Let the fans decide who won the battle. It’s not like you’re going to stop selling records. There’s too much pride and people are getting punked.” http://www.djpremierblog.com/2009/05)
Temperament/Type: the likely “personality” side of the clash
Becoming familiar with personality theory during this time, and typing everyone I could think of, Shan stood out as as a “Melancholy” temperament, which is very common in the black community. A pure Melancholy is likely an ISTJ type (Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, Judging), whose main world view is called “introverted Sensing”, which filters reality through past fact and experience.
So the type can hold on to a lot of resentment and never forget or let it go; hence being named “melancholy” in the first place. Yet, being introverted, it can be rather passive. So rather than venting quickly, they will hold it in, maybe even appear to pass it off and move on (which they will often pitch as a philosophy in life, especially when giving advice to others), but nevertheless let it build up and explode, after many years of non-resolution.
KRS on the other hand seems to be an ENTP (extraverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Perceiving) or the Sanguine-Choleric. This is a combination of the two “extroverted” temperaments, which (as most “classic temperament” profile systems testify) then seems to amplify the aggressiveness of both. (The other blend of the two, the similar ESTP, is the Choleric-Sanguine, which is also pretty aggressive).
KRS is obviously very “intuitive” or “conceptual” (being a Five Percenter and/or the Egyptian “Khamet” [i.e. Metu Neter], which are very “heady” intellectual religious concepts, with his name standing for “Knowledge Reigns Supreme”, which likely has a whole deep theme behind it, as do other Five Percenter and Khamet names and concepts), and seems to show Ti and Ne (introverted Thinking with extraverted iNtuition) “genius”. (BTW, Shan was also reportedly once a Five Percenter, but left. Never heard of anyone leaving the religion. This to me, is another evidence of an S preference, as S’s might not remain as intellectually committed to something like that).
I believe this “N” focus also leads to a problem, in concepts like “Criminal Minded”, and with the guns on the cover and all, which he always said was not promoting violence, but really is metaphorical [i.e. iNtuitive perspective] for street smarts (he has said specifically, the album cover means “think violently, but act righteously”), and rap battle skill. This seems to end up getting taken literally [especially a tendency for those with a more Sensory focus] by many people.
And the processing of these implications will be largely subconscious, and thus can start being acted out without even thinking of it. (KRS himself acted it out in the well known PM Dawn attack, in retaliation for a verbal offense that wasn’t even on record). That’s why I believe these concepts did still promote violence, even if they say they didn’t intend to.
Like the whole “take you out” expression, or “slaying MC’s”, KRS’s “bodybags” (“My Philosophy”), etc. which all literally mean murder, but of course are really metaphors for defeating rivals on the mic. However, during this time, the imagery was becoming more graphic, including guns, and even this far back, while the Bridge War never became physically violent, it could have, with Poet reportedly threatening to go after BDP armed (and he would say in one of the later raps that thankfully it never came to that), and then Just Ice would threaten the same when Poet dissed him.
So of course, a lot of the aggressive words are also defensive, against disses or even real life offenses, and thus would fall under self-protection (survival), which is a more “practical” [S] cause. Intuitive or not, who’s going to ignore actual threats from someone else?
This will add to the whole image being promoted and then, outright glorified (or at least “romanticized”). So then, beefs between industry factions would famously begin leading to death in the 90’s.
What it looks like, is that the rappers saw no contradiction in the different messages they were sending because they seemed to assume or expect people would take the whole “criminal/violence” imagery figuratively, but then take the calls for stopping the actual violence literally. But they didn’t realize that in many people’s psyches, it doesn’t get sorted out that way, and what actually ends up happening is that the violent imagery is what takes hold and gets acted out [i.e. literally], while the calls to peace are then brushed off or ignored, as (at best) an impractical hypothetical ideal that can’t actually be lived up to. Again, who can survive if we’re not prepared to fight and kill or be killed ourselves? We hope people will listen to “reason”, but if they don’t, then what else can we do but be tougher than they are?
Where other recording geniuses, such as Stevie or Steely, seem to be more Ti with Se (extraverted Sensing), which is useful for the melody and harmony of [true] “music”, rap has mainly the rhythm (with sampled or electronic background music beneath it), and is otherwise really spoken poetry (set to the rhythm), and thus doesn’t need as much of the Sensory mastery required for writing and playing full music. (A lot of artists advocating traditional music structure often complained about rap, and also other electronic styles, and how anyone could just throw it all together without even knowing how to play an instrument).
So the mastery lies in the words, rhymes and concepts.
ENTP is actually considered “role-informative”, which is softer than “directive communication”. This, from the more light and airy Sanguine being in the “social” area, represented by the E and the “open” P. (Classic temperaments intro, see: http://www.erictb.info/temperament1s.html) But in the leadership area, it’s the harder Choleric, which is the NT, which is about “mastery”, and is very competitive, and doesn’t back down. He does seem very “directive”, (acknowledging I could be wrong), but the next similar type, ESTP (which is common in the black community, especially in the “party” scene), I doubt, because I think he’s a clear NT.
(The “directiveness” analogue for the leadership area is “structure focus”, which definitely fits, and can lead to similar communication and behavior. And the Sanguine in the leadership area would not be as persistent in a battle.
Poet might very likely be an ESTP, the way he came out swinging fiercely, including at Just Ice and several other MC’s in another concurrent rap back then ⦅”eighty sa’en, I was crazy sa’en…” he recounts in “Bio”⦆; but quickly dropped it. Shanté might be that type also, behaving pretty much the same way.
Then there’s the ENTJ ⦅pure Choleric⦆, which is the next type I would go for [for KRS] if this is wrong, but he doesn’t really seem like a J, and his Thinking seems introverted (stimulated by internal analysis), not extraverted (guided by an external, totally “objective” standard), which the J would be indicating. ⦅He also “parents” with it, in the whole “Teacher” theme, with “Parent” being the archetypal complex carrying the auxiliary function, by which we reach out to support or “teach” others⦆. The “directive” Choleric in the social area would be more “dry” or aloof-seeming in interviews and lectures.
On the other hand, in a recent FB type discussion, someone suggested LL was ESTP, but he actually seems more like KRS in overall personality, including having to have the last word, so I think ENTP. His background most likely not as rough as KRS, that’s why he doesn’t seem quite as “hard”, and he didn’t become as “philosophical”, so he would represent the more familiar “lighter” side of Ne dominance. Moe Dee might be INTP, like me. Similar to KRS with the lyrical ingenuity, but introverted, and thus not as aggressive).
But while Sanguine is “friendly”, it is also still aggressive, with a “hot temper” like the Choleric. They just don’t hold on to it as long. I could tell you about an ENTP typology friend, who loudly defended my wife and I from a restaurant owner or whatever, who wasn’t being totally nice (and she now seems ready to battle, over the escalating race-and-politics issues, in her new home state). The Sanguine often rapidly “swings” between emotional states. But the addition of the Choleric will give it more of an “anchor” on the aggressive side.
So KRS when he’s talking (not rapping) carries the “friendly” air of an “informative” type, and even his teaching style is very pleasant, where other types are very “dry”. So he looks like he’ll easily accept you and be cool with you, as long as you’re not attacking or dissing him. The social Sanguine (“Inclusion” area, or “Interaction Style” in type) is readily accepting of anyone. If you get into a beef, then he responds rapidly and brutally and won’t back down. This is the Choleric, in the area of “Control” (or “leadership” or “action”, which is ultimately what Keirsey’s temperament groups are about), with the Sanguine’s social ‘extroversion’ (expressiveness) only fueling the fiery reaction. Yet at the same time, if time passes, and the other side is willing to quash the beef, then the accepting Sanguine will readily restore friendship and bear no resentment. And this is what we saw with the Marley and Poet collaboration.
30th year: The beef resumes!
So forward to this [past] year (as of 2016), Shan began doing new interviews, and basically reignited the old beef, and you can just hear all the old resentment coming out. Not following rap regularly, I would occasionally hear about this this past Spring, likely from Facebook posts, but didn’t follow up on it, and the months passed. You can see this progress here (this last one, just posted today; i.e. original “Roxanne” article comment time), with Shan even freestyling a 3+ minute rap in an over the phone interview (which really should have been done back in ’87), and then KRS in his usual fashion, quickly responding with a “hardcore” track.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/murdermastermusicshow/2016/04/02/episode-253hiphop-legend-mc-shan
http://hiphopwired.com/2016/04/08/mc-shan-responds-krs-one-apology-demands-vicious-bars/
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/murdermastermusicshow/2016/04/08/episode-256will-mc-shan-and-krs-ever-unite
http://allhiphop.com/2016/04/09/krs-one-releases-new-diss-song-false-accusations-mc-shan/
http://hiphopwired.com/2016/04/09/krs-one-replies-mc-shan-diss-s-h-n-audio
http://www.vladtv.com/article/222379/mc-shan-on-krs-one-dissing-him-on-south-bronx-bridge-is-over?
Shan naturally resents the claim that KRS “took him out”, and having to live with the ‘stigma’ of “losing” the battle. (The final trigger was an instance where KRS was battling someone else who mentioned Shan, and then claimed in a triumphalistic way “I took Shan out already“!)
He would claim he wanted to record a response to “The Bridge Is Over”, but Marley Marl stopped him. (Likewise, he has a video saying Simmons similarly stopped LL from responding to Shan’s dis of him, “Beat Biter” Edit: I also would hear KRS specifically paid off Marley to stop Shan from responding!)
So all of this coming out now is 30 years late (which KRS makes certain to mention in his response track). It looks odd to hold that for so long, and only now come out with it (it looks “passive-aggressive”, which is basically, in street lingo, all the more “weak”, so he better come back strong and stick with it), but this is how an introverted, but “directive” Si type will respond. Extraverted non-SJ’s will more quickly get into and out of a fight and think less about it. Also, ENTP is what’s called an “Aligning” type (Ti/Fe), where ISTJ is “Ordering” (Te/Fi). So tertiary Fi (introverted Feeling) is likely playing a part in Shan’s approach, and is not syncing with KRS’s tertiary Fe (extraverted Feeling), which favors external harmony and was evident in the willingness to resolve the issue in a conciliatory way (plus, on the function’s less positive side, all his “[down] with us/against us” lines, like in the old battles).
I also wonder if Shan could be possibly INFP, which is a Phlegmatic or Supine, which are also pretty passive, and also even more likely to allow others to control them. The type is very close, cognitively, to the ISTJ, using the same functional perspectives in a slightly different order. I think I often don’t recognize fellow Supines in the black community because they, from what I’ve seen, learn to hide their passive temperament behind the street toughness they adopt from others (where I had the Choleric in the mix that resisted peer pressure to change my behavior). So they will generally look like all the Melancholies on the surface.
If so, Si would be tertiary (like it is for me), and still hold on to resentments like this, perhaps even more than the mature Si of SJ types.
If for some reason that much time had passed on a beef with me, and I still had resentment, but the other person was that friendly in resolving it, I might not have been able to just let it go like that, but would still appreciate the olive branch, and find some way to express my frustration over the negative consequences, and not come out swinging like Shan did.
KRS really spoke well of Shan, on record (in “Rising”, even going as far as to call “the Bridge” a “dope rhyme”; now he’s of course taking it all back), and in interviews (saying he wouldn’t have had a career if Shan had ignored him, but he didn’t, because “he knew what hip hop is”). I would never be able to come out like this with someone who turned to speak well of me like that. I’m not sure what I would do. Perhaps do the interview freestyle, but not attacking like that, but nevertheless calling out the assertion made. Really, I would prevent such a scenario in the first place by never having quit the battle to begin with, even if it meant leaving Marley right then. Nothing good could ever come out of swallowing something like that.
I would only come out like that once it is established that the beef is still on or at least unresolved.
If KRS is an ENTP, then Si is inferior, which is also fairly unconscious, but being several months older than I am (and thus also in midlife), should figure more in consciousness now, as you can see evidenced in his rap “Rising” covering the recollections of how the beef started (which includes great detail, though not perfectly remembered. This to me is another evidence of him being an “Inquiring Awareness” or Si/Ne compatible type, and with the Ti/Fe also, an “Enhancing” Intentional Style). So he will have a nostalgic recount of history, which we do see a lot from him elsewhere (like most notably in 1993’s “Outta Here”, which greatly resembled “Rising”; and he will bring up past facts, like against Shan now), but it is still part of an “inferior” complex, and avoidant or at least intimidated by too many negative past facts and details. For me, as a similar type: the introverted counterpart, Si moves up to tertiary, and is similarly nostalgic, and vulnerable-feeling. Though it is also closer to consciousness; close enough to really flare up at past negative occurrences.
Shan’s dilemma, and key mistakes
But as these are but divisions of reality, neither perspective is more “right” than the other, and the past is something that can come up (from the “shadows”) and wreak havoc, and so should be dealt with.
Given the overall “narrative” that has become entrenched, the man does have a lot of reason to be resentful! He got the really bum deal out of the whole thing. So upon studying the whole battle (especially when contributing to Wikipedia and learning all the details behind the scenes), I began lamenting the irony of KRS being angered by Magic, and yet he and Marley walk out of it with their careers unscathed (even getting bigger, in fact), while Shan takes the fall for their actions. Former Juice Crew rapper Craig G even later turned against him and effectively rubbed this in his face in a rap. Now hearing that Marley specifically kept him from fighting back more, makes it all the more messed up.
And Shan also points out the business aspect of it, where Marley (actually his cousin) was very shrewd, and as with as many other producer-performer associations, apparently did not give him all he was due. He also says Cold Chillin’ label CEO Fly Ty especially, was screwing them as well.
(So he also focuses on the money aspect of it, answering the natural charge that he’s probably only doing this now because he “needed money”. So he’s claiming to have been doing well over the years, with the proceeds off of the hit single Snow collaboration “Informer” and others).
If Marley was really the problem, you wonder why, as KRS says, he didn’t pick up the battle all of that time inbetween (after he parted ways with him). But what he seemed to always express during that whole period, was that he ‘didn’t have to’ respond; for “I gave him a career already” (As KRS acknowledged in “Victory”) [edit: quote in comment below]; “it made us more famous”, etc. Even on “Kill That Noise”, his answer to being accused of saying hip hop started in Queens was simply “they’re only trying to jump on the bandwagon” (which Cool C would only take and throw back at him). However, when you look at retrospective comments on the battle, like in social media or YouTube posts, “He gave him his career” is not what you usually see. “The Bridge is Over” is often lauded as the greatest diss track ever, and KRS’s albums from back then as the among the best in hiphop. J-Lo famously sampled “South Bronx” in “Jenny From the Block”, and Wikipedia reports “The Bridge is Over” as “one of the most sampled hip hop songs in hip hop history” (listing nine tracks that sample it!)
How will all this look on the one being dissed? Not “He’s better, because he gave him his career”. These references made me think, were J-Lo and the others thinking “Oh, this rap I’m using wouldn’t have existed if it weren’t for Shan”, or were they thinking “KRS put out something so ingenious, I want to use it!”? You don’t [usually] see any such credit given to Shan; it’s only on very rare occasions, but then always answered by someone else with the final word, “the Bridge is over!”
While not quite as braggadocious as LL and the other “kings” on the mic, he did have an arrogant streak, as in the way he treated Kane, and apparently Craig G as well, and stuck his nose up at joining in “The Symphony” rap. (But then he says he opted out because he knew Marley wouldn’t give them the money for it. He used to say they were just making a “tape”, like for fun or something, but then would make them into records, and not pay the performers).
So he basically isolated himself, and also underestimated the outside threat before him, until it was way, way, way too late.
If that weren’t enough, I’m reading that (likely based on this “I gave him his career” notion), they would do shows together, and KRS would perform “The Bridge Is Over”, and Shan would basically play along with it! In fact, Juice Crew member Masta Ace has a video (YT v=YkMYu_wGEZA) pointing this out, and saying “You get on stage, with a guy who’s dissing you…the song is dissing you, and you’re doing ad-libs. Once that happened, it’s over! It’s squashed! There’s nothing else that needs to happen, just high five; keep it moving”, and thus begging them to stop this now. (I say, these “ad-libs” would have been the perfect time to spring a surprise rebuttal on him; like his line from “Da Bridge 2001”, and then, could throw in “I gave you your career”!) There was also the similar well-known Sprite commercial, showing them in a boxing ring, with the groove of “The Bridge Is Over” playing, and they both ad-lib something to the effect of KRS winning (something about being knocked out by Kris). Even back then, I didn’t like that whole image being presented!
(BAD MOVE! What this was doing was creating a “routine” act where you’re the “patsy“; basically sort of like Abbott & Costello. No one thinks of Costello’s role as “giving Abbott a career”. I would never do something like that! You don’t do something like that all that time, and then do a turnaround and revolt against it later.
This is one of the things that makes him sound Supine or Phlegmatic, where I, again have the Choleric in the mix, that would never go for something like that. Though one thing in favor of being a Melancholy [S type] is not seeing the “implications” of where this would go!)
It also parallels what has happened in politics, where for decades, the conservatives have loudly claimed “truth”, (including a lot of negative rhetoric about blacks, whom liberals were supposedly pampering). Liberals apparently felt they “didn’t have to respond”, for the “culture war” seemed to be going in their favor, and they actually went along with the conservative stereotypes by trying to use government to enforce their ideals, but having no logical argument for much of it. Forward to recent years, and the unanswered rhetoric festers into a solid ‘unrefuted’ narrative conservatives use to validate their views, and then the liberals suddenly wake up to find all of this ignorance erupting everywhere, from the presidential election, to denial of science and various conspiracy theories. Now, the liberals have become more vociferous, in reaction.
In this light, I should note, right after KRS and Marley’s reconciliation, I myself would then enter a very similar battle online, with a so-called “type expert” who didn’t like me sharing my ideas on a listserve. We would go back and forth off and on at different times, then there was a whole blowout that caught me off guard, and I felt totally humiliated and needed to regroup and move on. This “move on” part would later be used against me. But when I saw how the typological concepts were being twisted (to justify the other person’s own rash behavior based on alleged “shadow” archetype intertype dynamics), and then finally verified my real type (which had to be questioned in order to support the whole premise), the person claimed to feel “attacked”, and suddenly came back fighting, anchored by an [ever since] accusation of me going back on a “truce” we had and reigniting the beef. Not only was it not a real truce, but the person had been making snarky or gloating remarks about the whole affair over the course of months in the interim.
In further clashes (relayed through others), I would (among other things) be chided for “holding on” to that stuff for so long. This was a type for whom Si is “shadow”, so past stuff isn’t as relevant, and should just be forgotten. However, the whole point of the theory is that this stuff, when unresolved, does still remain in the “shadow” from where it does arise and cause problems.
I mention all this, because I can identify with Shan’s position, and made a similar mistake in not taking an opportunity for a better more straightforward resolution earlier on; but the difference is that I didn’t actually play along with it, but was rather dealing with someone who takes a totally different tactic than KRS, in turning the tables and in the end casting you as the aggressor and getting their “last word” by taking the defensive position and shutting you out, but nevertheless still getting their attacks through via others.
So still, it would carry a stigma, as he recognizes now (must have hit him at some point between those 90’s performances and the 00’s track references), and KRS mentioning “taking Shan out” one last time seemed to be the last straw. In fairness to Shan, this is really what “re-ignited” the beef. Yes, he may have “quashed” it on his end by playing along, but if the beef is really quashed, then the winner shouldn’t go gloating about it, for then it’s not really “quashed” on his end; it’s simply “won”, which implies it’s still “a thing”; it’s still implicit; hence being able to be brought up anytime, to be bragged about. (Especially if he ever performs “The Bridge Is Over”, and as an all time hit, how could he not? So it’s technically “past”, but unless the loser has died, it’s still lying dormant, and has the potential to be revived. It’s not a stable situation, it’s a “false-resolution” [scientifically, a “false-vacuum”], as I called my own experience, which is easily unraveled by poking the wound with careless acts or statements). Some say Shan will only add another defeat to the one 30 years ago, and if he would leave it alone, then he would be remembered more for the positive side of his career. But not when KRS keeps bringing up “taking him out”!
So in reality, both of them messed it up!
Where to go from here?
I would like to see them resolve this on stage (and you can throw in the LL-MoeDee battle that never occurred; that LL had apparently shied away from back in the day), and hope Shan can do it, not being as active as KRS all these years, and appearing [visually] frail (which KRS and everyone is attributing to the crack I believe he has admitted to recovering from). Though he has actually started to release a few new singles, (adopting the modern 90’s to the present Eminem etc. influenced rap style, which is of course hardcore and vulgar), and he does seem to still have the voice. He does say he has pages of rhymes written for him, that he “won’t know where all of this is coming from”. Wow; 30 years of held-in resentment, welling up like that!
KRS released a second single dissing him, apparently part of an album project coming out, and he’s basically waiting for a response. Shan’s responses now are mostly by interview. It sounds like when asked, Shan is pointing to the moneymaking aspect of the situation. It’s pointed out that this might actually sell. Some commenters are saying this is just what hip hop needs today, since they’re all in agreement that the modern Southern based style has rendered hip hop “dead”. So I hope that doesn’t become a cop-out.
While he’s making much of the fact that they never had a live battle, and thus Shan couldn’t have been “taken out”; it’s still true, that the battle could have contributed to his downfall, or at least on the surface, it looks like it. So that technically would be “taken out”. He draws the analogy to him dissing LL, so he obviously didn’t “take him [LL] out”. But if it had created the “stigma” he even testifies to, then it could be said he [Shan] was taken out. (By the time of his second album, you had “I Pioneered This”, which was already protesting an apparent belief that he “fell off”! That’s how it was starting to look even back then! He would then have only one other album after that). But instead, LL never went out; he got bigger and bigger in fact, and that’s what makes the comparison impossibly false. (With Cool C, who he also mentions, he was already being barraged by KRS, so for that reason, no one would ever attribute taking him out to this one-record act that briefly joined in. However, the similar Mitch Ski, who did a similar diss record around the same time, would actually claim in that record that he, representing “Brooklyn”, took out the Bridge, while South Bronx only “helped us out”. That’s what Shan could have mentioned.
BTW, Cool C, hooked up with Steady B in rhyme and in real life crime, has for years been on death row for a murder, which kept getting stayed, while Steady faces a lesser life in prison as an accomplice; see https://medium.com/cuepoint/how-cool-c-and-steady-b-robbed-a-bank-killed-a-cop-and-lost-their-souls-d24d404f120a).
The response (both spoken and the rap) Shan has done so far seem good (even liked by some commenters). KRS’s disses are ingenious and intimidating, but there are holes in them you can go after, which Shan did in the interviews. Like mocking his “four, three, two, one”, and some sort of scatting he was doing (“deedle, deedle, deedle” or something like that), which are basically “filler”, which may make for an ingeniously nice sounding product as in many of his raps, but (as in that case), it can get silly (Shan called him a “Care Bears rapper” on that), where again, a more intellectual content would be stronger. Crediting Nas for resurrecting QB, by claiming “Shan” is just “Nas spelled backwards”, while again, a strong insult, is also really silly if you think about it.
Shan also pointed out “You ain’t even from the Bronx”, which was a great slam, but again, is 30 years too late, as the whole Bronx vs Queens aspect of the battle is long past relevance. Perhaps that would have been in his immediate response to “The Bridge Is Over”, where it would have been a perfect comeback, instantly blowing up the whole premise he built his career on! (Or at the very least, should have been in the 90’s ad-libs). We would possibly look back on that battle very differently today. (Though perhaps it wasn’t as widely known back then that KRS wasn’t originally from the Bronx. They all seemed to grant it to him, and he did live in the Bronx at the time. I remember hearing later, that he had been in Brooklyn before, and this where he was actually born, and I immediately thought this made the whole “South Bronx” premise ironic, but it wasn’t until later, with him telling more of his life story, including where he had been homeless and basically all over the place, that it was more clear).
Being an introverted Thinking (TP) type like me, logical consistency is what our rational drive is, and we like to pick out inconsistencies in others’ logic (and even our own). You see him doing this all the time, when discussing race and politics (like Malcolm X, who he is rather similar to, and I also believe was ENTP). But we of course are not perfectly logical, and so will miss inconsistencies in our own logic, especially once the ego becomes fixated upon a particular view of something. Hence his weak spot will be inconsistencies, like claiming to be a peacemaker while promoting beef and violence (which my Ti easily recognized. It’s judged “false” or “incorrect” according to my own analysis of the situation).
There’s also several videos of old guys from the Bronx questioning some of his recounts of the history of hip hop up there, especially regarding the Zulu Nation. (Which would figure all the more being he wasn’t originally from there. Again, Si is inferior if he’s driving off of dominant Ne, which can get caught up in inferred ideas and outright flights of fancy if not grounded enough with the judgment function (to determine if they’re “right”). And those guys interviewed might be the typical ISTJ’s whose whole main perspective is Si, so they would remember everything clearly. I also always could never figure the claim of Brooklyn having no hip hop because of the “Dreads” [Rastafarians]; and what this even had to do with the distant Queensbridge area).
Evidence of this is “shadowy” (rash, sudden) reactions when these inconsistencies are pointed out. The PM Dawn rapper reportedly had claimed KRS was not “practicing what he preached”, supposedly leading to the physical attack on him. He was trapped and the intellect had reached its end; he felt his integrity was at stake or questioned, so he reacted (Daemonic extraverted Sensing, taking the tangible opportunity to bum rush the show) and then came up with a very non-intellectual blanket justification; that he was “light attacking darkness” or something like that.
(No explanation of what defined light and darkness in that case and what determined him being on the “light” side. He was the one caught in a lie! A “daemonic” eruption like that can undermine your aims. This deeply “shadow” complex not only reacts against perceived attacks on one’s integrity, but is also “pathologically narcissistic” as well.
I just now see in an edit for this, that this actually led to Das Efx and Ice Cube jumping in, to likewise call him a hypocrite, and he released “We In There” basically calling out their whole “gangsta” image ⦅e.g. they just “bit” Criminal Minded⦆, saying they aren’t actually down to shoot nobody, ⦅i.e. like they’re always rapping about⦆, and are not actually “running from the police”, but would instead make good prey for prison rapists. Never heard this, and never knew he actually went after the gangsta premise, including a major West Coast rapper, whom, [even he] apparently never responded.
You always used to think of the contrast between the tough street “hood” who is either not very intelligent, or if he is intelligent, it is mis-directed and never put to good use; and the diametric opposite intellectual “nerd”, who couldn’t last a day in the streets and thus stays inside in the books, and this guy is like the total “coniunctio” of the two; the best of both wrapped up in one!)
In a more organized “battle”, such as a show, or even response tracks, where it’s already clear you’re battling the other person, and you’re already saying all sorts of hard disses against him, hopefully he wouldn’t get physical like that, but he could still be trapped in his own words. (And if he does have to resort to getting physical, he’s basically lost!)
For now, the internet is conveying the battle, and that’s allowing both sides to get their shots in. Fueling the fire was Karceno4life, who has been rigorously chiding Shan for reentering the battle (which will “just make the defeat worse”, and talking about “you didn’t learn the first time; he has to ‘school’ you all over again”), and leading to an actual social media battle between the two of them. (Twitter—>Instagram video—>YouTube).
When hip hop started, battles were on the mic. When they became big enough to start making records, in the 80’s, then battles were on “wax”.
So now, the internet is the new medium, and we really don’t have to wait for a new record to be pressed anymore for them to answer each other. (Like commenters on these videos argue either way, and so the fans, once totally voiceless can be like the foot soldiers launching the two sides’ attacks against each other for them. So some have pointed out, for instance how Shan is the one who tells the truth, while KRS, or the YouTuber himself distorts things.
Of course, social media doesn’t require the same skill as the mic; whether live or even in the record studio. But it’s something, now). At least Shan got to finally break his silence, and “Kill That Noise” is no longer his final statement in the battle. Perhaps some sort of resolution can come through that.
So if they do have their showdown, in whatever form, then perhaps afterward, they too can finally team up, as other fans seem to be wishing.
I myself don’t know what’s going to happen now, but on the other hand, I too figured Hillary would just be the “same ‘ol, same ‘ol”. I had liked how the angry, dog-whistling Right was divided earlier in the race, when the other Republican contenders were still vying against him for the nomination. The Christians almost solidly were against him, in favor of Rubio or especially Cruz. When they dropped out, they began to come back together, against Hillary (the Christians now compromising the moral stance they previously had against Trump).
If she won, it would just be a continuation of the last eight years, with them all against Obama. If he won, than they would have everything they want, and seemingly would no longer have a liberal scapegoat. (But of course, they could always say that any problems are really Obama’s fault, for “messing things up so bad”, which is what some did when they had Bush in, along with the Congress. Blaming the previous administration, which they excoriated Obama for, would all of a sudden become good. Or, if problems are undeniably Trumps’ fault, I’ve already seen a meme saying they had to elect him because of Obama. You can see this sentiment expressed right here: http://reason.com/blog/2016/11/09/trump-won-because-leftist-political-corr “If you’re a leftist reading this, you…probably can’t understand why someone would get so bent out of shape about being told their words are hurtful. You probably think it’s not a big deal and these people need to get over themselves. Who’s the delicate snowflake now, huh? you’re probably thinking. I’m telling you: your failure to acknowledge this miscalculation and adjust your approach has delivered the country to Trump.” A similar argument is this, but which makes a lot of good points about the party’s cockiness: https://medium.com/@trentlapinski/dear-democrats-read-this-if-you-do-not-understand-why-trump-won-5a0cdb13c597#.y7zpo06d1).
I was for Bernie, who was populist, like Trump, but populism can be either right or left (separate dimensions), but has become more associated with the far right brand, of Trump. I didn’t feel like bothering to vote for Hillary, and figured Trump was discrediting himself more and more as the time drew near. Just last night he was quoted as saying “If I lose, you’ll never see me again”, sounding like a childish “sore loser” even before the votes were being counted. I thought that might be the final wake up call regarding his character. But since my wife wanted to vote, I went, and figured I might as well too. I had mulled writing in Bernie, but what would that really prove, so I might as well cast my vote for Hillary. (So now, I can feel safe assured that I had no part in the responsibility for whatever is to befall us now).
They seemed to run neck and neck, and certain states seeming to go to one, but then falling to the other. But by 10-11PM, his numbers suddenly began getting bigger, and he was grabbing Florida, North Carolina and Michigan, which were really needed to win. So we went to bed, not sure what we would hear when we awoke. I still thought she might snag it as the final results came in. Surely, the country would never really elect such a virtual madman. But sure enough, when I got up, around 6:30 and turned on the internet, he had done it!
So here are several articles, videos and memes on this shocking turn of events:
AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/an-american-tragedy-donald-trump
Donald Trump The Change Agent Won By Vowing To Stop Change
America has its first radical reactionary leader. Now what?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-change-won_us_5822c53ce4b0e80b02cdefa3
Hillary Clinton’s Weakness
She had been in power and prominence so long, and, as everyone knew, she was the very embodiment of a political establishment that most voters — and not just Trump supporters — have come to despise in recent years.
The US has elected its most dangerous leader. We all have plenty to fear
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/09/donald-trump-us-president-nightmare
America Elected A Man Who Said ‘Grab Them By The P***y’ Over The First Female President
It really happened.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-wins_us_582296a9e4b0e80b02cdcc8a
Here Is What Donald Trump Wants To Do In His First 100 Days
http://www.npr.org/2016/11/09/501451368/here-is-what-donald-trump-wants-to-do-in-his-first-100-days
Trump Elected President, Thanks to 4 in 5 White Evangelicals
Dramatic election ends with historic victory for Donald Trump.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2016/november/trump-elected-president-thanks-to-4-in-5-white-evangelicals.html
President Trump: Now What For the Church?
http://www.russellmoore.com/2016/11/09/president-trump-now-church
Huge Margin Among Working-Class Whites Lifts Trump to a Stunning Election Upset
‘This was a whitelash’: Van Jones’ take on the election results
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/09/politics/van-jones-results-disappointment-cnntv/index.html
This Election Has Completely Debunked The Myth Of A ‘Post-Racial’ America
Donald Trump has emboldened racists to new heights.
It’s Our Fault: Donald Trump Is The President We Deserve
We should be appalled, but we should not be surprised.
Dear Trump Supporter – A Message From American Minorities
http://shows.huffingtonpost.com/video/dear-trump-supporter-a-message-from-american-minorities-58230bdf869ea9683c401857
http://shows.huffingtonpost.com/b3980d43-2fbd-4b94-8ef8-8f6fdc7a632e
Nobody Called This Election Quite Like Michael Moore
The Founding Fathers ensured that rural white votes count more than others
Blame the electoral college, among other things.
Here’s a conservative video explaining the good intentions of the system:
https://www.prageru.com/courses/political-science/do-you-understand-electoral-college
But on the flipside of the “tyranny of the majority”, is the tyranny of an agitated minority against a “silent majority”:
Tim Wise, November 9 at 5:47pm:
In case you’re still inclined to believe Trump’s win was simply about working class hardscrabble whites ignored by the system…this wasn’t a class revolt. It was a racial and ethno-cultural one dressed up as a “salt of the earth” rebellion…
(On Philip Yancey’s Facebook discussion post about the election https://www.facebook.com/PhilipYancey/photos/a.430130023698153.101173.118057118238780/1311468422230971):
Jay Merritt Four years ago, the Mormon religion was on the Billy Graham website under the category of CULT. Then Mitt Romney became the candidate for the Republicans. Franklin Graham had a meeting with Romney. Suddenly, the cult status was removed, and Graham threw his quiet support of Romney behind the campaign.
This time, Graham had a rather public meeting in June with Trump and a few hundred hand picked Evangelicals. And they threw their support behind the Trump campaign, disguised as a push for Values, sidestepping Trumps character.
Waiting to see if the Billy Graham website will redefine character, and repentance.
Maurice Infinite (someone I grew up with, and now connected on Facebook)
Wednesday, November 9, 2016 at 2:46pm·
I never thought I’d see a black President in my lifetime. I’m glad for that. He did a great job and made us all proud (all of us intelligent humans). He was dignified every step of the way and is an example of what a leader should be. His grace under fire instilled fear in his detractors. Trump’s only genius is realizing that this fear was real to a large group of disenfranchised, uneducated, and misled people and capitalizing on it effectively. He became a leader of a herd of sheep with no shepherd.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” – Sun Tzu
The Democrats didn’t respect their enemy. They under estimated him. Even more important, they overestimated themselves. Elitism and entitlement is what lost this election. You can’t under estimate an enemy that has nothing to lose.
“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.” – Sun Tzu
Trump played dumb. If you notice… his victory speech was coherent and calculated. Unlike any other speech he’s made during this election process. He played the Democrats and the Republicans. His been planning this for 20 years. He’s been invited to dinners, shook hands, donated money… all the while he was studying his enemy.
“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win” – Sun Tzu
Respect it. Don’t fear it. Learn from it. Don’t repeat it.
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-statement-on-trump
I had long noted that there seem to be flavors that are better suited for milk-based products and some better for water based products. So milk would be ice cream (solid, frozen), pudding (solid, not frozen) as well as flavorings like Quik (liquid—milk), and egg creams (carbonated liquid). Water would be sherbet (solid, frozen), gelatin (solid, not frozen), Kool Aid (liquid), and soda (carbonated liquid).
I run across this article explaining:
Here’s Why Grape Ice Cream Isn’t a Thing
http://mentalfloss.com/article/88201/heres-why-grape-ice-cream-isnt-thing
Grapes have a high water content, so when you try to use the fruit as a base for ice cream, chunks of that water therein tend to freeze. Chefs whipping up small batches of homemade grape ice cream can avoid this problem by pureeing the fruit, but it’s much harder to manufacture large volumes of ice cream when it’s flecked with bits of ice.
Of course, other fruits, like cherries, are also mostly water—and Cherry Garcia is one of Ben & Jerry’s most popular flavors. In short, it’s possible to make fruit ice cream on a larger scale, but the demand has to be there to make the hassle worthwhile (and for that matter, profitable).
And as Cohen explained, most people don’t even think to associate grapes with ice cream—so if Ben & Jerry’s made a grape-flavored dessert, it’s likely that nobody would buy it. Since cherry and vanilla are such popular flavors, it pays for the company to make Cherry Garcia.
The ice cream (and egg cream and Quik) flavors are chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. Banana is another common flavor for the milk products. Strawberry is a major flavor of Kool Aid and gelatin (but not pudding). I’ve always wondered why, as it seems to be an anomaly (though it is also common as mousse, which is like a thicker version of pudding that’s also commonly chocolate and vanilla as well. Meanwhile, butterscotch is the other common pudding flavor).
The strawberry “water” products to me don’t taste as good as the milk-based products, or the other fruit flavors of the water flavors, and needed not to be a separate flavor from the other berries. (Other ice cream flavors are nuts like butter almond or pecan and pistachio. Then, there’s mint and egg nog).
Cherry and grape, along with orange, lemon, lime and most other berries are more common sherbet/gelatin/Kool Aid/soda flavors. Cherry Garcia was the anomaly. For a mainstream store brand like Breyers, it was always cherry-vanilla. Then you have orange sherbet — vanilla ice cream blends.
Lemon “pudding” is really merengue pie filling, and a totally different consistency from chocolate vanilla and butterscotch (and obviously more water based).
Peach is the one that is good either way (ice cream, Kool Aid, soda and other water-based drinks, etc. Also tastes good as a Royal instant pudding mix I tried once!)
Cake on the other hand is a medium that commonly handles both sets of flavors (except grape; and while Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker once had cherry, that I don’t think I’ve seen in a long while. It too was pretty similar to strawberry). So cake leans slightly to the “milk” side (chocolate and vanilla being the most common flavors), and strawberry common as a mix (though comes and goes as a snack cake flavor. Little Debbie has a new set of strawberry cakes out for the holidays, I saw recently. Hostess had strawberry cupcakes before the shutdown). But lemon and orange are also very common (and well tasting).
Then there’s yogurt, which is dairy, but also mixed in the categories of flavors, with mainly fruit, but also vanilla. (Chocolate is more rare, though).
So since the Royal line that includes peach are really Greek yogurt flavors, it also includes cherry, and even blueberry in addition to strawberry and vanilla.
“Chocolate water” would basically be YooHoo, and I don’t think that tastes good. Occasionally, small companies will have chocolate soda.
I once took grape Kool-Aid and tried to make “grape milk” (after this PSA commercial called “magic cow” suggested you could make flavored milk with “drink mixes”), but it was nasty. The powder doesn’t even mix with the milk well. (My parents flipped at me wasting a whole container of milk for that. I wondered if the pre-sweetened version in the can which seemed more soluble would work better, but never tried it after that).
Never thought of why different flavors were more suited to milk or water, but them explaining the water content in the fruit is interesting. Chocolate and vanilla aren’t even fruits, and so have no water (the same with the nuts). Banana as well is rather dry. Strawberry seems to have less water than grape, cherry and the citrus fruits. Peach seems to be inbetween. (So I wonder why they forced strawberry as a common Kool Aid and Jello flavor, then. If it was demand, as they explained, then I wonder why that fruit).
Putting to use the concept of the functions as “divisions of reality”; Jung I see quoted as saying, “I can only hope and wish that no one becomes ‘Jungian.'” (see http://carljungdepthpsychology.blogspot.com/2014/12/carl-jung-and-i-can-only-hope-and-wish.html); —he seemed to be trying to develop a scientific hypothesis of reality. But it was too “abstract” for the science field, and what people most remember him for today is some of his “spiritualistic” teachings, and his “typology”.
But now, I’ve come to realize that a lot of our problems stem from the need to reconcile the S and N (sensory vs intuitive; concrete vs abstract; tangible vs conceptual; “what is” vs “implications”) division of awareness. Reading Robert Johnson’s Living Your Unlived Life a few years ago, I saw an acknowledgment of a need to have our hopes and dreams “concretized”, or made “real” in the tangible world. At the same time, coming to see the functions of type as “divisions of reality”, it explained how much of our drives in life are to undo the split; to create the “coniunctio“, which is the union of opposites.
Our wishes and wants are ideas (N products, basically), and having them come true concretizes the idea (turns it from an N product to S). If it can’t be done literally, then that is what symbolic “ritual” (religious or otherwise) is for.
It seems we all want our wishes concretized. It’s part of the survival instinct, as we have to live in this tangible or concrete world. As an N growing up in an S environment, I frequently heard the distinction between “the real world” and “your dream world” or “fantasy”, with the former as the “important” one. This is because it is the realm of survival; of consequences that can be very negative, but then we would be forced to live with, if we haven’t taken all the necessary precautions to avoid them and protect ourselves.
The visible world, if superstring theory is correct, consists of invisible loops of vibrational energy. Enough of certain vibrations of these loops together will produce fields that repel or block other fields from passing through. Back on a macroscopic scale, this will either trigger receptors in our skin (consisting of more of these fields) directly, or bounce the other fields back which will be picked up by other receptors from a distance. Thus, we end up with what we call a “tangible object“, which can be felt, seen and heard; that is, “sensation” (S).
These loops of energy are only 10-33m big, and below that, space and time themselves break down, so that you are only left with a sort of hypothetical realm defined by mathematical matrices. Here, S “tangible reality” and N “hypothetical idea” have been completely undifferentiated. (What started heading toward this notion was “the uncertainty principle”, where every point in space is filled with “virtual” matter/antimatter pairs that split and then annihilate each other, forming only a “potential” [N] existence of particles[S]).
As divisions of reality, the reason “reality” seems lopsided in favor of S, is because of the forces of “entropy”, where we are dragged along in the dimension of “time”, so that events have a causal relationship (where in the other three dimensions, of space, objects and events are more independent), and for every action, there must be a reaction, and for every “give” there must be a “take” (as matter cannot be created or destroyed; at least not in our everyday physics). So it is often hard to undo changes made in the tangible world. Hence, having to “live with” what we call “consequences”, that we want to avoid if negative and not conducive to our survival. Like ending up penniless and without food on the street, if we haven’t found some skill to “trade” with, or held down an occupation of this trade in one way or the other.
Hence, the “physical” world, or universe, can be very violent and unforgiving.
Our world of “ideas”, however, is more malleable or readily changeable, by us in our own minds. Intuition was defined by Jung as “where it’s heading” (while S was “what it is”), but if we don’t like where it’s heading, in our minds we have more power to change things; perhaps the whole “story” itself.
The drawback of this, is that there will not be agreement in awareness. Each person can assign his own meaning or interpretation of things. With the physical world, everyone has to “agree” on certain things. If there’s a wall before us, we all will see and feel it. If someone is blind and can’t see it, or has no tactile sense, or simply chooses to believe it’s not there; they along with everyone else will be stopped if they try to walk through it. So the big drawback of the N perspective’s malleability is that S “reality” can so easily crash right through it and even drown it out. And it can be otherwise unstable.
Another problem with this is to begin with, we can’t even see (or otherwise perceive) all of reality; especially not at once. (This is what people using an ST perspective, that aims to thunder “reality” or “truth” at others often neglect). This is where N fills in, and people come up with interpretations, implications, hypotheses, etc. And this ends up as the source of all the disputes we have in life, especially the two biggest ones, we are not supposed to bother arguing about: religion (what unseen entity created all of this), and politics (which seen [human collective] entity should rule it in absence of intervention by anyone higher).
This is where I myself realized, that I can fantasize, hypothesize and argue all I want through my preferred N perspective, but I got the sense that the to make my views or experiences the “official” ones; I needed the S perspective; for them to be concretized in actual experience where everyone would have to agree that this was real.
While we all want our wishes concretized, I realize we must remember that the ideas are in a way always “better” because of the fact that they are more controllable. This is basically what religion has taught (though not practiced itself, consistently, like in getting mixed up in politics). We have little control over the concrete reality, and it changes irreversibly; (only “ideas” last, really) so the things we take joy in get changed forever. People we love can die, or turn against us. Really great times of peace and comfort can be disrupted by tragedy. (So to some, it then becomes hard to get emotionally attached to anything for fear it will be destroyed).
The problem of faith is basically that it is a shaky N product, like politics, that has been subject to people’s interpretations. So with God, we are left with the “idea”, represented in the diagram by the third category, “spirit” (which “bears witness with our spirit”). Ideas of God vs reality of God is very difficult to deal with because He has withdrawn all tangible intervention (so then we are supposed to go on “general revelation” as the tangible [S] evidence, and “conscience” as the moral [F] guide). The “body” was represented by the Son, who did walk the earth and say that whoever saw Him saw the (otherwise aloof) Father (John 14:9; which would basically be the divine “Soul”). Before that, you had various “epiphanies”, which we could also see as the “Word” or pre-incarnate Christ. But after Christ, all of that ended.
People will try to hold scripture up as the “concrete” reality, but unfortunately, that too is something that has become prone to interpretation by many different groups of men. (What ends up happening is that “majority” and “seniority” ends up defining the correct interpretation; like the Catholic Church’s “antiquity/ubiquity/unanimity” and American evangelical apologetic’s “historic orthodoxy”, which right away disagrees with the older and more widespread Catholicism in many places. But if the earlier group was wrong, then so can the newer group be).
While some language is “plain” (which people will seize and build a whole premise off of), there are still larger contexts (N products) that could have been lost or at least obscured over time. Like the exact meaning of the symbols of prophecy. We tend to take it and apply it all to ourselves, in our time, but what happens, is that every generation ends up with different meanings for the same things.
Heaven now is just ideas, with absolutely no tangible experience available. On one hand, the notion of this other realm, where we will apparently all have our senses back and agree on reality, will be technically “tangible”, though perhaps not based on the same energy and forces as this universe (the Standard Model). Religion traditionally taught that this was completely different from this existence; a simultaneous existence people go when they die, but the rise of dispensational futurism, with its emphasis on certain scriptures regarding [presumably] future “bodily resurrection”, led to a revised view that posits that the first stage of the heavenly kingdom, the “Millennium”, will be this same earth, though ruled by Christ instead of the current sinful human systems. At the end of that, the entire universe will be transformed into something else. (When still a futurist, I actually put this together with string theory, which says the Standard Model could change in an instant, if it were not the lowest energy state, like a bed sheet wanting to curl up. All matter in the universe would break down and reshape itself according to new laws. So perhaps then there would no longer be any “entropy”, where things tend to decay, and the physical world could finally conform to our ideas of “perfection”. Survival might no longer be the first priority of living beings).
Heaven being an “idea” makes it very unstable as a source of “hope”. We end up creating images of a “perfect” version of this world (ever read Armstrong’s The Wonderful World of Tomorrow or the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth and others?), that makes some people think it must be boring or lack meaning (the primal “meaning” of life in this tangible world again, being necessary “survival” in it). Also, if it’s true that the “descriptions” of Heaven at the end of the Bible are really metaphors for something else (such as redemption in this world, which is a more matching-ly abstract “hope”), then we see right there why hope in unseen ideas can be so uncertain (and scripture not as “concrete” as we would think). Again, something tangible becomes “official”, having to be agreed on by everyone; one way or another.
This problem is highlighted by the phenomenon of Christians preaching Heaven to the suffering, while hoarding power over others and making sure their own lives are taken care of, and fighting what they see as “threats” to their power or freedoms. Concrete reality and “nature” usurps the idea of integrity they preach.
It seems S/N disparity is more significant than the other major pole of type, T/F (impersonal vs personal) because it involves the type of data being taken into awareness to begin with. T/F confusion would involve stuff like treating people as impersonal objects, or becoming attached to things as if they were people. There’s plenty of that, of course, but that too even is a confusion of S and N; usually focusing on the “idea” of people and things apart from the tangible reality.
In this breakdown, F in effect becomes associated with S, and N with T, in dealing with whether they are ideas [N] which are impersonal [T] things, rather than having affected [F] emotions and feelings which are tangible stimuli processed and stored in a physical brain [S].
It is when dealing with the nature of reality in itself that S becomes wed to T, in dealing with “what is”, in the physical [S] world of the universe and its impersonal [T] laws as opposed to people who also consist of invisible souls [N] that are nevertheless affected [F] by things.
Real people can be seen as an invisible “idea”, but it has to match a visible “body” that contains a brain that holds all their knowledge; all their sensations, intuitions, thoughts and feelings; basically holds the “invisible part of them”. So when our “ideas” of people don’t match the tangible body, or what’s in the brain, that’s when there are misunderstandings, disappointments and disillusionments. (Like in online dating, that’s where we get what’s called “catfishing”). To get involved with a potential romantic or sexual partner, you’re getting more than just an idea of a person, (and more than just a body that you project these ideas onto), but also a person with all their own issues, quirks, faults, wants, wounds, etc. that will affect their relationship to you.
We all need to remember that every person is a living being. This on one hand “depersonalizes” (T) them in a way, yet it maintains their individual right to live and survive in the world (S) and not exist merely as an idea (N) simply to fulfill someone’s fantasy, which depersonalizes them in a different way.
Meanwhile, fictional characters are basically “ideas” of people without tangible bodies. We can get caught up in fantasy worlds like we see on TV, and then treat real people as if they were characters like those. But when the information in their brains become evident, or if their bodies don’t match up to our expectations (even natural stuff such as body odor, etc. that everyone has, but we don’t think about when idealizing a person), then again, we often encounter problems.
So this is a way to discuss a lot of the “cognitive dissonance” we see in life.
Been trying to develop this analogy for awhile, based on the four type dichotomies (Sensing/iNtuition [perception of tangible reality vs ideas], Thinking/Feeling [impersonal vs soul-affecting judgments], introversion/extraversion [inner vs outer focus], rationality/irrationality of our preferred “outer” directed function [used to help determine which is our “dominant” perspective]) as “divisions of reality”.
So I realized that the four “dimensions” I often compare to as the easiest illustration of how we “divide” reality, would be the best to extend to a full analogy.
[EDIT: improved much more analogous version in comment below]
So we start with a person facing one of the compass directions that we rotate in, N, E, S, W. He can also look up or down while looking in one of those directions. Two of the compass directions will correspond to Latitude (E/W), and the other one will be Longitude (N/S).
The opposite direction is totally behind him (basically, unconscious), but the perpendicular directions are in the corner of his eyes, and the nonvertical ones are basically the directions of his two arms. So we can imagine one of these directions is “secondary”. Primary and secondary are determined by the fourth spacetime “dimension”, Past and Future. He will look at his primary direction first, and then the secondary direction second.
So we have a person with one preferred horizontal direction, and one preferred vertical direction. He also has a secondary horizontal direction that he looks in afterward, and we have to presume that for the sake of “balance” for some reason, he must look the opposite vertical direction when looking in that direction (this is where the practicality breaks down. I tried to imagine a scenario where something would force the opposite “orientation” for the different directions).
When looking one direction, the other three are “undifferentiated” in that you are equally “blind” to them (to some extent), so they all are the same in being invisible (left and right, however, are partly differentiated in that you can see them a bit in the corner of your eye).
Basically, we should assume that since he spends most of his time looking in one direction, and he tends to look either up or down in that direction (perhaps observing something in that direction that directs his vision either up or down), when he has to look in any of the other directions, from his neck being tired of being bend up or down, he will look in the opposite vertical direction.
However, when looking opposite of the secondary direction, something will draw him to look in the same vertical direction as his main direction. Perhaps he’s looking at an arc shaped object in the sky or on the ground, and he needs to look away from it for awhile, causing him to look in a second direction, but when looking in the third direction, he will direct his gaze toward that object again. (Like perhaps a message written in the sky or something). Of course, when needing to look totally away from it can also be done by looking totally in the other direction (and opposite vertical orientation).
His shadow on the ground would basically be looking in the same horizontal directions, but opposite vertical direction. Even though this is hard to see with normal dark silhouettes, it is basically the same image that would be projected by standing on a reflective surface. So the reflections are always looking the same compass direction, but when looking up, the reflection’s head is actually pointing down, which is the reflection of “up” in the reflection, and if looking down, then the reflection would be looking at his “down” which is our “up”.
So you would have a person with one preferred vertical direction, and a primary and secondary horizontal direction. It could be primary East, secondary South, and an orientation of Up. We assume when looking South, he will “give his neck a rest” from looking up, and then look Down. We could use a simple code, U-ES: an Up/East looker with secondary South. Where he is basically a latitude type, looking first along latitude, someone decides that which direction he looks Up in is important, and denotes this by whether it’s the Longitude or Latitude. For him this corresponds, but for another East looker who looks Down in that direction (D-E), the direction he looks up with be the secondary one, which will be North or South; that is, Longitude. So, with “A”=”upward latitude” and “O”=”upward longitude”, we can make this first person’s code USEA. A person who looks down instead would be DSEO. (Since the order of directions [time element] is now determined by A/O, we are free to follow the standard order for direction combinations; S/N then E/W)
We then end up with sixteen “directional types:
USEA: Up, South, East, Lattitude first
USEO: Up, South, East, Longitude first
USWA: Up, South, West, Latitude first
USWO: Up, South, West, Longitude first
UNEA: Up, North, East, Lattitude first
UNEO: Up, North, East, Longitude first
UNWA: Up, North, West, Latitude first
UNWO: Up, North, West, Longitude first
DSEA: Down, South, West, Longitude first
DSEO: Down, East, Longitude first
DSWA: Down, Up, South, West, Latitude first
DSWO: Down, South, West, Longitude first
DNEA: Down, North, East, Lattitude first
DNEO: Down, North, East, Longitude first
DNWA: Down, North, West, Latitude first
DNWO: Down, North, West, Longitude first
Now with two books out detailing Beebe’s model, what comes to mind is Socionics’ own eight-function model, “Model A”, which seems to be what a lot of people on the type boards have taken to increasingly (along with Enneagram, which is a completely different system). I see people like YouTuber and NYC Typology Meetup group leader Leon Tsao talking about “and your PoLR function does [this]…and your Role function…” etc. which reminded me of discussions of Beebe’s archetypes, or a bit more closely, Linda Berens’ versions of them. And again, it seems people slow to learn Beebe’s model have taken up this one readily.
Yet, the positions (which are actually “the functions“, while the actual “Xy” function-attitudes are called “information-elements“) seem very different. When I think of Se, I have learned to recognize it as my “Trickster” function, and look for it in feelings of “double-binds”, or trying to turn the tables on others. But then I hear it is my “Vulnerable” function (In my own lexicography, “vulnerable” is the tertiary and inferior functions and their shadows, which would include the Trickster).
So just as I’m finally getting the full handle on Beebe’s model, here comes a new batch of character roles for the same functions, and one more people seem to be more enthusiastic about (being they think of Socionics as being so much more developed than MBTI. As I’ve said, with Beebe’s model, Type Logic, and Berens’ new “Intentional Styles”, we have just about everything Socionics does! See also: https://erictb.wordpress.com/2014/07/29/finally-official-tandem-group-names/#comment-2017).
So like Beren’s function “roles” (and in practice, the way some use Beebe’s archetypes), the information elements (function-attitudes) are the “players” that “do” the behaviors, rather than complexes (ego-states; lesser senses of “I”) being what interpret situations through the situations. So this makes it a bit hard to make the comparisons.
To start, here are the comparisons of the eight positions and several other operational terms:
| Socionics | Beebe | Lenore Thomson “ship”/”lasagna” stack |
| 1. Base (leading, program) | Hero (1) | Captain (1) |
| 2. Creative (implementing, realizing) | Parent (2) | First Mate (2) |
| 3. Role | Demon (8) | Crow’s Nest #1 (3) |
| 4. Vulnerable (place of least resistance [PoLR]) | Trickster (7) | Crow’s Nest #2 (4) |
| 5. Suggestive (dual-seeking) | Anima (4) | castaway on lifeboat to shore (8) |
| 6. Mobilizing (activating function; hidden agenda) | Puer/Puella (3) | castaway on skis (7) |
| 7. Ignoring | Opposing Personality (5) | Double Agent #2 (6) |
| 8. Demonstrative | Witch/Senex (6) | Double Agent #1 (5) |
| “Ego Block” | “Preferred functions” | |
| “Super-Ego Block” | [ETB: “deep shadows”] | “Crow’s Nests”; left-right brain alternates |
| “Super-Id Block” | [unpreferred functions] | castaways |
| “Id Block” | [ETB “near shadows”] | opposite-brain “Double agents” |
| “Strong” | Preferred functions and their shadows | |
| “Weak” | unpreferred functions and their shadows | |
| “Valued” | Ego-syntonic (“primary”) | |
| “Unvalued” | Ego-dystonic (“Shadow”) | |
| Accepting | “spine” | |
| Producing | “arm” | |
| Mental (1, 2, 3, 4) | [same “J/P”] | same brain hemisphere |
| Vital (5, 6, 7, 8) | opposite brain hemisphere | |
It should be noted, that “mental” functions are considered “conscious”, while vital ones are “unconscious”! So they divide the stack between conscious and unconscious along the lines of 1-4 and 5-8 just like Beebe’s model, only all of the preferred brain hemisphere functions (including what we consider the bottom of the shadow and thus furthest from the Ego) are now “conscious”; while all of the brain-lateral opposites (including what we consider the “ego-syntonic” tertiary and inferior) are considered unconscious.
This would in a way correspond to Lenore’s “preferred + right/left brain alternates”, as if based on a misunderstanding of it, thinking these two functions are “conscious”, because (according to her theory), they happen to come up first when the dominant can’t solve the problem. But that’s not really “conscious”, and she at that point (the book) was speaking of the functions as things “used” pretty much like this model (and most other typologists), but later on moved more toward a focus on them being conscious or unconscious “perspectives”. Plus, she also says when the person grows, they begin using the tertiary (what Socionics would consider “mobilizing”, and an unconscious #6) more instead.
How the eight “function” roles seem to correspond to the Beebe archetypes (http://www.sociotype.com/socionics/model_a)
Function 1 (Base/Leading) Source of confidence; how someone lives their life; most comfortable state of mind; personal motivation in life
Function 2 (Creative) Used to Interact with others; feel: needed when used to help solve others’ problems; overuse by others can cause irritation
These two naturally make a clean analogy to the Hero and Parent (including #2 being the head of the “arm”, involved with relating to others)
Function 3 (Role) Perceived as personal weakness; sometimes makes hard attempts to improve; criticism causes irritation: activated when anxious
I can see the Demonic Personality here, especially in the “personal weakness” part, especially now with the revelation from Beebe that the complex is about “narcissism” and seeking “integrity”. (And so it would naturally produce “anxiety” and particular “irritation” at criticism. For me, it doesn’t even have to be a direct criticism; but rather a moral issue that may implicate me indirectly, like many conservative arguments).
Function 4 (Vulnerable) Usage causes extreme irritation; avoided as much as possible; has to be developed by personal experience; often ignored
This is a totally generic “shadow” description, that does not tie into a specific Trickster analogue. Since it is in the “conscious” half, then this probably covers the old dispute of the attitude of the tertiary. So this model essentially has it as the opposite attitude from the dominant, (instead of the same attitude, as the Grant/Beebe model commonly used) and makes it 4th place instead of tertiary.
Function 5 (Suggestive/Dual-Seeking), Entertaining; soothing; Energizing; leads to self-actualization; deficiency causes attempts to self supply
“Dual-seeking” and “self-actualization” are the clues for the “anima/animus” archetype!
Function 6 (Mobilizing/Activating) Appreciated; overuse by others can be seen as excessive; may be overindulged or severely neglected; can cause boredom
This sounds compatible with the Puer/Puella, which “inflates” (“overindulged”), and then “deflates”, and can be overwhelmed and intimidated by too much of the function.
Function 7 (Ignoring/Observing) Constantly annoying; mostly used in private; can be summoned when needed; causes boredom; avoidance makes it appear weak
I can see “ignoring” covering the fact that this is the rejected attitude of the dominant function. “Constantly annoying” is general “shadow” trait, and “causes boredom” reminds me of a citation someone made of a Beebe lecture, that we think the “Opposing Personality” functional perspective is “so stupid”.
Function 8 (Demonstrative) Used often in private; often made fun of; important to worldview; perceived as obvious information
This at first seemed to have nothing to do with the Witch[Crone]/Senex, especialy the term “Demonstrative”. But if you think of it, you take your dominant attitude, and then the auxiliary function, which you “parent” others with (or even in this model, are “creative” with), pair the function and attitude together, and this is what you have (The shadow of the auxiliary).
“Obvious information” I’m not sure of, but probably covers it being the opposite attitude of the auxiliary. You focus on the preferred attitude, and probably take the opposite attitude for granted (which again would tie right into the whole Senex/Crone concept). On that point, it might also explain the “made fun of” part. (Think some “young whippersnappers” harassing the old cranks). “Important to worldview” might also connect to the archetype, since it involves “wisdom”. “Used often in private” I don’t know about.
The “blocks” (from above link and http://www.the16types.info/vbulletin/content.php/258-Model-A-Blocks-and-Functions-of-the-Socionic-Model-of-the-Psyche):
RING 1 (Conscious, Mental) Strive to verbalize information and formulate observations and form the core of the individual’s intellectual activity
Block 1 (EGO) Most confident; used in most areas regardless of relevance; prone to overuse: source of purpose; indifferent to praise
“I know I can.” (“I know I can. I want to.”)
Zone of confidence, expertise, willfulness, and self-actualization. What you think about when things go right.
Block 2 (Super-Ego) Lack confidence; sensitive to criticism; prone an overreaction; source of stress and anxiety: appreciates praise
“I know I can’t.” (“I’m not good enough. I must work on that.”)
Zone of self-criticism, self-doubt, guilt, and self-perfection. What you think about when things go wrong.
RING 2 (Unconscious, Vital) Tend to manifest themselves without words in the process of doing things or inadvertently in the loan of spontaneous sentiments.
Block 3 (Super-Id) Poorly developed; seen as chores best left to others; prone to being desired; source of recreation; appreciates help
“I don’t know I can’t.” (“Why doesn’t anyone help me?”)
Block 4 (Id) Well developed; seen as boring and meaningless; prone to being ignored; source of skill growth; indifferent to help
What one does automatically when one is being oneself
If they placed “Id” before “Super-Id”, it would be the same as Lenore’s order. Really don’t know at all what the basis of the order is, but we see these “rings” and “traits” (below) are what set the order.
Accepting (independent): focus on obtaining a picture of reality
Producing (dependent): create some sort of new product model to that part of reality
Here we see the clear analogue to the “spine” and “arms”; one being about the ego itself, and thus “independent”, and the other “dependent” on others.
Overall, these “function” roles seem arbitrarily placed, though there are these parallels. They don’t fit together as symmetrically as Beebe archetypes, where the name of each one is obviously a compensatory reflection of the opposite position. They’re thus harder to remember, and thus, to me, just don’t “click” and make sense the way Beebe’s model finally did. (It’s sort of like the way Beebe’s model looked before I saw the symmetry of it, and people saw that as too difficult to grasp, so I wonder why some are more open to this system, which doesn’t seem to have the symmetry behind it).
Hunziker, Depth Typology: C.G. Jung, Isabel Myers, John Beebe and the Guide Map to Becoming Who We Are
Write Way Publishing Company, © Mark Hunziker, 2016
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01JEQXOIA/
Right as Beebe finally publishes his first volume on specifically his eight function model, Mark Hunziker, who had briefly mentioned the model in his earlier Building Blocks of Type (and on his “VTWellness” page) comes out with his own book largely on Beebe’s model. While Beebe’s book is given a June 17 publishing date (on Amazon, at least) Hunziker is listed at July 30. Still, he mentions Beebe’s book as not out yet, at least at the time of writing. In any case, this really makes a great primer for Beebe’s model and thus his book, and for anyone really not familiar with it, they should read this one first!
He starts out (chapter 1) introducing the concept of “Depth Typology“, which is basically the name of this whole, extended theory, completed by Beebe’s model. Its root, of course, is Jung’s “psychological type” theory published in 1921. He points out “Until now, the scope of typology was limited to the conscious side of the psyche”, represented by “the first four functions” or “ego-syntonic” or “primary” stack in the older four-process model. Myers’ “focus was on the conscious side, so she did not speculate about how the framework and dynamics of type might apply to the unconscious”. (Kindle location 553; no “page” numbers available at all for some reason).
I note, that to them, the inferior represented the unconscious or “shadow”, even though it has now been placed, technically, on the “conscious” side.
Chapter 2 goes into the development of our sense of “science” and its “assumptions”, based on “the Cartesian World View” of the Newtonian universe, which is “materialistic”, consisting of “objects” which exert influence on other objects, which is what we base our notion of “reality” on. The more accurate view, citing researcher Valerie Hunt, is that the reality of the world “lies in fields which interact with other fields of energy” (in “dynamic chaos patterns that are always evolving to higher levels of complexity”). Also mentioned, as part of “the new sciences”, is “reductionism”. “The great reluctance of scientists to deal with subjective phenomena is part of our Cartesian heritage. Descartes’ fundamental division between mind and matter, between the ‘I’ and the world, had us believing that the world could be accurately described without ever taking the human participant/observer into account.” This became the “ideal of all science”. Yet particle physics is one thing calling this into question!
He goes on to discus “systems theory”, and then “Me and not-Me”; the latter, what our theory here (of “consciousness”) is founded upon. “It seems to me that the ‘Me versus Other’ conundrum is at the heart of most of the personal and social dysfunction in our ego-centric modern culture. (#859) Continuing in this “without/within” division, citing Wheatley & Kellner-Rogers, “We cannot stand outside a system as an objective distant director. There is no objective ground to stand anywhere in the entire universe”. This is basically something Einstein’s “Relativity” taught us, or should have taught us!
(The next section is on a “higher power”, though it’s pretty vague, and basically in terms of “a holistic process of physical/psychological/spiritual human evolution”).
In “Depth Typology in the New Cosmos”, “Jung envisioned a psychological system in which the Conscious and Unconscious are as real—and as illusory—as the empirical and transcendental realities they reflect. Consciousness is best adapted to processing and coping with the empirical experience of our day-to-day lives; unconsciousness has a greater capacity for connecting to the intangible background reality. Specifically, it is the Collective Unconscious that maintains an awareness of the energic reality around and within us. This awareness is represented to our conscious awareness through the metaphysical feeling-toned-idea imagery that we call archetypes”.
He then discusses the “self-invented ‘I'”.
Similar to trying to swim across a powerful river, “psychology, including typology, is a matter of attention to the subtle energies at work in us, around us, and upon us, rather than about bolstering our defenses against them. It’s about understanding and feeling what we can and facing and embracing what we can’t. It’s about cooperating and collaborating with forces vastly more powerful than ourselves rather than attempting to control them. Ultimately, our psychological mandate is to grow into who we can be rather than defending who we think we are”. The part of our psyche that knows “the rest of the story”—that knows of the reality of our environment and our Selves and remembers the time-tested wisdom accrued by our ancestors—is mostly unconscious.” (#1029) The goal then is to “integrate” the input of the unconscious. Beebe’s model aids this, by addressing those “other four” functions for each type, usually left out of common four-process discussions.
Chapter 3 is “Psychological Type: Evolution of the Model. This covers Jung’s story, basically. We see that “Psychological type itself grew out of his effort to investigate that the differences between his theories and Freud’s and Adler’s might be explained by the three men’s subjective biases“. Recall, as we saw in the Beebe review, to Freud, “the study of the unconscious could only be accomplished rationally through a dialectic of thinking and feeling” (where Jung was using intuition). As we’ve seen in Beebe writings, Jung types Freud as what we would call an INFP, with evidences of “demonic Ti” in the way he named psychological categories. Adler (whose theory included “four styles of life” based on a expressive/responsive-style matrix similar to Interaction styles or DISC), was IIRC, said to be ISTJ. Jung would also see these different types of consciousness in his clients.
At location 1151, he points out that testing out his empirical observations is what led Jung to “incorporate disparate ancient religious, mythological and philosophical texts”, traveling across the world to African, Asian and Native American traditions, and of course incorporating alchemy, as well as theoretical physicists.
This of course would explain why he seems so “pagan”, particularly to Christians, who are often wary of him (I’ve pointed out that the Christian temperament theorists I entered the field through, Arno and LaHaye, don’t even mention Jung, —though LaHaye did briefly in passing mention the four functions as suggested comparative “temperament” categories). When mentioning him to Christians, I try to argue that I’m not so sure how literal his “spiritual” lingo is to be taken; like if he really believed that stuff, like a religion. Being an introverted iNtuitive as it is, the language is often cryptic and hard to know how literally to be taken. Though one person I’ve discussed this with does mention that he did seances. Still, I don’t know if he really believed in it, or was just using it for his studies of these things.
He also mentions “the legacy” of Jung, as embodied in both his own (with Leona Haas), as well as Berens’ models. Two of the principles he then lists (#1251) is that
•”the healthy psychic system is balanced in every aspect [i.e. i/e and j/p] and contains mechanisms of compensation and growth to maintain or regain that dynamic equilibrium”
•”It is the tension between opposites that pulls us toward balance and toward growth”.
Next section is Myers’ and Briggs’ Contributions, which explains the rationale for their readaptation of Jung’s system. The difference between the functions and attitudes are more obvious than the difference between the particular attitudes of the functions, and since identifying the basic preferences was the goal, the increased simplicity and clarity of their instrument was more desired.
This then brings us to Beebe and the “depth” he “brings to the model”, by reintroducing the function-attitudes, extending the hierarchy to all eight of them for each type, adding the archetypes (“fields of emotional energies“) and “axes” of compensatory pairs of functions and archetypes.
“No one before Beebe had ventured to extend the map of typology beyond the inferior (4th) function-attitude, the ‘gateway to the unconscious'”. We also see Jung even expressed skepticism about the possibility of doing so, since he assumed the unconscious portion of the personality cannot be grasped cognitively. No wonder everyone shied away from “the bottom four”!
He reiterates the point I had always cited in Building Blocks, that the sequence of development does not necessarily follow the “linear hierarchy”. “It is more accurate and useful to think of each function-attitude as being integrated with ego to the degree that it is conscious, while at the same time, it will have a shadowy and independent nature to the degree that it’s unconcious” (#1395).
Chapter 4 is “Key Terms and Concepts”, such as “personality” and “consciousness”, and the definition of the “ego”. It’s pointed out that “even when we can’t ‘prove’ the existence of something or agree on all the details of its nature, we can still use it as a theoretical construct to aid in our understanding and promote our investigations.”(#1538). It’s later established that “it is the dominant and auxiliary function-attitudes that form the typological core of the ego of most adults”. Also mentioned here is Western society, and its extraverted Thinking “ego-stance”.
In the discussion of the Persona, we get a good example of an undifferentiated function:
For someone who has not fully developed her extraverted feeling function into conscious accessibility, promoting a harmonious environment ill not actually be a major consideration in her egoteam’s decision-making process. But she still may be able to slip on an Fe mask temporarily, conscientiously attending, for example, to the needs and emotional wellbeing of her guests when hosting a party. Likewise, someone who has not differentiated his extraverted intuition into routine consciousness use won’t normally think about future possibilities though he can still participate n a conversation about the likely consequences of an action that’s being considered. (#1706)
Next is the discussion of the unconscious, whose content is “based on the unfiltered raw data of experience and the human condition, which the ego filters “based on what is comfortable and acceptable to us. It is limited to the emotions we are willing to admit to ourselves that we feel, the thoughts that we deem okay to think, acceptable behavior, what fits with our belief system, our cultural/social/moral constraints, what ‘makes sense’ to us, and who we conceive ourselves to be”. So the unconscious part of the psyche “continues to work behind the scenes to attempt to balance the biases and blind spots of the ego”. Without a framework for embracing this, “modern man is rarely prepared to integrate it in healthy ways”. (#1774)
This gets into discussion of the collective unconscious, which is “the part of us where we are psychologically indistinguishable from one another. Jung also entertained the possibility that the source material and nature of the collective unconscious may extend beyond humankind, tot he laws of basic nature, the repeating patterns of the universe itself, to what quantum physicists often refer to as the ‘source field’ and philosophers call the ‘universal substrate'”.
We also along the way see the function-attitudes described in terms of “mental processes that we have not developed into conscious ‘skillsets'”. Again, the functions themselves are “forms of consciousness”, where I think it is better to focus on the complexes or “ego-states”, which are the personalized “archetypes” themselves, as the “lesser senses of ‘I'” to form awareness (of which the ego itself is one).
Then, “projection” and “shadow”, which is “the personification of” and “an active manifestation of certain unconscious contents [which could be added to the ego complex, but for various reasons are not], not the unconscious itself” (#1908), as it is often described as. Where repeated is the point that any unconscious function can be considered part of the shadow, “it is the predictably oppositional, shadowy nature of the ego-dystonic function-attitude-archetypes that earns them the designation of “the Shadow” in the depth typology lexicon”. (#1939) Also, “trying to deal with our shadow directly simply doesn’t work. Everyone’s notion of such an interaction is formed by their ego—and it is precisely that ego stance tho which the shadow is usually reacting”.
Under “Ego-syntonic and Ego-dystonic, it’s pointed out that the simple labeling of the “ego syntonic” half as “conscious” and the ego-dystonic half as “unconscious”(or at least “relatively” so) is misleading, as a gross oversimplification. All are partly conscious and unconscious, and the mix varies from person to person. The ego-syntonic functions are simply “congruous with each other, and therefore with one’s sense of ‘who I am’. They may contradict and battle with each other at times, but they are still on the same team”.
Regarding the ego-dystonic functions:
Because of their incompatibility with the orientation of the ego, the egodystonic function-attitudes can rarely, if ever, be truly integrated with the conscious side of the personality, no matter how well ‘developed’ they may become. In fact, “development” of the ego-dystonic FAs is usually more a matter of accepting their limitations and their primitive, archetypal nature and cultivating our ability to roughly translate their messages while we struggle to use the associated practical skills that would naturally become well-honed if those function-attitudes were well developed.
Archetypal energies “carry” each function-attitude to the degree that the FA is unconscious; a function-attitude that we can engage consciously can be used relatively free of the archetype that carries it when unconscious…freer of the associations and emotional colorings of the archetypes. (#1974, emphasis added)
It’s then mentioned how Jung seemed to engage both extraverted and introverted Thinking, “Hence, the endless debate about whether he was an INTJ or an INTP”. Yet, “if you look closely”, Jung’s use of Ti “always seemed somewhat tortured and convoluted, and a bit tinged with the didactic tone of the Senex archetype”. This is perhaps why I and some others find him so hard to digest!
From a personal communication between him and Beebe, the ego-dystonic functions are portrayed “They work, as do all functions, to support the wellbeing of the entire psyche—trying to compensate for the imbalance of an ego-dominated personality”. This gets into the question of whether the lower archetypes are dispatched by the ego (As “defenses”, as is mentioned here, or rather the Self, as I will address again). So they are almost always “heavily laden with the primitive emotional energies of their associated archetypal complexes”. So it’s the “emotional tone” that will be easier to recognize when they appear.
The chapter concludes with a discussion of the Self, the archetypal complex of “wholeness” or “the true Me”.
Chapter 5 is “Individuation, Differentiation and Type Development”. Cited is Jungs’ definition of “individuation” as “the development of the psychological individual as a being distinct from the general, collective psychology”. Later, Beebe’s eight function model is pictured as making the model of psychological type fully capable of encompassing the concept of individuation. (It’s then reiterated from a quote of Jung, that this process will be essentially short-circuited by “conscious intention”, because of the “typological attitude that excludes whatever does not fit in with it”. So this, on its own “can never be more than an attempt to better understand and pick up some coping tricks and an opportunity to practice some unfamiliar skills…and emulate function-attitudes that remain essentially as unconscious as ever. It does not create a fundamental shift in that ego standpoint, which is what individuation is all about.” (#2285)
Also discussed is how “differentiation” means functions being separated from the other functions (whether the “natural” ones, that is; S, N, T, F, or the two attitudes of a particular function). It’s pointed out that to bring one function-attitude into consciousness will involve some differentiation of the opposite attitude, even though one will be four places lower from the other in the stack. But the lower one, not so much that it is developed “into skillfull, conscious use or cleanly separated from the unconscious”. There will be an “energic readiness” to to engage the [“natural”] function in general, but one of the attitudes will be honed in and relied on more, as it will be more successful.
Now we enter Part II, on “Beebe’s Depth Typology Model”. Chapter 6 is on “the Function-Attitudes”. This begins with the basic definitions of the four “natural” functions, and then moves into the specific “attitudes”. The unconscious ones “don’t behave in the clear, skillset-related ways that we have learned to identify”. They’re more like “primitive predecessors”.
This, I point out for Fi (which is tertiary or lower for the Thinking types teaching the models, and thus often colored by that “primitive” form) would be the “screw everyone else; only what I feel/value matters” often described. But if you read FP type profiles (where it is dominant or auxiliary, and thus developed into its most “mature” form), you can see the evidence of a completely different manifestation; of using that “selfish” feeling to “put yourself into the other person’s shoes” and thus infer their needs or wants, and thus “respond to them” just as much as an extraverted Feeling type. (Hunziker soon mentions that “they would not tend to try to win others over to their point of view” —as some assumptions of the functions imply, though, again, this is more likely the TJ types’ less developed form of it. “They’d often go along with what they assume to be others’ deeply held convictions—as long as their own are not violated”). So it often leads to the opposite of “selfishness”, in them going along with people against their [lesser] wishes or values. (basically the “Supine” or even “Sanguine” ‘weak will’, since the FP types comprise those temperaments).
Next is “The Sequence of the Eight Function-Attitudes”. Starting with just the first four commonly discussed, with no one attempting to explain how the other four fit in, “because the focus of MBTI users was on the issues of the ego-syntonic side of personality, the incompleteness of this picture was not considered problematic, indeed it was hardly even noticed”. (#2581)
Next is discussed how the order is based on the need of “balance”. The tertiary was believed to be the same attitude as the auxiliary and inferior (the opposite of the dominant, to basically counter the “powerful dominant function-attitude” with “the collective weight of all three” of the others. But Beebe’s view forms a more elegant, and more plausible balance. What wasn’t thought of, was that if #2, 3 and 4 had to balance the dominant with an opposite attitude, then their shadows, #6, 7 and 8 would end up the same attitude as the dominant. How would the “shadow” end up so in sync with the dominant?
Of course, it should really be pointed out that the people disputing the orientation of the tertiary were likely not thinking strictly in terms of solid “function-attitude” units like we do, but thinking of the “natural” functions separately from the two attitudes. So you stack S, N, T, F for each type, and then ask which attitude each function bears, separately. Whatever the dominant one was, the other three would be opposite (or maybe the tertiary, the same as the dominant). The “other four” were really the “other attitude” of these same four, and not anything stacked separately from them.
In this juncture, we get another clarification of something we’ve heard Beebe cited on before, but now given a specific reason: “It is not uncommon for children to develop some skill and comfort in using their seventh (Trickster) function-attitude in response to the overwhelming power of their parents“. Now that explains everything! (including, as he will point out later, that this is why the attitude of the tertiary became ambiguous to begin with!)
Also mentioned, is that to think “opposition” to the heroic tendencies comes solely through the fifth function-attitude (the “Opposing Personality) would be to misunderstand the nature of the model because the shadow functions are too indistinct and unseparated to operate consistently like coherent, differentiated entities. They “rarely operate as discrete units. More often, they’re confusingly mixed together or form ad oc alliances“. (#2638) This, I take it is referring to even when they are attached to the archetype. I would again point out that it’s the archetypal complexes or “ego-states” that make the distinctions.
But then remaining still “mixed together” somewhat would make sense, and explain for instance, when I’m trying to think of examples of Ni (which I would expect to be involved in the negative premonitions I get in a “Senex” state), and then I have to wonder if it’s really Ne; Ni being the hardest to understand and distinguish from its opposite attitude. I notice that whenever I think it’s Ni, there’s always some “object” I’m comparing it to, and I figure it must “become” Ni, when I come out of Senex mode and am trying to analyze it with my normal TiNe. But this point here gives another explanation as to why shadow functions are hard to pin down, and can be easily confused with their more conscious counterparts.
He soon acknowledges the point I’ve been emphasizing, that “Unconscious function-attitudes are carried by emotional energies that tend to form archaic mini-personalities known as ‘archetypal complexes'”.
Also, “Unconscious function-attitudes usually operate as defenders of the Self. When our conscious resources are not able to take care of our normal business, or if an inflated ego is itself the source of dysfunction, our unconscious resources rise to combat the problem.
Defending the Self often conflicts with the ego-syntonic function-attitudes’ orientation toward supporting and strengthening the Ego.”
This again gets into a bit of confusion I have about this, because most of our “shadow” reactions seem to be defending the ego-position. (As I’ll show below). Under traumatic stress, or in the later stages of the individuation process, is when the Self dispatches the shadow complexes, from what I was told.
Also, “Unconscious function-attitudes, but their connection to the collective human experience, can draw upon a deeper and broader wisdom than the relatively limited experience and perspective of our conscious side.” They “defend us from outside threats and from internal imbalance”. That “outside threats” part is what I would think would be dispatched by the ego rather than the Self.
Chapter 7 goes onto the Archetypes.
The “energy factor” that gives the function-attitudes life, is said by Beebe to lie in “the innately archetypal nature of the unconscious—and therefore of all unconscious content, including any function-attitudes that are not fully conscious” (#2712). The archetypes manifest in “specific down to earth physical, emotional and cognitive embodiments”. To Jung, they are assumed to be “the deposits of the constantly repeated experiences of humanity. Endless repetition has engraved these experiences into our psychic constitution, not in the form of images filled with content, but at first only as forms without content, representing merely the possibility of a certain type of perception and action (1953/1966 ¶109; 1959/1969a, ¶99)”. (Thinking they themselves consisted of “images” was a mistake I made when Lenore was explaining this stuff to me. The way she put it was “images freighted with emotion“. Her correction said pretty much the same thing, that S, N, T and F “are just names that we’ve given to different ways of bringing experience into cognitive awareness. They’re not things [as I, following much of the rest of the online type community, had fallen into seeing them]. They’re perspectives, ways of determining what matters in a situation.”)
So Hunziker, quoting John Gianni soon points out one of the main things Lenore had taught me, that “the complex is a historical experience and a particularized manifestation of an archetype. A complex is a complete incarnation of each archetype (2004, p 143)”, They are “given concrete form by real-world experience”.
Along the way, the “collective unconscious” is discussed, and the role of “the residue of the experiences of our ancestors”, and then, the notion of a “higher power”, being “something much bigger”, being implied by the archetypes, and thus this informs our notions about the nature of God, in addition to “our sense of place in the universe”, “our entire world view”, etc. So “In daily life”, “we are profoundly influenced by the psychological frames that make our lives manageable, as well as the energies that give our experiences their impetus and emotional flavors. And these energies/frames are largely predetermined by the archetypal forms and the related experiences that crystallize them into complexes”. (#2814)
In “the case for eight particular archetypes”, he cites Beebe as saying the archetypes are “roles” the individual enters when expressing a particular consciousness. He acknowledges that thinking of them as “roles” (which is basically what Berens replaces them with in renamed form in her re-framing of the model) might be seen as a bit of a simplification. But:
We’re all aware that we slip from role to role in our lives. We go to work and slip into the role that fits our job description; we came home and move into a parental role with our kids and another role with our partner; and into other roles in our various civic functions, social activities, and relationships. So we can relate to the idea of playing multiple roles. And to the extent that we carry unconscious associations into them, they are all archetypal. That is to say that if we were completely conscious at any given moment, we would not be playing a role at all. We would be supremely present, acting from our core true selves, seeing them with unadulterated clarity and empathy, and relating to them with complete authenticity. But the reality is that everything we do is tinged and clouded by our sense of the archetypal roles in play. (#2878)
This corresponds perfectly to the description of “ego states” as I discussed from the Hartman/Zimberoff article “Ego Surrender” (see https://erictb.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/a-quantum-explanation-of-the-soul/#comment-1247 and https://erictb.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/a-start-to-understanding-complexes).
But then again, the focus is in practice shifted back to the function-attitudes themselves as “the actors in our personal drama, each possessing certain traits and skillsets”, and from there, “each assigned a certain archetypal role through which they can apply those talents.”
This again is where I differ, seeing the complexes themselves (which are but the concretized or “filled with personal experience” archetypes, as just discussed above) as the “actors”, which then take on the different FA perspectives as their “world views”. The “ego” itself is but the main one taking on the dominant function and attitude, and the “Hero” and “Persona” go along with it. The Parent takes on the opposite attitude, and then the opposite rationality (j/p) of function. As the other six archetypes involved are but reflections and/or “shadows” of the first two, they take on the opposite functions and/or attitudes. And from there, we have Beebe’s “eight archetypal complexes using the eight function-attitudes” model!
But what I think should be ‘personified‘ are the complexes, not the functions.
Next is questioned “Why would eight particular ones be the ones that tend to carry our function attitudes?” and the answer, as discussed in the last review, was that Beebe “arrived at this configuration from personal reflection, dream interpretation and observation, and has validated it by decades of insights and feedback from clients and workshop participants.” Also, a clue from Jung, that “the archetypes most clearly characterized from the empirical point of view are those which have the most frequent and the most disturbing influence on the ego (1959/1969b ¶13)”. So Hunziker concludes
the roles that most routinely color our conscious business do indeed fit with the heroic, parental, childlike, or idealized opposite gender patterns. And those archetypes that he subsequently linked to the ego-dystonic function-attitudes, seem to fit the description of “most disturbing” to the Ego. The Opposing Personality, Witch/Senex, Trickster and Demon/Daimon, once we come to understand them, seem to encapsulate most of our disturbing eruptions from the unconscious.
Just as the eight function-attitudes of type are the eight narrow primary ‘personalities’ available within us for playing out life’s drama, Beebe’s eight archetypal images describe the key roles that these eight actors inevitably need to fill. Every whole human being needs to be part heroic leader, part nurturing parent, part carefree child, part idealized mate, part oppositional anti-hero, part fearsome old crone, part untrustworthy trickster, and part dark “Other”.
Here we see more clearly that the function-attitudes are the “personalities”, and the archetypes are the “roles”. Again, I would reverse that. Using the term “complexes” more, rather than “archetypes”, and especially emphasizing that they are “ego-states”, helps understand how this works. He continues “There are many other archetypal images beyond Beebe’s eight, but this particular collection appears to cover the basics”. They make “a balanced and effective team for inner collaboration”. (The way Lenore put it, the eight are simply “the complexes that structure an ego identity”. At http://www.personalitypathways.com/thomson/type3-3.html “As far as I’m concerned, Beebe’s model is a very good one, but only if it’s clear that it’s talking about complexes. Complexes are the way in which instinctual energies become available to consciousness. The model, in this respect, doesn’t show us how the type functions operate. Rather, [it tells us what happens in the psyche when we borrow instinctual energy from the unconscious to further our ego-based choices.” original e-mail version: “…it shows the archetypal structure underlying an established ego identity“]. And now, Beebe himself has stated this in his book, as mentioned in the other article).
Next is pointed out that the eight archetypes aren’t inexorably tied to the hierarchy positions. “Like most elements of Jungian psychology, and indeed in modern science in general, it’s a matter of probability.” The scheme “tells us which archetypal energies are likely to be carrying which function-attitude in a given typology”. They also, as stated earlier, become harder to identify the further down in the hierarchy the FA resides, being a defining characteristic of the unconscious is the lack of differentiation of its contents.
Next is the “Eight Archetypes of Typology”. We get a table with Beebe’s three columns of names (“Persona level”, “ego level” and Self-level”) for each of the FA’s, as was mentioned in the previous review, then descriptions of each archetype. For the Hero, “the greatest danger for the Hero/Heroine is inflation, an exaggerated sense of the heroic function-attitude’s ability to take care of everything, without help from other people or from other function-attitudes”. This is linked to Einstein’s definition of insanity; trying to solve a problem using the same way of thinking that hasn’t been working.
For Mother/Father (i.s. Parent) he discusses how the archetype gets confused with extraverted Feeling, because of the connotation of “nurturing and support”, and addressing people’s needs. Now, FA gets defined as “a mode of thinking and operating” which “doesn’t relate to a particular role or the drive to fulfill that role”, which lies in the “feeling-toned archetypal energy complex”. So people for whole Fe is ego-dystonic are no less capable of being great parents; they just might not but, support and protect in as “warm and fuzzy” a style as an Fe preferrer might.
In “possession” by the Parent archetype (i.e. inflation), as we read briefly in Berens, we become “overprotective”, or “parenting” when not appropriate to take that role. Posession by the Child (Puer/Puella) “usually involves refusing to take responsibility for the results of our actions. Likewise, projecting the Child (usually done by people who are stuck in overly-responsible, too serious mode) means regarding the target of our projection as refusing to ‘grow up’ and ‘act like an adult’.”
Under Anima/Animus, we see another great point Lenore had given me, that “Jung was likely reflecting the cultural bias of his day in associating ‘Eros’ with Feeling function and primarily with women (who would therefore be presumed to have a ‘Logos’/Thinking-oriented Animus) and vice versa for men“. Then, in the 80’s and 90’s, “there appeared to be a movement to redefine Jungian eros as the drive to connect or merge and logos as the drive to separate, discriminate or distinguish“. (#3062) This I have seen a lot, in online sites about the Anima or Jung. He then provides better ways of describing the anima and animus, given the entanglement with cultural assumptions that have shaped the notions of “masculinity” and “femininity” often used to describe them. (this also touches upon something Lenore was saying).
Also mentioned is “one of the main reasons why one develops a persona is so as not to expose inferiorities, especially the inferiorities of the fourth function”. The “persona” is usually portrayed as an alternate “dominant place” archetype alongside the hero, and here we see its purpose is to essentially counter the inferior.
Relatively unconscious, but still ego-syntonic, it is still consciously accessible, meaning we can connect with it. Also, Jung is quoted “It is because we are not using them purposefully as functions that they remain personified complexes. So long as they are in this state they must be accepted as relatively independent personalities (1953/1966 ¶339)”.
Of course, projection of it is what drives attraction to people who exhibit inverse qualities where we “form archetypally idealized ideas of them, (and to then be disappointed when they fail to live up to that ideal)”
The Opposing Personality “is most often activated in defense of the personality from real or imagined outside threats. The different attitudes of each function “senses the other as an encroachment on its own province” (Jung). Again, the contrasexual nature of the complex is mentioned (which along with sharing the same i/e attitude makes it difficult to distinguish from the anima/animus, as I’ve realized in my own projections and fantasy life), but nothing about this coming from it being energized by the anima.
The Witch/Senex, or “critical Parent” “can be a necessary attitude to take toward the Eternal Child in others (and perhaps in ourselves)—the ‘tough love’ needed to avoid overindulgence”. But it lacks a governing mechanism of consciousness to ensure it’s only used appropriately. Citing Beebe, it “moves shame into guilt, and “makes us ashamed of our shame”.
The Trickster, like the Eternal Child “is puerile, but not in a timid or helpless way”. It’s often what “defends our vulnerable Eternal Child from the Senex attacks from others”, which is a great specification, and of course, often does this by catching the attacker in double-binds. As Lenore explained to me regarding the more Kalsched-ian notion of the archetype for when a person is ready to grow, it’s a “catalyst for individuation” and “breaks down self-limiting structures, creating disorder, in order to open up new options that lead to a new order“. So it ignores boundaries including self-imposed, societal and parental limits, representing “autonomy from parental patterns”. It “can be activated in compensation for an attitude of hyper-responsibility, a characteristic of the internal Senex” (#3254).
The Demon/Daimon is essentially, “our inferior inferior”. It’s “what we need to be ashamed of—the flaw in our character for which integrity exists and is needed”. Patterns of its projection are often at the root of social inequities and wars, as we saw at the very end of Beebe’s book; with the most demonized enemies of ESTJ American typology, typically condemned for “assumed perceived lack of or misguided and perverse values“. (He says “not for flawed logic, intuition or perception of facts”, but they certainly do throw the “logic” and “facts” charge at the “liberals”. Perhaps this is the projection of the OP and Senex. Those are basically the side issues, at the most emotionally fervent charge, regarding “values”).
As I’ll mention again, I wonder if these are supposed to be “Self”-dispatched defenses, but they sound a bit like ego defenses.
Chapter 8 is “Depth Typology Dynamics”. This covers Myers-Briggs and the relationship between Cognition and Emotion. Here, we have another subject Lenore had discussed, and that’s the role of the cerebral cortex in conscious thought, while archetypes are more heavily influenced by the older limbic system, the seat of emotions”. “A great deal of what we see in depth typology, then, may come down to an ongoing process of two distinct and differently functioning neurological systems, striving to collaborate.” (#3387) So, “Once we have intellectually grasped the nature of the eight archetypes, function-attitudes are often most easily recognized by the emotional energy of the archetypes that carry them. If we ask ourselves whether what we’re experiencing feels heroic, or nurturing, immature, embarrassing, oppositional, hypercritical, manipulative or undermining, we can often detect the emotional tone of what’s going on typologically before we are able to grasp it intellectually.”
Next is the claim that function-attitudes “trigger” the archetypal complexes, and that the archetypes trigger the function-attitudes. Citing Beebe, 2010, “the most common trigger for any function-attitude archetype is when we engage the function-attitude”. This includes when others engage a function attitude associated with a particular archetype for us. “Obviously, often it will be difficult to know which aspect—archetype or function-attitude—is the cause and which is the effect”.
This, I’ve seen (especially from my discussions with Lenore) we have to be careful with, as it can be overgeneralized. It makes it sound like every time I have to look at/hear/touch, etc. something, or if someone else does it in interaction with me, I’ll go into “Trickster” mode. (Again, as I said in the other review, I really wish she had some input in these book projects.
Meanwhile, as we saw above, Hunziker did acknowledge that when conscious, the FA is then more able to be used free of the archetype. But it’s easy to forget this in the above statement; and he also said that they’re rarely truly integrated with consciousness. I would go with “general” [versus “special”] uses of the functions, as the “conscious” uses, where no particular archetype is constellated at that moment. Beebe on the other hand had also acknowledged to me these regular “generic” uses of the functions; that “the function attitude is not fated to be equal to its archetypal carrier”; “the archetype is the shell in which the function-attitude lives and grows, and out of which the ego can scoop the function-attitude for its own purposes”).
Se being in “7th place” means I might be less likely to pay full attention to current sensory data (and I now notice this all the time), and this is not necessarily something “observed by its archetypally-tinged symptoms, which are somehow the same in everyone”, as Lenore put it. It’s just less conscious, or less relevant to the ego. I also notice that NJ’s tend to be pretty averse to revisiting old conflicts. Some testify to being poor at remembering certain things (not that they can’t remember anything at all, outside of the archetype). Again, there is no specific “Trickster” or “Demon” necessarily constellated at that point. It’s a more “generic” form of [partial] “unconsciousness”.
So it may be more that it’s the complex that constellates first, and being a “lesser sense of ‘I'” (i.e. “ego-state”), it then sees the situation through the perspective of the associated FA. What I find is that a situation calling for the given FA might constellate the complex if it is tied with a longstanding “issue” regarding that functional perspective. Hence, people’s “self-contented” form of “moralizing” triggering the Demonic Personality for me (because of issues of guilt stemming from experiences), or certain physical situations making me feel tricked or trapped (based, again, on experiences).
We next get some personal examples, such as that Mark himself once reported as an introverted Thinking type on the MBTI assessment, and determined that this was from his Senex being constellated at the time, due to a task that required a lot of Ti, which was making him cranky, impatient and inflexible.
“Archetypal baggage”is described “Whenever we enter into a situation that seems to fit a common theme and whenever we unconsciously engage a function-attitude, a certain amount of archetypal energy engages as well. Since most situations fit one or more archetypal patterns and since we rarely if ever, engage our function-attitudes in complete consciousness, archetypal complexes are essentially always part of the type dynamic”. If not aware of this, the archetype may dominate the situation and we respond to the archetypal preconceptions more than to reality.
Next, “Axes of personality” deals with the tandems, including the arm and spine concept, and later, “Interpersonal friction between differently oriented axes”. He shows how each FA needs to work in conjunction with its opposite, like his dominant Ni “anchored in present reality” via inferior Se, etc. Discussed are dynamics like how types that look like they have a lot in common (because of common dichotomy preferences) may really be very different and clash.
This is also where he discusses the phenomenon Beebe had called “crossed spines” (though that term isn’t used here). I had mentioned this on my intro to type page, though later had some reservations about it after thinking about my own marriage experience, and this would be a good place to discuss what I believe is a needed qualification of that concept. As INTP and ESFJ, we are both “rational” types” (and thus “rational spines”), both having Ti/Fe dominant/inferior, though reversed. I do often find that I think she’s making a judgment, when she then claims to be simply making an observation or seeking information. This is what supposedly happens when two people have “crossed spines”. Since I once had to grapple with whether I was really Ne dominant or not, then I had to figure this out. (Or perhaps if she were really Se dominant).
Hunziker gives an example of an ENTJ and ISFJ. Both “J” types, but J refers only to the extraverted judgment function, whether dominant (as for the ENTJ) or auxiliary (As for the ISFJ, who is actually a dominant “perceiving” or “irrational” type). Since the ISFJ will be “‘all about’ gathering information, even though this may not be apparent from interacting with him”, and the ENTJ will be about making decisions, this can create conflict. Not just on the dominant “spine” level, but even on the arms, such as the auxiliary), where they’ll be reversed in rationality. (The ENTJ will now relate by perception, and the ISFJ through judgment. So “the ISFJ may ‘hear’ the observation as a call to act on information”).
But since this carries across both spine and arm, it assumes the two parties always being in spine or arm “mode” at the same time. But if different complexes or ego-states (and here’s another case where thinking in this term helps) are in executive control in a given moment, then the rationality may still end up getting “crossed”. So I notice when I’m deep in dominant or Heroic mode, and my wife will then try to “Parent” with Si, or make a playful suggestion with Ne (or in more stressful times, the Witch or Trickster may even get involved); I’ll hear it as a call to make a decision. She’ll then protest that “It’s just an observation”. Or “I just want more information”. Making this more complicated, is that part of the reason this happens, is because there are times when, particularly with that “childlike” idea, that she switches back into “spine” mode, and the perception does become a judgment. So (perhaps in my “vulnerable” Si “child” mode that holds on to past incidences), I anticipate that, and then it figures for my spine orientation, and I guess it’s often when I’m too immersed in dominant mode, and so really averse to any disruption.
(Plus, there’s also the old J/P difference, where even though we’re both “rational” types, my domniant judgment is introverted, and perception extraverted, while her dominant judgment is extraverted. This leads her to want action, while I need to take in more information first before making a decision).
In “Dynamics Within the System”, “When an extraverted Sensing Hero becomes inflated, the introverted sensing Opposing Personality rises to object, and the introverted Intuitive Anima insists ‘Hey, don’t forget about me!'”.
“Beebe says that the target of the harsh, belittling, limit-setting criticism of our sixth function-attitude Witch/Senex is usually the Eternal Child in others and ourselves. In fact, he has observed that this ‘problem of the Witch/Senex and Eternal Child’ is behind many self-limiting psychological issues” (#3872). I can definitely see this, in the perpetual battle between trying to redo the past, and the premonition of the inevitable repeat of the issues that caused the pain in the first place. I begin countering these premonitions of “what’s [apparently] meant to be” (based on [a model of] “the way it is” that the Child perceives and is hurt by) with exaggerated descriptions of situations (and often consciously recognized as such, but the emotions keep driving the distortions; it “feels so good”) with the purpose of proving that I’m being “cheated” in the [Senex’s] big “scheme” of things.
So here we see the surprising point that, “It appears that in order for the tertiary function-attitude Child to develop, the seventh function-attitude Trickster must first become sufficiently differentiated to come to its defense—to make it safe enough for the Child to come out of hiding and become conscious.” (This corresponds [in part] with Lenore’s “Crow’s Nest” that gets replaced with the tertiary function when we mature. Though the crow’s nest also included the 8th function, which is omitted here).
So the realization, mentioned before; “This might very well explain the ongoing debate regarding the attitude of the tertiary—i.e., that the seventh could easily be mistakenly assumed to be the ego-syntonic tertiary due to its level of development“.
Now we enter Part III, about applications of the model. Chapter 9 is on the value of teaching the Beebe model. It’s actually easier to understand type by the FA’s than remembering sixteen type profiles. It yields more of a “Here is how it may work for you” dynamic rather than “Here’s who you are”, as profiles seem to imply. Every time we talk about a “trait”, we can backtrack to the basics of the [natural] function and explain why its engagement in one or the other attitude would logically result in such a trait.
Chapter 10 is on its usefulness in Counseling, Coaching, and Psychotherapy. (Again, we see the FA’s portrayed as “little voices” and “some other parts of me” that operate in the background of consciousness. The complexes themselves are the “other parts of us”; the other, lesser senses of “I” under the main ego).
Here is a part that raises questions of understanding for me. “In response [to FA’s being “called”, or archetypal energies “triggered”], our existing ego-centric toolkit typically becomes energized to defend itself against the threat to the status quo. The harder the unconscious, “internal Other” elements work to get our conscious attention, the more threatening and invasive they seem to the ego—and the more the ego digs in to resist the invasion”. (And when the relatively developed “ego-identified” FA’s become over-energized, “we become caricatures of our normal selves” trying to fix the problem with our normal approaches. The hero may become a “super-Hero”, etc. The basic dilemma that has most people seeking counseling or therapy is that “the Ego/Me views the very parts of oneself that hold the solution, the No-Me shadow, as the threat to be defended against”).
I wonder, isn’t the “egocentric toolkit” using the shadows to “defend itself” then being dispatched by the ego, and not the Self at that point? Lenore had described the Kalsched concept of the Trickster and Demon, in either trauma, or the later stage toward individuation, being dispatched by the Self (see http://www.personalitypathways.com/thomson/type3-3.html), but then that to me left open the question of whether at the other times, the shadows were being dispatched by the ego. It sure feels like it, when I get those OP, Senex, Trickster or Demon reactions, ruminations or projections, specifically defending ego against the threat. But then the thing is that she doesn’t really believe any below the OP are constellated in normal situations. Like the Demon, she said, was “so far from the Ego that it can never be integrated or controlled” (or “so far from the Heroic self-image that they’re more like intrapsychic messengers from the unconscious”, ibid). The Senex, she would later tell me, is present in any function that becomes too one-sided, and that too would be presumably Self-dispatched.
But then this seems to be left ambiguous by Beebe and Hunziker (unless I’ve missed something). I guess, the complexes themselves are dispatched by the Self (since it “owns” them, where the ego thinks it owns them, which is the definition of “inflation”), and while it’s the ego that essentially is “using” them for its defenses, since they are out of the ego’s conscious control, they don’t come out the way the ego wishes, and hence why they are so problematic. The “message from the Self” then is that these “problematic” manifestations are what the Self is trying to “get the ego’s attention” through).
So what I was really looking for here, was a clear distinction between the Beebe “everyday” constellations of the archetypes, and the Kalsched [via Lenore] “trauma” or “individuation” constellations. I guess it’s all dispatched by the Self, but Beebe’s theory simply has the Self dispatching lesser constellations of them for everyday ego defenses, in order to try to make the ego aware of how its defenses are coloring its perception and judgment. That is what makes perfect sense.
These last chapters now getting smaller; Ch. 11 is on Self Development and Self-Help. In projection, “Our internal rationale insists that since these thoughts, feelings, attitudes and desires don’t fit with our idea of who we are, someone else must be responsible”. (#4319) Tying in with the question I just raised, “We protect our Ego rather than our Self”.
Chapter 12 is on “Relationships and Communication”.
Chapter 13 is “cultural Personalty Type”. In a quote, it’s pointed out that humans were designed for cooperation, but only with some people, that is within groups, in the context of personal relationships. Our brains didn’t evolve for cooperation between groups.Hence, all the “Me vs Other” played out on a societal scale, where the “Me” becomes “Us”. So “Without some perceived OTher, we’d have no one to carry our projections; we’d be forced to face the truth that the unacceptable Other is within each of us.” (#4603)
(Next is mentioned the influence of Christianity and its ego-syntonic members of the “trinity” [which he says “systematizes” denial of the “unacceptable Other”], on the shaping of Western culture, and how other religions have a quaternity of deities, with one representing that base, unacceptable side. But this ignores that the Son, though “good”, still bore the Shadow of sin for us. A fourth Person was not necessary.
[This can lead to the debate of whether the “Azazel goat” of the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur (which is today!) ritual, who ultimately had all the sin symbolically placed on him, and sent off into the wilderness, represented Christ or Satan. “Orthodox” apologists generally protest that that would essentially add Satan as a fourth entity in our redemption, in addition to the Father, Son and Spirit. However, those who say it is Satan, which I’ve seen among the sabbatarian groups, point out that Satan is the one banished in the end, never to return].
So whenever projecting onto others, we can ask “what function-attitudes does the ‘threat’ seem to be acting out…? What archetypal energies do we associate with this “Other? What archetypal reactions are triggered in us?”
There’s also the possibility of cultural typology influencing this as well. Mentioned is that the split between US conservatives and liberals seems to be according to “two different family models”. The conservatives take a “strict father” model where human nature is flawed and must be tamed and molded into “right behavior” by rewards and punishments to train people to survive in a hostile world. As I’ve been pointing out for years, it’s a “scarcity-based view”, where there must be “winners” and “losers”, and that right behavior leads to success, while wrong behavior leads to failure. (Hence, social “entitlement” programs promote laziness). Of course, this is supposed to be based on “the Biblical doctrine of ‘sin'”, which liberals had long rejected. But what the conservatives fail to remember is that this “flawed nature” includes they themselves, and this whole approach is based on [divine] Law, which was necessitated by the “knowledge of good and evil” that marked the Fall to begin with. It lacks “Grace”, and then one’s own ongoing sin (or societal sin) must be denied, in order to prove that one has “earned” success. This is why, for instance, they deny racism and its effects, while then casting blame on the victims of it (and then proceed to put down “victimhood”).
So the liberals use the “nurturing parent” model, which is more in accord with Jungian thought. Human nature is basically good if properly guided and supported (which we see is what the conservatives have long condemned them for). They have an “abundance-based” view that assumes individuals will succeed if their parents protect, support and enable them to find out “who they are”. (And the conservatives are right to an extent, that this is an ideal that fails to take into consideration human sin. But again, they too as well, in setting up their own ideals).
Of course, there are flipsides of this, like Christian writer Michael Horton criticizing conservatives for one of the same points as liberals, in that human nature is basically good, if properly guided. It’s just that their “rewards and punishments” are the “proper guiding” in their view! This again, is where they fail to see their ideal is no better than the liberals.
So Hunziker points out that both groups exist within the prevailing ESTJ American typology, where Si takes on the Parental role, and its shadow, Se, the Witch/Senex. So they see each other as “shadowy Bad (Se) Parents of our society”. Liberals see conservatives as lacking empathy that a parent should have, while conservatives see liberals as overly permissive. (But they also see them as overly authoritarian, toward the general, tax-paying public. Liberals can charge that conservatives are overly permissive to corporations and banks). He points out “the trouble is, that the current U.S. culture is a not-very-functional version of ESTJ typology“.
In this chapter, he also cites Lenore’s book, p.8, that societies tend to favor some typological configurations more than others. “Types that are well represented will have more options for using their strengths, but they are also less likely to see the limits an possibilities of social institutions”, while uncommon types will have to “work harder to be understood, but are less likely to be seduced by a collective illusion”. (Earlier, in the ch. 5 section on “Individuation” he also cited her from p.24 on us being “hardwired for the kind of tension that makes change possible”).
Chapter 14 is on Spirituality and Creativity and 15 is Health and Wellness
“Spirituality is about engaging our human body/mind to attain deeper awareness of what our lives really are and how to live them happily and successfully—to remember our ‘original instructions’ rather than arrogantly attempting to impose our ego will in an attempt to control our lives. Instead of trying to dam and redirect the flow of the river of life, the spiritual part of us humbly accepts the capriciousness of that river and seeks to swim with the current”. (#4729)
“Being ‘responsible’ doesn’t imply that we have complete control and therefore are culpable for everything that happens. Our responsibility is simply to participate in our well being. Blaming is ego-directed judgment, always based on the flawed assumption that we know, from our ego-perspective, what we should do and things should be. It seems our sense of who we could be—an idealized self-image—raises our expectations of ourselves and thus increases our disappointment and frustration when we fall short”. (#4979)
This is what I’m grappling with. It seems unbalanced, as some types (like Se and Te-preferrers) have more of a talent for “swimming with the current” (or at least seeing the opportunities to exploit it with the least resistance), and thus gaining the most power and influence in the world (this would be the “temperament” part of “Timing-Talent-Temperament”, and it also makes the “talent” part easier to cultivate, and then “timing” or forces out of our control get dismissed, and then they often get credited as if it were pure will on their part), and then the rest of us have to bend our will and “roll with the punches”.
At #5238, is discussed from Myers’ Gifts Differing how “satisfaction can and must be earned”, which children don’t learn if they are never allowed to fail, or “everything works for them”,so they become “spoiled” and don’t learn that it must be be earned) , where if they are never allowed to succeed, or “nothing works”, and thus don’t learn that it can be earned. But I believe that our notions of “earning” are skewed to begin with, ignoring these factors that are beyond our control. Yet the “narratives” created and widely held still posit that some have completely “earned”. The above quote acknowledges that we don’t have complete control, but in practice in the world, the message is that we do. This makes it difficult to know how or when to just “participate”, and what “swimming with the current” or “our proper role in the system” (as mentioned at the end, below) really means.
(Then is mentioned “increasingly or predominantly ego-initiated volition”, which reminds me of the shadow constellations, which are said to be Self-dispatched).
Also covered is addictions and compulsions, which stem from a sense of “incompleteness”, and the focus on punishment assumes it’s all a matter of “will”. “The Me is successfully resisting the internal ‘Other’, perceiving it as a threat. Facing an entrenched, fortified ago-resistance, the natural response of the unconscious is increasingly insistent and powerful attempts to break through and the ego in turns, with increasingly desperate defense, including, at some point, even other unthinkable destructive behaviors”. As we demonize and resist the activities of the activated unconscious functions, what we’re really yearning for is the integration of the Anima or Animus ‘soul function'”. “the ‘hole’ that addictive and compulsive behaviors are making a misguided attempt to fill is the felt shortcoming of the integrity of the self that results from such a sense of inferiority. And the perceived ‘pain’ is the associated shame”.
Chapter 16 is Decision-Making and Problem-Solving. The eight FA’s are listed as an outline of “steps” in a decision-making process. It’s pointed out how in four “natural” function processes, “it tends to be the extraverted versions of each function unless individual typology or team culture brings certain introverted functions to the fore”.
Chapter 17 is on Parenting, Teaching and Learning Styles. Early childhood is a period of experimentation, where they learn which mental processes work best for them, and then go back to them more an more, thus “developing” skillsets” around them. Any dynamic of power and responsibility versus incapacity and dependence (such as employees and bosses, political leaders and followers, and even spouses) may be an occasion for the possible interactions of the Parent and Child functions. If it’s coming from the Child, it will have an emotional tone of helplessness and vulnerability. Yet it will also take on more than it can handle and then become overwhelmed and withdraw in fear. This is what has elsewhere been called the “inflation and deflation” specifically described for the tertiary. Given are examples of several FA’s in the Child position. We are cautioned “In dealing with someone; Eternal Child…the nurturing, supportive and protective energy of the archetypal Mother or Father is not always what’s needed. Sometimes, the Critical Parent role must be assumed to set necessary limits”.
Chapter 18 is Cultivating Effective Leaders, Workers and Teams, and the final chapter, 19 is “saving the World”, which shows how “ego inflation” is humans’ “Achilles heel”. “We can and do operate on self-constructed, inaccurate ideas of who we are, we ignore information that does not reinforce our faux self image, and we live in false relationship with our environment. The three basic requirements for successfully participating in any system are thus distorted by our mistaken notions of who we are—of our proper role in the larger system”. (#5436) This then becomes collective also, such as religious and political “isms”, which further reinforce flawed notions of our place in the world. “We project our problems and waste most of our precious time and energy blaming and fighting ‘Them’. Humanity is in a state of collective hubris with an unjustifiably inflated notion of its own wisdom and importance”.
So if the roots of the problem is in ego inflation and shadow projection, then what’s needed is “depth typology”.
So again, this is a must read for anyone trying to understand or introduce or familiarize themselves with Beebe’s model, and Jungian theory in general. It certainly will help one understand Beebe’s book better.
"ERIPEDIA" 