Intelligence, Wisdom, and Soul Development
Apr. 3rd, 2024 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
causticusIt goes without saying that intelligence is very prized and valued in our culture. What I mean by intelligence is a grab bag of “big brain” traits like mental sharpness, cleverness, mathematical proclivity, and good verbal skills. In so many of our culture’s high-paying, high-status occupations, intelligence is key. Intelligence is very useful; especially when it comes to manipulating the physical environment and coming up with ever-more efficient ways of extracting goodies from it. Having an advanced degree from a prestigious academic institution is supposedly a good proxy (err...a very expensive one!!) for being gifted in the area of measurable intelligence, or so the story goes.
Wisdom is much harder to measure, if it can even be measured at all. It’s why grading papers (beyond the technical aspects of writing) is mostly a subjective art, as opposed to the completely-objective process of scoring a math test. If Intelligence corresponds with the so-called “left brain,” then Wisdom is the domain of the “right brain.” Wisdom contains the intangible and unquantifiable aspects of what actually make us “smart.” Wisdom is creative, artistic, and intuitive, whereas Intelligence is technical, nimble, and quantifiable. If Intelligence is STEM, then Wisdom is the Humanities side of academia.
Those familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, and similar Fantasy Role Playing Games (RPGs), will immediately recognize these two terms as being attributes found on the player’s character sheet. Intelligence is what makes a powerful Wizard, and Wisdom is what makes a good Cleric. Of course, the human physical and psycho-spiritual makeup is magnitudes more complex than a simple list of eight attribute scores. But to make a quick point, a small dose of nerdy category-reductionism can be sometimes helpful. In D&D, Wisdom is a shorthand way of saying “psycho-spiritual acumen.” It’s much better marketing to use a commonly-understood word than to explain the game mechanics using clinical-sounding psychobabble. But I do digress.
Incarnation as a levelling-up process
Our finest spiritual teachings might suggest that both Wisdom and Intelligence are things that increase in the individual soul as it accumulates more and more human incarnations under its belt. One very key thing to take into account is that Intelligence all by itself has nothing to do with a person’s morality; intelligence is a gift that can be used for good, evil, and neutral purposes. A soul that develops intelligence at a fast past over a limited number of human incarnations may experience several lifetimes where they misuse their intelligence in service of various self-serving and short-sighted goals; this would be the “clever fool.” To understand the sometimes-amoral nature of intelligence, it’s interesting to recall that Mercury is the god of thieves and fraudsters. Mercury is the celestial intelligence that rules over flexibility and nimbleness of all kinds, including mental nimbleness. Mercury is raw intelligence. Mercury is the god of Tricknology. (Sorry D&D purists, but Intelligence is really just Cognitive Dexterity)
There is a connection though between Wisdom and moral agency; a wise person may “know” what’s right in a situation, even if they fail to act on that realization. In isolation, Wisdom is a passive state consisting of a cross-contextualization of accumulated experiences and abstract impressions. Without right action, Wisdom is wasted potential. A soul with a lot of Wisdom (been there, done that, many times over) will cultivate a native sense of right and wrong; such a person will have much less dependence on whatever set of concrete rules and moral commandments their culture imposes on them. As a result, a “wise” person can become quite resentful if they happen to live in a society that’s way too conformist and restrictive. In excess, this resentment can result in a state of perma-rebelliousness and a tendency toward reactive anitnomianism. Another downside of Wisdom is the tendency to get lost in lofty abstractions and lose touch with the banal reality on the ground. Adults without families (or businesses) to take care of are especially prone to this sort of psychological waywardness. No, “fur babies” don’t count. Au contraire, our spiritual “lessers” still know how to touch grass.
Ugh, more categories
In the Myers-Briggs personality typology (a commercial bastardization of Carl Jung’s psychological type theory), the trait “Intuition” is a fairly close proxy for the sort of Wisdom I’m getting at here. The so-called “Intuition type” has become an identity for adoring fans of this system to latch onto as a crude means of differentiating themselves from the hordes of those pitiful, simple souls with less Wisdom (i.e. “Sensing” types) than thou, or so the story goes. “INTJ” and “INTP” types are those who fancy themselves as being gifted in the areas of both Intelligence and Wisdom. “NF” types like INFJ are more specialized in the area of Wisdom, though typically with an artistic, creative, or romantic bent (maybe this is where that other attribute, Charisma, starts to creep in).
There are of course other systems of accounting for the varying levels of soul maturity found throughout humanity. The Gnostics of late antiquity uses a tripartite scheme. They categorized all people into three categories, from least to most wise, (1) Hylics, (2) Psychics, and (3) Pneumatics. Hylics have very little Wisdom. They are are those young, immature souls who are the most drawn toward the ordinary sensory experiences the material world has to offer; they are sensual, possess rudimentary intellect, and are mostly driven by their base appetites. Pneumatics have Wisdom out the wazoo are seen as being spiritually gifted; these are the rare souls known to us as sages, mystics, philosophers, and saints; that is, when they do decide to come out of their hidey-holes and show themselves to the unwashed masses. Psychics are the broad mass of humanity that makes up the middle ground between these two extremes. Really, there are many different levels and gradations that might fall within this expansive umbrella. Most people reading this post are likely going to be in the mid-to-upper tiers of the Psychic category.
The Gnostics borrowed this scheme from Plato’s conception of the soul having thee parts (and infused it with their obsession with spirit/matter dualism): Nous (Higher Mind), Thumos (Spiritedness, Passion), and Epithumia (Appetite, Survival Instincts). This is somewhat similar to the three “gunas” of Hindu Yoga philosophy: Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas. In Taoist internal alchemy theory there are: Shen, Qi, and Jing. So on, so forth, you get the picture.
Diversity is our strength
These overlapping theories might lead one into the uncomfortable territory of entertaining the notion that “humanity” is in fact an intractable hodgepodge of differing levels of soul-development and maturity; some individual souls are closer to the animal realm they recently emerged out of, whereas others are closer to graduating out of humanity and eventually becoming something akin to a demigod or angelic being.
The next logical step within this theory is the idea that these differing qualities manifest quite differently in different cultures and ethnic groups, when we speak of group-average traits and behaviors. After 2000 years of mono-ideologies ruling the roost, the notion of Difference has become somewhat of a scare-concept; after all, the American constitution says we were all created “equal” or something. Today, the discussion of innate difference is quite taboo in some circles. Among the educated literati of the West, the tendency of outright bunk theorizing is either to deny human group difference outright (Blank-slate Egalitarianism) or to embrace it in a gross, vulgar, materialist-reductionist manner (Race Realism); when the lowly plebes latch onto the latter theory, it tends to get even more gross and vulgar. I think the taboo fixation associated with the former comes from the sort of cognitive dissonance that is a product of the West’s obsession with Practical Intelligence; we love it and we hold the entirety of humanity to a weird standard that’s defined by almost solely by ideals associated with Intelligence-related aptitudes. When the facts on the ground report back to us that an imbalanced development of Intelligence isn’t the global norm, nor is it the be-all, end-all of human existence, Western brains start to go haywire and respond erratically (what’s known as “Reeeeeeeeeee!” in today’s memeology). Few “smart” people these days can talk about this sensitive topic without an emotional meltdown quickly ensuing.
Closing thoughts
I think this is one of those areas where Intelligence and Wisdom should certainly be harmonized. But, no, a balanced approach to discoursing on hot topics is apparently something the ancients were able to do, not us (I’m being a bit facetious here; surely, the ancients of various locales each had their own assortment of no-no topics).
Whatever one’s perspective may be on this subject matter, it’s quite apparent that there is no shortage of sup-topics to explore on the wonderfully-varied landscape of human psycho-spiritual qualities. With Intelligence and Wisdom gracefully-applied in tandem, such exploration will be something more nuanced and interesting than an IQ score, a D&D character sheet, a crude racial stereotype, or a silly Myers-Briggs personality type profile.
Wisdom is much harder to measure, if it can even be measured at all. It’s why grading papers (beyond the technical aspects of writing) is mostly a subjective art, as opposed to the completely-objective process of scoring a math test. If Intelligence corresponds with the so-called “left brain,” then Wisdom is the domain of the “right brain.” Wisdom contains the intangible and unquantifiable aspects of what actually make us “smart.” Wisdom is creative, artistic, and intuitive, whereas Intelligence is technical, nimble, and quantifiable. If Intelligence is STEM, then Wisdom is the Humanities side of academia.
Those familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, and similar Fantasy Role Playing Games (RPGs), will immediately recognize these two terms as being attributes found on the player’s character sheet. Intelligence is what makes a powerful Wizard, and Wisdom is what makes a good Cleric. Of course, the human physical and psycho-spiritual makeup is magnitudes more complex than a simple list of eight attribute scores. But to make a quick point, a small dose of nerdy category-reductionism can be sometimes helpful. In D&D, Wisdom is a shorthand way of saying “psycho-spiritual acumen.” It’s much better marketing to use a commonly-understood word than to explain the game mechanics using clinical-sounding psychobabble. But I do digress.
Incarnation as a levelling-up process
Our finest spiritual teachings might suggest that both Wisdom and Intelligence are things that increase in the individual soul as it accumulates more and more human incarnations under its belt. One very key thing to take into account is that Intelligence all by itself has nothing to do with a person’s morality; intelligence is a gift that can be used for good, evil, and neutral purposes. A soul that develops intelligence at a fast past over a limited number of human incarnations may experience several lifetimes where they misuse their intelligence in service of various self-serving and short-sighted goals; this would be the “clever fool.” To understand the sometimes-amoral nature of intelligence, it’s interesting to recall that Mercury is the god of thieves and fraudsters. Mercury is the celestial intelligence that rules over flexibility and nimbleness of all kinds, including mental nimbleness. Mercury is raw intelligence. Mercury is the god of Tricknology. (Sorry D&D purists, but Intelligence is really just Cognitive Dexterity)
There is a connection though between Wisdom and moral agency; a wise person may “know” what’s right in a situation, even if they fail to act on that realization. In isolation, Wisdom is a passive state consisting of a cross-contextualization of accumulated experiences and abstract impressions. Without right action, Wisdom is wasted potential. A soul with a lot of Wisdom (been there, done that, many times over) will cultivate a native sense of right and wrong; such a person will have much less dependence on whatever set of concrete rules and moral commandments their culture imposes on them. As a result, a “wise” person can become quite resentful if they happen to live in a society that’s way too conformist and restrictive. In excess, this resentment can result in a state of perma-rebelliousness and a tendency toward reactive anitnomianism. Another downside of Wisdom is the tendency to get lost in lofty abstractions and lose touch with the banal reality on the ground. Adults without families (or businesses) to take care of are especially prone to this sort of psychological waywardness. No, “fur babies” don’t count. Au contraire, our spiritual “lessers” still know how to touch grass.
Ugh, more categories
In the Myers-Briggs personality typology (a commercial bastardization of Carl Jung’s psychological type theory), the trait “Intuition” is a fairly close proxy for the sort of Wisdom I’m getting at here. The so-called “Intuition type” has become an identity for adoring fans of this system to latch onto as a crude means of differentiating themselves from the hordes of those pitiful, simple souls with less Wisdom (i.e. “Sensing” types) than thou, or so the story goes. “INTJ” and “INTP” types are those who fancy themselves as being gifted in the areas of both Intelligence and Wisdom. “NF” types like INFJ are more specialized in the area of Wisdom, though typically with an artistic, creative, or romantic bent (maybe this is where that other attribute, Charisma, starts to creep in).
There are of course other systems of accounting for the varying levels of soul maturity found throughout humanity. The Gnostics of late antiquity uses a tripartite scheme. They categorized all people into three categories, from least to most wise, (1) Hylics, (2) Psychics, and (3) Pneumatics. Hylics have very little Wisdom. They are are those young, immature souls who are the most drawn toward the ordinary sensory experiences the material world has to offer; they are sensual, possess rudimentary intellect, and are mostly driven by their base appetites. Pneumatics have Wisdom out the wazoo are seen as being spiritually gifted; these are the rare souls known to us as sages, mystics, philosophers, and saints; that is, when they do decide to come out of their hidey-holes and show themselves to the unwashed masses. Psychics are the broad mass of humanity that makes up the middle ground between these two extremes. Really, there are many different levels and gradations that might fall within this expansive umbrella. Most people reading this post are likely going to be in the mid-to-upper tiers of the Psychic category.
The Gnostics borrowed this scheme from Plato’s conception of the soul having thee parts (and infused it with their obsession with spirit/matter dualism): Nous (Higher Mind), Thumos (Spiritedness, Passion), and Epithumia (Appetite, Survival Instincts). This is somewhat similar to the three “gunas” of Hindu Yoga philosophy: Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas. In Taoist internal alchemy theory there are: Shen, Qi, and Jing. So on, so forth, you get the picture.
Diversity is our strength
These overlapping theories might lead one into the uncomfortable territory of entertaining the notion that “humanity” is in fact an intractable hodgepodge of differing levels of soul-development and maturity; some individual souls are closer to the animal realm they recently emerged out of, whereas others are closer to graduating out of humanity and eventually becoming something akin to a demigod or angelic being.
The next logical step within this theory is the idea that these differing qualities manifest quite differently in different cultures and ethnic groups, when we speak of group-average traits and behaviors. After 2000 years of mono-ideologies ruling the roost, the notion of Difference has become somewhat of a scare-concept; after all, the American constitution says we were all created “equal” or something. Today, the discussion of innate difference is quite taboo in some circles. Among the educated literati of the West, the tendency of outright bunk theorizing is either to deny human group difference outright (Blank-slate Egalitarianism) or to embrace it in a gross, vulgar, materialist-reductionist manner (Race Realism); when the lowly plebes latch onto the latter theory, it tends to get even more gross and vulgar. I think the taboo fixation associated with the former comes from the sort of cognitive dissonance that is a product of the West’s obsession with Practical Intelligence; we love it and we hold the entirety of humanity to a weird standard that’s defined by almost solely by ideals associated with Intelligence-related aptitudes. When the facts on the ground report back to us that an imbalanced development of Intelligence isn’t the global norm, nor is it the be-all, end-all of human existence, Western brains start to go haywire and respond erratically (what’s known as “Reeeeeeeeeee!” in today’s memeology). Few “smart” people these days can talk about this sensitive topic without an emotional meltdown quickly ensuing.
Closing thoughts
I think this is one of those areas where Intelligence and Wisdom should certainly be harmonized. But, no, a balanced approach to discoursing on hot topics is apparently something the ancients were able to do, not us (I’m being a bit facetious here; surely, the ancients of various locales each had their own assortment of no-no topics).
Whatever one’s perspective may be on this subject matter, it’s quite apparent that there is no shortage of sup-topics to explore on the wonderfully-varied landscape of human psycho-spiritual qualities. With Intelligence and Wisdom gracefully-applied in tandem, such exploration will be something more nuanced and interesting than an IQ score, a D&D character sheet, a crude racial stereotype, or a silly Myers-Briggs personality type profile.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-04-03 09:10 pm (UTC)(Warning, everything that follows requires at least a passing understanding of, and agreement with the axioms of, Plotinus. I'm sorry.)
(Also, I'm sorry for disagreeing with all your posts, lately! I'm not trying to be argumentative. Your posts seem to be very good at catalysing reflections on things I hadn't really considered! So please consider this a dialogue or a musing rather than a statement of dogma. Maybe I should have just made it a post on my own blog.)
I think Wisdom and Intelligence are the same thing (that is, they are reflections of Truth), but reflected at different levels of being. Intelligence is "knowing" at the level of the body: as such, it is inherently discriminatory, since categorization is very useful in a world where things may be divided indefinitely. Wisdom is "knowing" at the level of the soul: as such, it is inherently unitive, since souls are not infinitely divisible, and thus tends towards understanding things in terms of wholeness.
But what are these, really? I think they are reflections of Truth, the Intellect's understanding of things. Since the Intellect is the literal basis of things, it's understanding of them is reality; but lower orders of beings don't have access to all that (or else they would be the Intellect itself). Wisdom is the reflection of Truth, but from the perspective of a soul (rather than a universal perspective), since a soul has a unique perspective. Intelligence is a reflection of Wisdom from the perspective of a particular location and a particular time, since a body has a unique location in time and space (while a soul does not).
Therefore, Intelligence may be acquired with time and effort. Wisdom always is, but may be tapped into. Truth exists, but is unobtainable from any particular perspective. And, of course, the One does whatever it does over all.
To your point concerning Mercury: I think Its intelligence is merely one kind of intelligence. Saturn is intelligent, too, but is a plodding sort of intelligence obtained through effort and experience, rather that quick, off-the-cuff intelligence that is characteristic of Mercury. And what of the Moon? She is intelligent, too, but in a very different way!
To your point regarding soul maturity: Plotinus says something similar, that there are three categories of souls. The first are those unfettered souls who specifically incarnate in order to help others; the second are those souls who have the capacity and strength to free themselves, but are not really strong enough to help others (except incidentally); the third are those souls so mired in materiality that they haven't the strength to raise themselves. I wonder if this is the same sort of distinction the Gnostics were drawing on? I haven't completed my read-through of Plato, but it might antedate him... in any case, I disagree with Plato (and, in fact, Plotinus), and think that Reason is only one way to the divine. (Personally, I favor Devotion, which may reasonably be considered appetitive.) In any case, I think any of the three powers of the soul leads to Wisdom, regardless of whether it makes use of Intellect or not.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-04-03 11:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-04-04 12:13 am (UTC)I think you are correct in that my attempt here was to be thought-provoking and to casually bounce some interesting ideas around and see what sticks.
On the definition of words, what I was doing was playing off popular notions of what the word intelligence means. On definitions in general, I see there being colloquial, pop-cultural, and (sometimes) technical definitions of what a given word means; I generally see language as very contextual. I'm guessing you are referring to a specifically-Neoplatonic technical definition of the word intelligence? Or at least whatever words in Greek usually get translated into English as "Intelligence" and "Intellect" (I prefer to leave Nous untranslated, but that's just my dollar store opinion). You are way more knowledgeable about Neoplatonism than me, so I'll defer to you on this one!
You are totally right about each of the planets representing different types of intelligence. This post would have probably been like 15 paragraphs longer if I got into that much detail ;) Also I have a Neoplatonist buddy who sometimes reads these posts and his one of his few hangups about classical paganism is the fact that Hermes/Mercury is associated with thievery. I threw that bit in there as a bit of preemptive taunting in the event he comes across this post.
On Devotion, I think that could be associated with both Nous and Thumos, depending on the type of devotion being performed. The more emotional and ecstatic types of devotion would I think correspond with Thumos, which in esoteric anatomy covers the heart and solar plexus centers.
Finally, thanks for the response post!
(no subject)
Date: 2024-04-04 01:03 am (UTC)Re: Hermes/Mercury and thieves, yipes! has he never met a Mercurial person!?!? Thievery, con-artistry, and rules-lawyering are such obvious associations of such people to me that I have a really difficult time with setting all that aside and trying to make sense of the philosophical Hermes (e.g. Hermes Trismegistus)!
Re: Thumos, that's a thought-provoking dichotomy and I'll have to ponder it awhile. Certainly the two kinds of devotion match different kinds of mystics I've seen...
(no subject)
Date: 2024-04-04 02:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-04-05 09:16 am (UTC)I find it quite appropriate that the messenger of the gods is a thief, disabusing humanity of our notions of superiority, robbing us of our comfortable illusions.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-04-05 02:29 pm (UTC)Mythologies that remind us of our very-fallible human condition, I find to be quite useful.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-04-04 02:50 am (UTC)Anyhow, just to push a little on a few points for the sake of exploration:
1) One way of squaring the sometimes assholish mythical behavior of "intelligent" Gods that I have found is to think of "intelligence" as "getting your way with your wits," which by itself has very little to say about figuring out what "your way" ought to be at all (that's closer to wisdom as you define it). Sure, most Gods worshipped for this sort of thing (Mercury and Woden come immediately to mind) tend to end up associated with some kind of wisdom or higher intelligence (wanting the right things, rather than just being good at getting the immoral thing), but if human intelligence is anything to go by, it's just self-evident that smart people face a temptation to take advantage of those around them to their benefit, and sometimes they give into it. Personally, that's one thing I find so powerful about the Norse myths - Odin shows a development from cleverness for its own sake to using it for higher ends, whereas Loki shows the escalating fustercluck of being tricksy every dang time.
2) On the amorality of intelligence: I'd mostly agree, except that some of the crassest and most basic kinds of evil do seem to have a negative correlation with intelligence - the vast majority of assaults, robberies, rapes, and murders are committed by folks too dumb/too insensitive to things far away in time to stop themselves, which is pretty tightly correlated with low IQ.
3) Put these together and it suggests that while Intelligence and Wisdom can be usefully distinguished and thought of as separate things, they don't seem wholly independent. Intelligence seems to make it easier to recognize wisdom (on average) and wisdom seems to enable acting intelligently (on average). But...
4) Your point about the West waaaay over-weighting Intelligence (specifically the flavor of it that IQ pretty handily measures) leads to a mostly one-way over-identification of Intelligence and Wisdom - something like "Wisdom is just the output of properly calibrated intelligence," but pursued to its extreme, that gets us to all of the managerial nonsense we're dealing with these days, so, whoops.
5) On personality typing in general: have I ever shared with you my theory on personality tests/typing schemes? I believe that any personality typing system that was invented by a human who has had a reasonable amount of interactions with humans and reflected on them somewhat will be pretty useful, even if it is wildly different from other schemes that purport to do the same thing. How can this be? Well, I think that for most typing systems, at least half of what they are doing is making the subconscious impressions and intuitions of the person applying it more readily available for thought and reflection. Even bog-standard pop psychological astrology that only looks at sun signs gives the person doing the analysis a framework for "oh, look, that there is consistent with him being an Aquarius," which she might not have noticed otherwise. So, going from zero to "some typing system" will feel like getting dramatically more insight into the world and people around you for almost everyone. On the other hand, going from "crappy pop categorization scheme" to "better categorization scheme" has diminishing returns or requires significant work to realize the fully better results of (don't just learn the Big 5, give the person a battery of tests and engage in weeks of therapeutic dialogue; don't just learn their Sun, Moon, and Ascendant, cast a whole natal chart and interpret every single placement and aspect!)
6) So, practically speaking, I don't much disagree with your conclusions, but I had a few quibbles and additions I wanted to share.
Cheers,
Jeff
Appendix) Almost entirely off-topic, but just because we're talking about game-based systems of psycho-spiritual categorization, behold the Magic: the Gathering Five Color system as personality types! https://humanparts.medium.com/the-mtg-color-wheel-c9700a7cf36d
(Less fun, but likely more useful, the colors explained via the Big Five, which I kind of instinctively did to the above article when I read it years ago in the middle of my peak interest in JBP, though I don't know that I wholly agree with this analysis: https://www.reddit.com/r/mtg/comments/sssde0/magic_colors_according_to_big_five_personality/)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-04-04 05:25 pm (UTC)1. To reiterate some things from my replies, to sdi, a lot of what I was doing here was riffing on the popular notions of what "intelligence" is or should be. Which, in my opinion, coincides with the Mercurial/Wodenic aspect of intelligence. Funny though, it really does seem that Loki very well encapsulates a rather unbalanced manifestation of this intelligence.
2. Yeah, clearly, many forms of evil and wrongdoing don't require much going on upstairs. I think though, evil becomes more egregious when there are higher degrees of conscious and deliberate human agency involved in whatever acts take place; it's why 1st degree and conspiracy murders generally get the harsher punishments.
3. Yeah I agree that the two are complementary, and in the grand scheme of things, can be said to be the same thing.
4. The current implosion and downfall of the managerial class was another big motivator for writing this post ;)
5. I've been down years worth of rabbit holes as far as different personality typologies are concerned. In the end, I agree that most of them seem to capture at least some aspect of the overall picture, but none of them come close to being a comprehensive map of the human psyche. This is why I like to compare and contrast them side-by-side. I'd say "sun sign astrology" is probably the weakest of them all. Big5 is the most empirically valid, but because of that it only captures surface-level traits, and it's too "boring" to have a large fandom (like with MBTI and Enneagram) obsessing over it. BTW I have to say that the MtG color typology you linked me (thanks for those links!) is a great example of a very creative way of operationalizing Big5 traits into something fun and digestible. I totally agree that going from one "crappy pop categorization scheme" to "better categorization scheme" has diminishing returns; this happens quite a lot in the online typology community.
Besides the most obvious example of astrology and full natal chart analysis, each of "basic" pop-typology has an expansion-pack version that requires a lot more time and theoretical understanding to make meaningful use of. MBTI has its "function theory" and Enneagram has its instinct stacks and "tri-types" that add a ton of nuance and complexity to the original product; this has made for a lucrative money-making opportunity for self-help gurus who specialize in those typologies. I do have to say though that I think this typologies are probably the most useful for RPG game designers; they offer a way more interesting and nuanced way of generating and roleplaying character personality than the alignment system, or just using alignments alone.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-04-04 07:34 pm (UTC)1. Yeah, fair enough. I still have a lot of work to do on thinking through what Loki means for my view of the Gods and the cosmos.
2-3. Absolutely - if anything, this reinforces point 3, now that I think about it. If intelligence generally nudges towards wisdom, then using intelligence explicitly and intentionally for evil is even worse than if intelligence is an entirely neutral tool with no moral weight of its own.
4. Not surprising there!
5. That's an interesting point - even JBP's version of Big 5 has an "expansion pack" that greatly increases its utility (his "Understand Yourself" course breaks each of the 5 into two sub-components: 1. Openness breaks down into "Intellect" (not IQ, interest in abstractions) and "Openness" (basically interest in/sensitivity to aesthetics), 2. Conscientiousness breaks down into "Industriousness" and "Orderliness," 3. Extraversion breaks down into "Assertiveness" and "Enthusiasm", 4. Agreeableness breaks down into "Compassion" and "Politeness", and 5. Neuroticism breaks down into "Volatility" and "Withdrawal"). And I don't think I've ever consciously designed an NPC using a personality typology, but I just might have to now that you mention it!