how important are these ideas really?
I’m finally going to write something now!! It’s been a long time since I’ve really done this, because as it turns out, writing about complex ideas is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT and I communicate that a lot better in face-to-face dialogue because it’s easier to drop all those formalities of written coherence and just gush out the ideas through verbal force. Monologuing isn’t my specialty either, unless we’re talking about dialogical monologuing (what? I don’t know, who cares?) which is what I’m going to try and SORT OF do because I really want to write something but I wouldn’t have the patience to do it any other way.
I’ve been bothered by this a lot recently: I don’t actually think my website is particularly innovative or substantial. You might disagree, but I really do feel like I’ve already covered the avenues through which we’d discover a basis for that disagreement, and I still stand by what I say here. I mean—yes—there’s a neat language learning tool, some fun stuff about how typology hobbyists (should I still call them typologists? I feel like that’s such an Intellectual Sounding Word and it doesn’t describe most typology hobbyists on the Internet SORRY but it’s also useful because I can now distinguish “theorists” i.e. thought leaders with influence from “practitioners” i.e. “I am greatly considering posting a meme about how MBTI is not astrology now”) are sucked into believing dumb things, a multi-typology personality database, etc. etc.
But the important thing is this: the ideas behind these possibly innovative presentations are extremely simplistic and—in my opinion—super, super obvious. There isn’t anything challenging about the ideas I have. Conceptually speaking? It’s really, really easy to understand—I think especially so for reasonlords (can we come up with a name for these people now? If you’re curious about the kind of person I’m talking about, just imagine this: young, usually male, cares about: themselves, freedom of speech, being nasty or edgy, rationality, atheism, free thought, blablablabla)—and there isn’t a lot of “stepping outside of the common perspective” needed. It’s more like… somebody stepped out and these ideas show them back in, I guess? It’s not an appeal to “the common perspective” exactly because the reasoning behind that tends to be really silly. I think some of the outsiders (remember, typology hobbyists) recognize how silly it is and see what they’re doing as an escape from… I guess the framework within which we [Mindbendingly Open-Minded People] exist? It’s the framework in which your average Allison is disgusted by personality categorization because it’s just not something she’s used to: ESPJ? What is this hocus pocus nonsense?
Okay, okay, enough of that. I’m basically just saying that the material itself is rockcandily simple. What isn’t so simple might be how I chose to communicate it—which maybe is where a little bit of innovation is involved. Simple ideas, complex presentation? It’s something like that, anyway. But the thing about ideas like those that I bring up regarding typology is that they’re not controversial when divorced from their context and placed into the one with all the average Allisons, Averies, and Alexes. Could you imagine an average scientist looking at typology thinking it’s something worth funding research for??
The case you can make for innovation here is if you say something like… yes, it is rather interesting that you made an abstract case for the-functions-really-suck rather than one that relies on existing systems and data analysis. But, I mean… seriously? People have always come up with new and engaging ways to communicate ideas (especially when they’re catered for specific audiences hint hint???) and it sort of deflates what innovation should mean when it comes to the stuff I’m talking about. We’re looking for complex ideas, not simple ones. And you know what? There are a lot of complex ideas I would like to talk about, and they’re not insubstantial either.
I mean, look, I think the stuff I have here is very important, but it is a niche appeal to a niche group of people, and what it addresses is… so inconsequential? I used to make a lot of hoo-ha about how typology dogma is DANGEROUS and how it’s super MISLEADING and it’s SCARY!!!!! but like, is it? I never actually bought into that, but I always thought reasonlords (I know, I know! Isn’t it great?) LOVED that kind of stuff so I’d obviously go on and spread that, but they just out reasonlorded me or something. I forget. It never worked, and I fried my brain in the process. And no, it doesn’t taste good.
Sometimes I get this URGE to write about things I really care about that are GENUINELY controversial. Like… possibly academically related? Ethics! Rights! Love! Politics?? Feminism???? Values??????? It’s juicy stuff, friends. The only problem is… I want it to be deep and substantial and serious and quotable and able to fill my ego and all of that buuuuuut I couldn’t even do that with this topic. Here I am typing like a bouncy wood whisperer trying to get a serious point across. It’s just hard you know? Like, the full context article on cognitive functions wasn’t difficult to discuss from an intellectual standpoint—I just needed to figure out how to present it. But this??? I have to think about what I want to say. And I sort of don’t have a thing to say yet. Not in writing, anyway. I could monologue about it—yes. But a formal serious-sounding thinkerdoo? I have to figure out EXACTLY what I want to say in order to do that. And I don’t!!! I have ideas to share but NOT an essay to share. Makes sense? I know it does.
That’s basically it. Here are things I especially want to talk about: how debate is DUMB and WHY it’s extremely childish, reasonlords and how they are basically blinded by their manliness (even girls can be this way [gasp] and it has a lot to do with socialization and what ideas, customs, mannerisms, tendencies, you know the rest you’ve been exposed to), reasonlords and how ANNOYING and SUFFOCATING and SELF-OBSESSED they are, how reasonlords ARE A REAL THING AND NO REASONLORD WILL CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE!!!!! (it is a very reasonlord thing to deny that a certain vague group of people exists because this is simply a generalization to them and I am just attacking a strawman that doesn’t exist in a pure form so clearly everything I’m saying can be ignored and you can go all yes I did it I won the fight blablabvlabvla god I hate you reasonlords not really because it’s more like I pity how you don’t understand how skewed your perspective is and think and operate from a familiar framework where I guess everything works by way of logic and there isn’t any such thing as suppression or oppression and oh sorry reasonlords it’s not that there is no such thing but that you believe that it is far more trivial than made out to be gah see why I hate reasonlords??? As you can see I am EXTREMELY mad and fuming as I type these words on my keyboard as I watch them appear in real time on my computer screen and thank you sir reasonlord you did this to me by existing)