Enneagram Ramblings

In terms of my insatiable and unealthy pursuit of self improvement (more on that shortly), I am pleased to anounce that I have finished with science and moved onto psudoscience. Hence: Enneagram.

For those unnaware, the Enneagram is theoretically a theoretic classification of common types of unhealthy obsessions/coping mechanisms clothed in the trappings of a Meyers-Briggs type personality taxonomy. I was introduced to it through LocalScriptMan's videos on the subject (2 hr watch, or 1 if you are not a coward and use 2x speed), which is basically essential viewing if any of what follows is to make sense, as well as maybe some of the Youve Got A Type videos on wings and instincts, since I don't feel like explaining the basics.

In the typology I am a 5w4 SX-SP, and on one level it is pretty clear exactly what is going on here. There are 54 distinct possible types, and with such variety combined with the intentional looseness/interprability of the Enneagram it is more or less gaurenteed that anyone wold be able to self-sort into a category and then conformation bias their way to being a true believer. Indeed, the typical broadness of the categories and nonfalsifiability of the claims makes the Enneagram fall resoundingly in the "just kindof words" category of model.

Nonetheless, this sort of high-consequence faux-vulnerable intellectual system is just what I have decided it tells me that I want, especially when I am running from my problems, and it (I) is correct, so far as I can tell. The reccommended corse of action, which seems completely reasonable, is to go touch grass and talk to people and focus on forming genuine community as opposed to more mastrabatory self-improvement, but I have [excuse] and thus will be blogging about my thoughts about these thoughts instead; expanding my personal portfolio with more self improvement. yippiee i love making things worse by getting better in the same way I always do hooray

I just read Blood Merridian by Cormack McCarthy recetly, and wow. Probably going to go back through and dredge for quotes, but I wanted to talk a little bit about it and the new page needs some content.

The big question of the book is obviously "Whats up with The Judge?". The typical answer is that he is Satan, which while not an irrational oppinion is a cowardly one since it blames the ultimate evil in the book on an abstract, nonhuman entity, and since I am not a coward (on the internet) I will not be following it.

Rather, I believe the Judge man, but the epitome thereof. He is the ultimate individualist, scholar, athlete, artist, adventurer. He constantly focuses on seeing and recording the world, and improving himself to have total controll over everything ("Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."). He is what the type 5 dreams himself as, the classical American Adventurer (cowboy) run amok, the Ubermench ("Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn."). He is ofcourse also a murderous kiddie rapist.

Perhaps an edgy and certainly a bleak take on what it means to be a man, and one that is directly stated by The Judge-- "And the answer, said the judge. If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet? The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day." If the Judge is taken to be the epitome of mankind, we see this clearly: he can do anything, knows everything, and is willing to submit himself to what he sees as the ultimate test of history, but in doing this he kills so many, destroys so much.