While I was first introduced to Myers-Briggs (Jung!) I’ve long since revelled in the DISC system. And tonight, I think I finally have found explicit use for the Jungian system.

The first analytic idea is to assume any one of the 16 MB categories is the ideal of one of the D,I,S or C. This is utter failure though. I realize now it’s more of a noun-verb thing. The DISC is pretty clear on behavior. MB is horrid at behavior, but *so much* better at means and intention.

For instance: I know a few people who are dominant “I” folk. (In fact all my major friends are IC’s!) But there is huge variation in what constitutes their actions. One will talk and talk and talk thinking he’s adding to an idea, when truly, he’s only saying the same thing 5 different ways. This gets old quick, but fact is, he’s focusing on the interpreting of info part of the Feeling over Sensory on MB. However, there’s another character who likes to come up with stories as he speaks.. his words take him places: he actually IS adding meaning, but he’s also open the new things (MB: Intuition!), whereas the first guy is stuck, having already decided, and now just trying to influence his decision. I like stories. And short attention spans.

I accidentally spoke a worthwhile statement last week. While in the context of shot-gun God-talk, of which I rarely tolerate, my mind decided to construct an almost-argument starting with “Modernism is too much,” meaning, “Raising the pure objectivity to the level of pure and absolute authority, and/or all the knowledge and personal, intellectual and otherwise internal requirements created and piled up upon us over the last 100 highly rational and scientific years is more than we were built to handle.” 

Let’s start with the intellect: to achieve the height of intellectuality, you must learn all that history has recorded, and then dive deep into some small minutia of the matter. “Leading edge” is always exciting, but nevermore has it taken so many anti-social, inhumane years and years to get there. It is nearly impossible to maintain oneself across multiple personal responsibilities (read: be a ‘whole’ ‘normal’ person) and be a deep-deep researcher/academic. 

Even in areas of “faith and science” do we really know via low-level empiricism what it is we are doing or studying? (What is it that makes a human mind tend towards happiness or otherwise? Is it really *just* drugs?) To one, “God” is as contrived as “evolution” is to another. Both, by their intellectual merits alone are seemingly just overblown constructs of any given data. That is, Modernism has given us so many data points and connections, to know it enough to speak clearly about it is hardly easy. 

Yet human pride comes in and decides to decide and speak and re-create anyways, this found in no greater contemporary faux-ideology of “All religions are the same” simply repeat the past instead of learning from it.

Sadly, this is what I see when looking at the ascendency of the human race. We aren’t going forward so much as we are doing a new version of the same-old. What looks like four steps forward become only one. Again: if Modernism has given us too much data to handle, we won’t handle it; humanity will ignore it, and we’ll all be our own geniuses by our own standards. 

How hard is it to be original.

35% of Ami professional smart-phone addicts want
87% don’t know when to stress about work and when to sleep

So says http://www.internetnews.com/stats/article.php/3772821

Think of who these ppl are.. they’re likely not the early baby-boomers. Maybe they’re the late ones. But they’re DEFINATELY the Gen-X’ers, and the GenY’ers just keep going mindlessly calling it “the new life.”

GenX’ers & Y’s grew up with a novel thing: gaming consoles. Our parents grew up with something tech-novel too: TV. Millenialls grew up with the internet, and smartphones are honestly a continuation of that novel-tech. And what happens every time novel-tech comes out? Ppl don’t know what ot do with it. There’s no social precedent keeping boundaries from addictions. Ppl go crazy.

I’ve had (still have) smartphone-y devices around me. Do I check them like these crazy wife-replacers? Nope. It’s all about being proficient with them enough to STOP GETTING ALERTS as well as keeping your values in place. Honestly, my mobile life is better served with smartphone-ish devices than without. I’d rather talk with people as I’m looking info up (or scribble out my thoughts for later referral) than to wait for my laptop to boot, or have to walk into the other room where the computer is.

Yes, we do live in a new Information Age. Previously people lived their lives just dandy without Search and Accessing info OTA. There’s nothing wrong with that, but lately people want the information that is available to them, and more information can mean more meaningful (accurate!) conversation. Less speculation when the facts are available. And I’m all about less silliness like that, so long as people don’t trade silliness for silliness.

There are 2 kinds of art, given a set of elements to play with:
1) The kind that thinks all adds up to 63.. or
2) The kind that thinks sees 34 or 23 or 13. i’ll take any of ‘em!

Each would see the ‘brown’ canvas with black dots differently. The first kid would likely create something more like the blue canvas, all focusing together; the latter would make something like the green canvas– not all the dots connected on the same pattern or at precisely the same angles. More is added in than is necessary, and some is left out.

The first type of artist is one of a strong-mind; who must make all the connections connect as close as possible. “Close” isn’t good enough. There *IS* *only* *one* *ideal*. This the idealism at it’s best/worst. There’s strengths to this, like knowing what you’re doing; understanding and having reasons. Those are good, but they aren’t *all* there is.

This method will also have trouble with what is given; will prefer to modify what is given in favor of ’rounding off the edges’ so that it fits within the Ideal he has created. Trouble is, self-defined ‘rough edges’ may be some else’s precious child. Sacrificing another for your-own is hardly commendable. Thus the idealists have consistently one thing to learn: love+humility, in the form of valuing others and seeking understanding of them. Often this won’t happen without a fight, since the idealist will idealize (within his own ideas/competencies) what the other persons wants. He will always think he has acheived until someone tells him otherwise.

This idealist thrives on energy, and dismisses the existence of entropy, that he should have to deal with it, bow to it’s demands, or worse, be accountable for it. “Entropy is outside of me, thereby ‘not my problem’” he would say.

The second form of art is a much less strong-minded/ideal approach, where “close enough” has much wider tolerances. It’s less ideal, more pragmatic. However, that does not mean that it is less precise; things can precisely exist and be placed within a tolerance. Often one method of this is to leave out elements that are ‘suggested’ but not ‘required’ for the scope of work; there are more however.

This is the pluralist’s approach: chopping off the head of #1 and making all #2 & #3. Creating more level ground. And for pragmatism, that’s just fine: why sell the $60k car to a kid who grew up with a ’85 cavalier? He won’t know what to do with it, can’t afford it, and will end up wrecking it, all while you’re $55k in debt! Giving away high quality has no place in the market. Rather, consistently selling people what they can handle (but not dream or do for themselves) is progress, and sufficient. This expectation and standard the idealist cannot handle, and will only scoff at.

Each artist is different. But both will tend to view their work as an expression/extention of themselves. So telling the idealist to not be so idealistic is telling them to do ‘crap-work’, and further communicating that ‘crap’ is more acceptable than they are. So what does that leave them feeling like? Crap’s crap. And entirely confused/frustrated. “But I was doing my best!!!” Yes, and the world can’t handle you. Idealists suffer through “The heartbreaking work of staggaring genius.” The world can’t handle idealists, and idealists can’t handle the world.

As for the hope of the idealist changing into the pragmatist, it can rarely happen. This is the cry of the 90′s for “out-of-the-box” thinkers. This is equal to the “work” that must be done in marriage, which no dating-for-one-month couple who has yet to run out of date ideas still has to learn and of which cannot conceive. Such work takes either supreme self-awareness or supreme others-focused-ness, consistent changing of purpose, playing with possibilities instead of fixating on the One, being thankful for open rebuke and not being afraid to try.

This is not about ‘aiming & shooting lower’ like the idealist will think it is. It’s another goal altogether, one filled with enabling other people’s dreams over your own, and calling their ugly baby pretty, because they never thought they could give birth.

Update: this little art-theory has everything to do with personal clothing style choices as well:

While recently looking at a “wide leg” ad, I was reminded me of a rather ‘artsy’ friend of mine. While analyzing this ad, I was further reminded what defines the “artsy” look. It’s having “outfits” that are offbeat, but also which only display 2% of “you” and having 90 of such outfits. This way you never wear the same style from day-to-day like ‘most’ ppl, and you never wear what is FULLY yourself, but are happy to take this one small 2% bit of you and tease it out into something bigger than yourself. Of course this is the ‘I’ personality type who can pull this off, since that’s how they *act*, not just dress.

I’m not that type. I’m the more orderly-idealist who will tend to be more “monochromatic” in style (having found the One Style that IS Me), albeit just off-beat enough, a la beatniks & film noir

This past Sunday’s liturgy involved the confession of misuse of intellect and imagination. My mind has been working underground on that generic idea since, and with luck, here we have a post.

As a child, I could not stand scary movies. (As an aside, I couldn’t stand the suspense of mystery novels either!) I could never walk up the stairs to my room, or from the basement– I’d have to run. Fear. A compulsion that ghosts or scary things were after me. If it was dark, and if I had my back turned, then they were there! I’ve called it childish and irrational, and tried my best over the past 15 yrs to keep my cool, with limited success.

In another vein, the past few years have made me aware of my disinterest in fantasy novels or movies.. Fantasy as in sci-fi or anything with gnomes, fairies, unicorns, orks, trees that walk or talk (no matter how many boulders they throw), wizards, etc. No LOTR or Narnia for me.

As for exhibit ‘C’ toward my non-standard imagination, my childhood was filled with two things: Dinosaurs and Legos. (Note the glaring lack of comic books like most boys). My childhood was not taken over my narrative or storyline of any sort. I still don’t read novels like many adults do, be it Harry Potter or Ted Dekker (Here’s to you Tim!). Rather I was caught up the the amazement of the granduer of dinosaurs, of the reality of another time, and of construction and interworkings of pieces of any sort– stretching them to their limit.

My imagination was non-narrative, but instead, constructivist and ideological, if not mechanical. Any wonder why I now take interest in contental philosophy? Sure I enjoy logic, but I’m not a pure analytic in my approach. I like considering the large ideas at play within the masses.. perhaps my world is a world of lego-men after all!

But tonight after watching a zombie-filled movie, as I walked from shadowy room to shadowy room in the winter dark, I was struck by this idea of imagination: My mind is strong, and it seems to project the non-real into reality. My mind is unable to make monsters appear before me and others like true wizardry, but for all intents and purposes, my mind is overactive enough to make me believe )behave) as if I could be attacked out of nowhere.

Take this into another realm.. many have trouble with depression, OCD or even trusting others. Is this simply a matter of having a strong, overactive mind projecting issues and concerns into one’s reality which are not? A matter of having the mind “push back” instead of simply being a tool to process and understand? Imagination running wild of a new sort?

Or again, all the ideologies in the world, from Democritus’ atoms, Descartes’ reality, Kant’s Phenomenology, Hegel’s history, Modernism’s dream, Christianity’s hope of a New Heaven and Earth, Nirvana, even Hindu castes.. these are all strictly in the category of imagination. The one difference would be whether any one of these dreams were to pan out. Just because something is unseen does not make it imaginary, but as well, to live in a presumed imaginary world which ends up being reality, that would not be so foolish of the faithful.

And precisely the point: the faithful trust that reality is more in line with their imagination than what is commonly held. This can lead to discrepency over the logical outcome of lifestyles given what is or is not included and prioritized in the ideology. This idea of faithfulness is also consistent with the requirement to “remember the dream.”

A Disciplined mind.
Something I don’t hear mentioned often is disciplining the mind. Discipline, in general, is spoken of, perhaps only in reference to one’s will or perhaps emotions, but training one’s mind to swap between reality and imagination would seem to be of use, for avoiding mental illness, as well as keeping faithfulness.

this morning, what i truly only want is social..
reading the news or finding the latest toys won’t do it
not to recieve.. not as in some transaction..
but yes, to know(trust/convinced) i am loved.

is it evidence? no.
it is experience.
experience which is cognitive, but emotionally *E*ffected.
but i in myself must be convinced..
and i do think that i am rationally convinced when i am emotionally changed.
until then i’m a bitter skeptic..
So through my bitter skepticism, i say in semi-blind faith (truly in faith, trust in previous knowledge & experience) “Come.. and love me..”
with the follow-up.. “I know I need it.. you”
and the poem:
“oh how I hurt so! And I’m so very sure you bring it! i know you want me, i know i deny. my bitter skepticism so strong! some days i can deny & ignore & be strong/sufficient.. but it only adds up & builds the tidal wave.”

this makes so much more sense than any purely intellectual approach.. using my will(which is only arrogance- not needing Jesus, only self) to bash my emotions.. rather, here, i have a legitimate problem, with the true solution, founded on truth deeper than i like, but at least as deep as i need. and it’s wholly logical.. but the will and emo’s won’t take pure logic alone.

–note: all capitalized references of “You” are toward God–

Love for You?
Your Kingdom? I have already taken part in what I understand Your will to be: I have written, I have processed, I have understood. And it is my joy. I love writing. But this writing is for me.. for me to understand my life and my world I live in. It has no direct relationship to You.

Go back a few days Mark.. dost thou love the world? You were floating before.. disconnected from affection for it. Now what? Because you have desired some things in this world.. because I have desired a laptop to function, and desired relationship.. Now I am entangled here to this dirt.
When can I now say that I desire nothing here? That I desire only my Savior?
I certainly desire my Savior for he has known me, and knows what I understand myself to need.. relationship.. task..

I know this.. that though I think I know what His will is for me, though I think I know what His kingdom coming into my kingdom looks like.. there’s always more.. there’s always kingdom expansion.. there’s always growth.. and growth is being made new daily. So today I can embrace what I know of His kingdom into my life, and think that’s enough.. but I know.. there’s an unsettled part of me that knows it’s not about what I know of what He’s doing, but always and forever to come to Him to know what He’s doing.. or at least to be ready for what He’ll soon be doing..

Some will fight and whine over “be ready” in the past sentence. They’ll say, “but are we ever really ready for what God will do in our lives?” They expect a “no” answer, based on the omni-everything of God over us. But I say that we CAN be ready for what God has for us. That is to say, it may not be when we think we are ready, but fact is, when God brings something our way in our lives, He has deemed us ready for it.

But right now I’m worried. I’m so very worried that I’m so close to being close to You, and now I”m going to run off to work. that I’m going to get mad today.

I’m ready now to say, “who’s to say?” about all this.. about becoming alive.
cuz it’s not a routine. cuz it’s not a “thing I do”. It’s a thing You do, and I need to come to you. It’s You. and I deny that. and I don’t like that. Your kingdom.. sure, I can do that. You will, sure, I’ve got it covered. but YOU? oh no.. that’s too much to handle. that requires another person. that requires externality. there must be an object then. Your kingdom and will I can subjectify in my own knowledge of it. But I cannot subjectify You.

Do I need? Need outside of me? yes of course.. of course I’m a contingent being: I need food. I need sleep. I need relationship.. I need You.
and it’s not about HOW do I need you? It’s just that you’re there. Always and forever You. Here.

070607-morning

It feels good: to have an upbeat song in my head
It feels good: to have a few open projects to manage
It feels good: to be making progress on “all fronts” of life
It feels good: to feel hungry and be able to fill it
It feels good: to have a plan for the day
It feels good: to have the day be open-ended
It feels good: to not be able to demand my way all the time
(hence I prefer roommates/living abroad)
It feels good: to sit up straight
It feels good: to have the tools for the job

but still, there is a ever-deepening hole in my chest, which I hold out while sitting/standing up, and that’s what makes it hard.

(and maybe i’m distracted by the food in my mouth!)

What’s in my soul?
Some days i hate that question cuz it exposes me and my weakness and fear,
today i’m willing to face all that cuz i know the goodness it will bring,
but that still doesn’t stop me from feeling the immediate sadness over weakness and fear.

Having a definitive answer of what is in my soul is not the point. It’s only part of the process.. of which the next step I usually don’t want to take.. but I must, because that is when what is in my soul is revealed and killed.

I can make any judgment on myself, my soul, my emotions, my actions..
But God has the final word.
(that’s an infinitely impossible ‘but’ by the way)
and with the word, ‘come’.
Not, “come and tell me..” or “come and do..” or “come and change..” just “come..”
This “come” is from Him to me.. but also me to Him.

and I suppose there’s a few storylines that clarify that..
1) He is always with me, always near me, always wanting to be ‘in’ me.
I am the one who keeps him from being ‘in’ me. So I must open the door and let Him ‘in’, inviting him in with the word “come”.

This has a danger. I can think I’m being spiritual by asking him to come.. I can think His coming is always in nice, neat, clean ways. “Yes, you can come in, but only into this part.” That’s not an invitation. and that’s not an invitation for Jesus. It may be an invitation for someone who has no authority over you, but that’s saying to the police who have a warrant, “you can only come into my living room.” The police already have the authority over the whole home. Now, it’s a matter of violence. “To the arrogant, bring a sword.”

2) The other option isn’t so much arrogance(though it still is involved) so much as fear,weakness, addiction. You do not cut down those who are already bleeding. Here, a bandage, comfort is needed.

The storyline goes as follows: He is always with me, always near me, always wanting to be ‘in’ me.

I am the one who burns the bridge, bars the door and holds a loaded and cocked gun. It’s a hostage situation.. and it’s me holding myself hostage. Call it dual-personalities.. call it ‘acting out’ v. ‘what I truly want’.

There’s 2 ways in: megaphone and force.. but force only brings force. To force in causes resentment and I’ll fire at anyone who comes, and I’ll fire at myself if I don’t see any way out.

But the other way.. is gentle. You don’t bring force to a hostage situation, you bring calm. If someone who is gentle, someone who is a true friend comes.. they speak the words of truth about the circumstance. They bring out what is happening, and bring words and external affirmation to the weakly formed idea of what I truly want.

I won’t let someone come close out of nowhere. and it’s not just “time” that I need. I’ll only starve myself into bitterness over time. I need gentle words of truth about where I am, in my soul, in my emotions, etc. While it is about hope, hope takes the form of the words spoken and affirmation given to what I want deeper than the demands of the hostage situation. And with that, it’s validation of those demands. It’s saying, “yes, we know you want that, and we understand why you want that. If I were you, I’d want that too.” (Those ‘demands’ are our short-term ‘savior’s.. our ‘pet’ sins.)

So where is the invitation here? This invitation is Jesus calling gently to me.. “come.. come out of your hurt.. come out of your pain.. there’s another option.. there’s life another way without the bitterness, whose end is full life..”

Sometimes I’m so far gone that I can’t call out “come”. My invitation to Jesus only comes from me after some hard work of getting the truth in me, whether by me, by another through friendship, by 3rd-party hearing of someone’s true life.. truth spoken, and invited in. When you’re not ready for the person, sometimes only words can cross over to melt the heart.

On the train ride over this morning (after just having enough time to get here to the church to meet with a friend) I was a mess and wondered why.. I couldn’t even say.. no words or feelings would come, just a big icky block of emotional mess. After attempts at prayer, it came: I fear myself. I fear all I am capable of, and how I can make that emotional mess worse, and that I presume that I will. That’s quite different than fearing God of course (which is ONE phrase I DO take literal!)

So that was nice to be able to put my circumstance on a map of reality. Pin me to the wall, have a “You are here” flag on the map of theology. And that’s kid of the point of theology (and Bible-reading, and other intellectual practices for that matter)

I’ve gotten caught up in this whole “finding out” where I am emotionally so very much. It’s either really good or really bad. If I know where I am, then I can “work with” where I am. I can act, I can learn. I can talk with God about where I am, how I got here, and know experientially how Jesus is the solution from that circumstance/emotion/spiritual condition.

But that’s pretty me-centred. My other option is to trust that God knows where I am, and He can work with me and show me what I need to know, which may or may not be to know where I am.

I’m a fan of both: I need the latter to not be paranoid about where I am and so remove focus from God and His knowledge of even me, but I need the former as a drive to live today with God, and understand His present goodness.

In America (and england to some degree), we had the ‘revivals’ in the 1700-1800′s. We did go thru a ‘religious death’ in the 1900′s thru fundamentalism & liberalism, but we’ve held the line thru evangelicalism.. now “alive” thru emerging-ism(?).

As to Germany, it has it’s roots back like America does in the 1600′s. but that’s 400 yrs ago. Germany’s 1800′s was liberalism thru rationalism, it’s 1900′s a mix of (rational fundamentalism)war + capitalism/modernism.

So we had at least some kind of religious element. They haven’t. We’ve had a bouy bouncing, a man barely tredding water.. their bouy got torpedoed; their man was pulled down, attacked in his head.

Now, the adults maintain rationality, and die jungen hold to agnosticism, and are afraid to commit, since commitment is exclusionary, and thank you Kant, “who’s to say” what’s beyond the knowable..

It’s a long road back. I wanna be here and write rationally on any and everything I can that will counter all the silly rationality: the problem with inclusionism, the need for exclusion, the need for commitment. But all this cannot be just from my own personal experience. I must also learn to get inside other people’s heads, specifically the mind of the anti-exclusionary, “happy enough,” anti-commitment, sleeping-with-live-in-girlfriend, semi-culturally-rebellious kid. ..Recovering regret, mining deeper than “good enough”..

They will always say, “but what about…” (the other option). I can say 2 things:
1) why do you need another option is this has your answers?
2) here is how those others do not hold up, and here ARE all the options.

But those are my thoughts.. who’s to say if that’s what God has for my life. All I know is that I write. A lot. and ALWAYS on the same topic: a philosophical recovery of theology, which is able to be displayed in all life: personal psychology, group sociology, economics and eventually science. Call me Van Til.

I’m after an ‘honest’ Christianity that is able to contain all that science finds, and is not surprised by ‘new’ findings. Cuz as much as I don’t like it, it’s true that when Christians are taken off guard, it looks like God is taken by surprise as well.

I think it’s cuz I’m so idealistic. cuz my mind is SO powerful. Idealism needs a proportion of empowerment to survive, to bring about it’s ideal. That’s me. And when my idealism is broken by the day, I have nothing.. and I’m furious. I don’t know what my ideal entails, but I do know what it doesn’t include, and that is usually what happens.

Someone less idealistic, who takes things “as they come” and doesn’t have any prejudice over whether they should or should not happen.. that’s the ‘other’ mind that I don’t have, that I don’t know, that I must learn to communicate into.

So before I find out something has failed at work, before I find out that something isn’t “my way”.. it’s so hard, believing(accepting) life won’t go my way. cuz it’s all I want. cuz without You, it is the only thing I need.

So break oh day, and with you my soul! Break, my heart, and with you your own self ideals for self-preservation which are not for your Maker.