Quarantine & Introverts

I don’t know if many of us will be quarantined, but I already think about it…

I read this morning, about China, that being locked in your apartment with your spouse will “maybe” provide a baby boom this next winter, but in the meanwhile gives two consequences :

1. Infodemia (too much informations about epidemic dramas) and depression.
2. Explosion of… divorces.

 

We don’t need a master in psychology to know that many couples go on just because they don’t have time to be with each other. Busy busy busy! That’s OK, we all do what we can, right?

Locked together, toxicity begins to dance around, boredom walks along walls like a tiger in a forgotten cage, back and forth…

I can’t imagine what happens to sports addicts, bikers and runners. They can do push-ups, but well, that’s not enough drug, I suppose.

But for introverts, it’s probably different. Being quarantined with shelves of books and Blu-rays (or with a computer and Internet, if you’re a dematerialized person) looks like holidays…

 

Bah, it’s just a feeling. Spring will come soon and will make all of us (including introverts and other cat persons) in a sudden urgent need of going outside to 1/ run with a dog or 2/ to lie down in the grass to smell the good quiet power of nature growing.

Let’s hope the heat wave will kill the viruses, all of them.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

What do you do in a trustless world?

What do you do in a trustless world?

First of all : is “trustless” even a word? I know how English build/uses words, hence (or therefore) I can invent “trustless”. Voilà. I’m pretty sure to be understood, here.

What do you do in a trustless world?

Hmmm I think you need two different tools, which are a FILTER and a MACHINE.

1. The Filter is the Comical/Grotesque one. This helps to tolerate, to bear the world around.
2. The Machine is the wordy one. Accounts, Stories, Tales. This is it. The tendency to tell, to write, to invent ideas or stories from the craziness.

 

Where d’you see that? Which one do you choose? What is efficient, for you? Where does the “I wear a mask” intervene here? Do you hide your filter? Do you hide your machine?

What about this event, this process : “Abandonment of the Mask”? Another article. I know.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

The Inside Idea of North

Had a good laugh this morning, having coffee on the bed and imagining a tropical happy flowery trumpets ambiance…

Which would be like being in hell, right?

I can’t talk much before my coffee, I don’t want a crazy happy dog (who wanna jog with me) at breakfast, and I don’t want a Cuban/Mexican brass band near my bed…

I need quietness – maybe a little Satie piano music if you want. I’m happy to see the cat lounging on the bed, and a few triangles of sun on the wooden floor. Basking silence…

 

I live in the North of France, it’s 34°F this morning, with a perfect cold wintery sun outside leaving bright still frames everywhere in the room. I talked yesterday with a guy who lived a few years in the South of France, who told me he was depressed by the solid blue skyed “great weather” of Nice or Toulouse : “Give me passing clouds, mist, showers and snow, give me low angle lights and pale blue skies…”.

It’s relative, because North of France is the very South of Norway, for example, right? Do people in North California have the same feeling, the “comfort of being from the North” (even if the State is only 170 years old)? Then, what about Oregon? what’s the North, for Morocco or Tunisia?

Is Autumn comforting to you? Like “Ahhh we’re home!”? Do you prefer Sibelius (Finland) or Villa Lobos (Brazil)? Cat or Dog? North or South? Have a walk in a forest, or party in Cuban bar?

Have a nice sunday!

BooksTeaCat, SportsBeerDog & their Social Interactions

 

 

Pink Floyd, MBTI & other Zodiac like games

ONE

The problem with Astrology is when people use their sign as a way to be lazy, to be a handful, to be an asshole. “I’m not even sorry I can’t do nothing I’m a Scorpio you know?”.

Zodiac : lazinesses or challenges?

TWO

The problem with other human-sortings like MBTI is different. People use it to swagger like idiots. “I’m an INTJ, I’m great, I’m unique, I’m VERY rare, I’m an empath”.

Let’em boast, will you?

#INFJ & #INTJ : The Tango Feeling/Thinking

THREE

You’re a smart person and you probably all this is “magic thinking”. It’s a categories game, and these are vague enough to appear magic : “Oh fuck it’s EXACTLY SO ME!”.

Not a big deal. Finding your Zodiac sign or your MBTI is a pretty accurate way to think about yourself, about what you like and dislike, about the way you could evolve.

“The noble man improves his qualities, not his flaws”

…said a wise man somewhere. Oui?

FOUR

If you realize it’s a game, a classification name in which you try to push yourself down a hole, a basin, you can use ANY other structure to think about who you are.

This morning I talked with a colleague about a GREAT documentary I DVD-burned for him about the Making of Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd. It’s very interesting, of course, to hear these guys telling how they wrote “Money” or worked with Alan Parsons.

But I said to him : “I’m Richard Wright, of course!”.

FIVE

Wright is the guy on the right. He’s quiet, he’s shy, he’s the keyboards player. He bright calm, fields of sounds.

Waters is the tortured guy, the tortured thinker, a great bass player and an original singer. He’s the soul of Pink Floyd.

Gilmour is the handsome singer, handsome guitar player. He has “this” sound. And a splendid voice too! He seems the strong soul Waters probably needed to channel his too many ideas.

Mason is the drummer (on the left). And as usual he’s funny, smart, fast, the relaxed watcher of the mess. He wrote a great, great book about the group.

SIX

See me coming?

You can play this game with other groups, with the Beatles, with the Police (which is a great trio for Types : Sting the leader, great bass player, fantastic voice, Copeland the crazy energetic drummer, Summers the smart and cultivated older guitarist. And they made reggae music with that! Who else?

SEVEN

Tool : find a classification in a group of types, a baseball team, a choir, a team. Find who you are. And begin to think : Why are you this person? Can you learn from him/her? What are his/her patterns, tools? What does he/she BRINGS to the structure? Who do you need to complete a group?

You go!

Thanks for reading!

“What’s bitten him?”

ONE

If you like to explore knowledge and history of men, you probably, like me, from time to time choose a field and dig it completely with excitement – you draw maps, you read, you try to find your own gold nuggets.

What’s bitten him?

John Ford’s cinema, or Kurozawa, or Brian de Palma. Or a painter : Hopper or Da Vinci, or Monet. Music ? Ravel or Shostakovich? Churchill, Lincoln, a French king? An architect, a poet? Faulkner?

Exploring is a joy. Books, conversations, documentaries, Internet. It’s like a map or a puzzle you complete little by little.

At one moment, “vous avez fait le tour”, as we say in French, you finished to turn around it : all angles. You have your little trunk, full of treasures. From time to time you like to complete it, to add a book…

TWO

But some fields, some characters are continents, it’s too much, too complex to examine all angles… Why?

• Because the subject is too big. Choose Puccini or Orson Welles, you’ll be OK. But study the US Revolution, Napoléon, or the Italian Renaissance, and you’re dead.
• ..
• Because the subject has too many links. It happened to me with the US Civil War. I read about Lincoln, slavery, battles, Indian natives, daily life at this time, consequences in Europa, “just after the war”, black problems in the XXth century…
• ..
• Because a personality or his art is too complex to understand completely. Manet in painting (a constant flow of paradoxes and possibilities), Mahler in classical music (not that “hard” to listen, but with so many facets and complexities), probably Proust in literature…
• ..

THREE

All this is a bit fractal, too : you can pick up a very tiny subject and explore it very well and so precisely that it becomes… infinite.

• A tiny subject can be an “dot”. One movie director from Norway. The diary of your grandmother. An unknown painter from Provence.
• It also could be a slight slice of a big event. One day in Germany during the WWII. A single battle of the Revolutionary War.
• Something besides. You like Stravinsky? Then you could study his influence.
• A much less known artist, or political man, or geographic place. Try Koechlin in French music. Or the guy who helped Lincoln with trains during the war. Study the city of Baku, in Azerbaijan.
• Choose another angle. Instead of exploring Tolstoï, read about his wife. Don’t study Communism, but the Mccarthysm againts movie makers, the life of John Reed, or daily life in USSR’s during collectivization.
• Move a cursor : don’t read about the Russian Revolution but how was the daily life there twenty years before.

There’s a danger of being stuck for your whole life : the subject your chose is so enthralling that you’ll never quit it.

FOUR

What subject(s) did you choose? Why? Did it end quickly or did you stay for years? Do you wait to have more time to attack a big one?

Thanks for reading!

My Archetype? Koala. With glasses…

My Archetype? Koala. With glasses…

More like my Animal Totem, right?

Therefore I’m slow and sweet, I’m quiet, I’m a reader. And I want to cuddle!

But my Astrological animal is the Taurus.

(With glasses?)

Oh my.

Therefore I’m stubborn, strong, gentle, trustful and steady, and slow to move. But when it begins you can’t stop any Taurus. You have to work a lot to make him angry. I love nature. Gimme a tree and some sun and a book and I’m in paradise.

But the ascending of this spectacled beast is Gemini.

Therefore this Taurus has some balloons in his back. It fastens his head. It brings casualness and some speed. Conversation skills too.

But MBTI says I’m INTJ or INFJ. It depends. I love (it’s the subject of a dozen of my blog articles) to think I’m bifaceted, a balance seeker. Think/Feel. INFTJ, voilà. Introvert for sure. Empathy : too much…

But Enneagrams says I’m 5. The Observer. Everybody runs, therefore I stay quiet. “Replacing experience with concepts” (oh, this is what I do here!). Terror : incompetence…

 

Oh well. I’m a mess. Like all of you, right?

Have a nice day!

 

 

 

Hicks lunch-mosquitoezing at work : What to do?

It’s lunch break.

You Introvert, I know you! You have your quiet spot to eat, right?…

Suddenly you hear what seems to be a one-man band screaming his joy, yelling in laughter, bringing a small group into noisy happiness. Hahaha!

Hicks.

1. They are happy
2. They are noisy
3. They like pranks
4. Rib-tickling funny stories they love
5. They speak like “He said this – then I said that”, in loops
6. They have big voices
7. They love TV
8. Laughing hard

You inner-facepalm while you have to eat, then you need strategies.

1. Go out for a walk under the trees.
2. Choose weird hours to eat in quiet.
3. Read
4. Mentally train yourself to close your ears
5. Find another human-being to conversation with
6. Earphones
7. Acceptance Amor-Fati driven
8. Wait for coffee breaks : they smoke (they always smoke)

You can quit, but that’s silly. Hicks are like mosquitoes. Everywhere.

Have a nice day!

The Happy Lonely Christmas Liars

“Tonight then, I Christmas eve dinner alone and I know you will believe me if I say you that this “freedom” brings me a pretty much voluptuous feeling. Music reading silence peace.”

This phrase can makes us think about the state of life where you need it – and need to write about it.

It’s maybe next to another state (when you have a family, you mostly want to be with them, right? Oh but maybe you are… and wish for quiet instead). It can be after it. Before it. Because of remoteness (your lover lives in another part of the planet). Well : circumstances…

But also : a real love for this state. “Music reading silence peace” lovers, call them introverts or quiet people, those who like silence and know that their own head is good company. Some days, you love or you need to be apart, apart from the people & parties.

Sipping moods in summer nights, the “outside the party” Type…

This friend also wrote me this :

“Yesterday evening I was invited to dinner with X and a few of her friends. It’s been like a trial :

• Why do you always wear black
• Why don’t you talk much
• Why don’t you go out
• Why a quiet face and nervous hands
• I know well that you are like this
• I know well that you are like that
• You are one of those women who this
• You are one of of those women who that”

 

Horror, she wrote.

Hmm?

Have a nice day!

Instagram : _bodylanguage_

Soccer Games (in shorts) (in the mud) (good grief)

When you’re not really interesting in soccer, you just watch and see two dozens of guys in shorts running after a ball. After all, we all need to be kept busy and to manage our time. Therefore, why not? Let’s take oneself in hand, and run after a ball, in a team! (important : in shorts).

I always have a bunch of naive questions I ask to my soccer lovers friends.

• Why don’t these guys play with women? Co-ed football?
• Why the hell is the team of “your” city the best? Imagine we do the same with movies or writers… Why don’t you watch all styles all teams and choose the one you love the most? No, OK, it’s your city, they’re the best. OK OK. OK.
• Why don’t you all handle two balls at the time? It’d be funnier!

 

Introverts and other guys with glasses will try to find a philosophy here. Camus said he liked to play the goal keeper, where he learned a good lesson :

“The ball never comes from where you expected her to come”.

Like problems and betrayals in life?

(pardon my French)

 

When I was a teenager, my spectacled friend Jean-Marc and I (there are always two guys with glasses in a classroom, right?) we had to play soccer, and we hated it. Œuf Corse.

It’s November, it’s cold, drizzling. I want quiet, an easy chair and a fire and a cat and a book. Not to run in the dirt with idiots!

Bahhhh I loved that bunch of screaming guys : they were running like lemmings after the ball. It’s cute. Look at’em all! YAHHHHH.

Needless to say that the two poor shivering Jean-Marc and Jean-Pascal, in shorts and drizzled eyeglasses, were not in the group clucking like headless hens, because having found one or two functioning neurons in our bored head, we were, on the playground, waiting, a little bit outside of the circle of fools.

Re-needless to say that, oh fuque, inescapably, the ball ALWAYS suddenly spouted out of the group towards JM (or JP). Shit, shit and shit. What do I do now?? Mired for good.

With a good dose of audacity, I tried then to do the thing : running in cold November, in shorts, with a ball in the middle of my legs! Obviously, with a horde of yelling pimpled teenagers locked on to me…

When then reach me – if they don’t, I fall (because of the mess ball/legs) – in a panic gesture, I hit the ball. PAF. Anywhere. PAF! Go get it, you fools! Let the fetchers fetch.

Sigh… My hands on my knees, trying to catch back my breath, pfeeww, spitting my lungs, listening distractedly to the reproaches of Mr Sports Teacher, I’m thinking about next month’s soccer game. Oô December, “when mud on the ground is frozen in uncomfortable excrescences”.

I hear a crow. Croak! He mocks me. OK, let’s focus. Where’s the horde? I stand up and deep breathe. You go girl.

Happily, today I didn’t fell full length in the mud…

 

Thanks for reading! Have a great sunday!

 

Managing Layers, Empathy Ways & Adaptation Paths

Wandering into this…

I work in a store. I have to deal with : managers, colleagues, customers. If you’re a principal in a school, you deal with : teachers & special educators, students, parents (a gardener deals with flowers – a client from time to time. Some days, I’d like to be this guy)…

I talked with a speech therapist one day, and we agreed on this : when you work with a lot of humans, you acquire an instinct, a very fast ability to adapt and adjust your communication ways to the others, your interlocutors.

Thus I really feel I have the head up display like in the Terminator red screen : when the robot meets someone, he’s computing, sorting, labelling what he sees, in real time. Tut criip tut tuuut!…

If today, at work, you meet someone you already know (a kid, a colleague, a chief), you’re fast inside because you have your labels ready, a bunch of stickers, it is. Then your sensors refines and adapts : what’s the mood here and is there something new to know? All this while your talking about the weather – right?

The purpose is not to terminate the person, but to adapt. It leads to a question about empathy : you empath, do you think or do you feel? Both? Of course both!

I posted an article about INTJ or INFJ in a forum, asking if the T (thinking) and F (feeling) are not, in fact, a braid, and I got attacked there by people who REALLY like their boxes and said I “did not understand”. Like in USSR in the old time, I probably needed to be re-educated.

So we work with groups (students/teachers/parents), we connect with individuals, we juggle with labels and realness, reality, we tango between instincts and analysis. Computing big data inside!

One day we are skilled enough to laugh when we learn that there are books about mentalism or “gestures analysis”. “Methods”. As if when someone crosses his legs to feel comfortable was a “sign of closure”! OMG.

Of course there’s a need of books! A few hundreds could be a beginning. Anthropology, Philosophy, Psychology…

And years of life.

Then, when you talk with your lover, you know he/she has an idea in her mind, a worry, a concern, anything. There, it’s not analysis, it’s instinct. And you effing WATCH your partner, from the inside, not as a pilot (you don’t decide this), you just notice anything : her eyes, a way of breathing, a microseconding hesitation in a phrase. You say : “What’s happening, dear?”. She’ll maybe answer :

– Aweee… How do you know?

OK. INFJ. Maybe…

 

Thanks for reading! Comment if you feel like you want to add something…

Have a nice day!

 

Instagram : _bodylanguage_

 

 

 

 

BooksTeaCat, SportsBeerDog & their Social Interactions Necessities – #INTJ

ONE

Introverts. We’re all a tribe.

There are labels we tend to like to read about us. INTJ, Empaths, Introverts, Thinkers…

We read memes about us with a smile.

Responsibilities and social interactions needs cursors at the minimum : we prefer to think alone, in front of beautiful nature, or with our saint trilogy (a book a tea a cat), under a blanket, watching the rain by the window. We love conversations… one to one.

TWO

And then, the other side. Extroverts, Go-ahead people, Fast people, Managers, people who like groups, parties, responsibilities, goals, etc…

THREE

When an introvert is bored, it’s sort of OK. She (I call her a she in this article, OK?) dreams, she opens a book, goes for a walk – or opens a bottle of French wine before writing a poem.

When an extrovert is bored, he’s (I call him a he, OK?) depressed. Something’s wrong. Routine is not OK at all. He becomes grey, and looks for “things to do” – which are often displacing his body (hunting, running, biking, driving, whatever) or finding goals (or anything that can bring a sense of success).

FOUR

But in the end, we all need social interactions. All this is pretty well told by the Hedgehog’s Dilemma :

The hedgehog’s dilemma, or sometimes the porcupine dilemma, is a metaphor about the challenges of human intimacy. It describes a situation in which a group of hedgehogs seek to move close to one another to share heat during cold weather. They must remain apart, however, as they cannot avoid hurting one another with their sharp spines. Though they all share the intention of a close reciprocal relationship, this may not occur, for reasons they cannot avoid.

The hedgehog’s dilemma suggests that despite goodwill, human intimacy cannot occur without substantial mutual harm, and what results is cautious behavior and weak relationships. The hedgehog’s dilemma is used to explain introversion and isolationism.

(Wikipedia)

FIVE

A new job, a project, a success. We met new people, we’ve been in groups, yeyyy!

The Extrovert got oxygen. He feels happy, and alive. Grey’s gone, he’s like a clean engine in the sun! He goes running with his dog! He smiles back and his wife is proud.

The Introvert got oxygen too. She feels happy… to be back home. She has new ideas of musics and books, seeds for conversations. Look at her, now : she’s reading, petting her cat’s head. Both are purring…

Her husband cuddles her, smiling, or… runs with the dogs. Depends of the type!

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Instagram : alessandramannelli

 

 

 

Unholy Placed & Sized Prisms

A photograph worries.
He doesn’t want to enjoy the moment, but to take advantage of it.
Ernst Jünger

 

If you’re creative, or obsessed by something, your contact with reality is spoiled.

It is true that we all have an ideal way of seeing a wise person, who is in “direct contact” with things and events : reality. Without filter, as we say, right?

But think about a photographer. He watches around with a frame in his head. He constantly “imagine what picture it could give”. A photographer always is a hunter…

If you blog, you hear every conversation, you read every article with this fisherman attitude : “Is there something I could write about?”.

More generally, if you’re a words lover, your filter is a complete set : everything around you, everything that “happens” becomes words, sentences, adjectives.

All this is maybe a protection. It creates a distance between us and the world.

I wrote about this already :

• The Art of Inside Sidestepping
• Waldgänger uses the Forest

Sometimes we’re HIT by reality, all in a sudden, we stickcatch up back. It can be a sight, a word, a surprise, a kid, a cat, a movement. Suddenly it’s OK : your filter vanished.

Here you are, look at youuuu!

Do we have to trigger it, to “want” this? Why? What happens when the filter comes back? What’s the role of alcohol (does it de-filter, or does it add a mattress?), of meditation, of pain, of love? Do we have to be aware of this filter working along the day? Is it useful to dance between the two states (with/without)?

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

Gleanpickupping seeds & tools in a Gidon Kremer interview

In a French grey morning of August, I’ve had my coffee with two good slices of brioche, frame window staring, in front of an ominous sky, at the cut out moving trees in the wind, shhhh.

Mind wandering…

According to your job, your availability, your passions, you have different way of “entering contact with reality” :

• A photographer type will watch around him with the “Can I take a picture here, when, from where?”.
• A musician type will analyze some new song he hears, decorticating it like an alarm-clock.
• A poet type will find a good word in a book then might begin to weave a poem in his head.
• The climber type will watch these city walls… etc…

You… just have to put your “mode on” (and YES, you can have many “modes on” ready in your head, haeccity oblige).

 

I read an interesting interview of Gidon Kremer, violonist, in a classical music magazine. I read this interview with two modes on.

1. First was : “Find maybe some music to listen to” (I found Schumann, Weinberg, Arvo Pärt, and a Prokofiev melody)…
2. The other one was my blogger mode : “What little structure, what tool, what tropism can I find in his interview?”.

 

So, well, I learned things about Gidon Kremer himself, his friends, career, evolutions, wonders, etc. He’s an interesting person, the typical clever artist (for me he’s a cousin of Bill Bruford, the drummer).

Eventually, my second “mode on” found quotes, wonders, seeds to plant (here or there) and to meditate on :

• We live a physical house, but also in some spiritual homes, other “places” we belong to.
• Playing very few notes is more difficult than pure virtuosity.
• When you find difficult to play or understand something, you maybe need to find parallel structures in other artists or situations : comparison enrichment.
• You can explore a field (movies, music) with artists, eras, but also labels or studios, producers, etc. Let’s write something about ECM.
• Should an artist listen or study what he did in his past? (Kremer never listens what he recorded in previous years).
• When an artist collaborates, there’s a need of “mutual listening”.
• Sometimes we miss something. Friends around us indicate things or persons but we don’t listen – when we maybe should.
• Then and therefore : what is to catch up? How do we? What is “to redeem”, how?
• “Seeking perfection is the enemy of beauty”

 

Etc etc. I found a few more. Whatever. Each line is a door to a new room, which is full of questions. How to drive “mutual listening”? What becomes virtuosity with very little notes to play? Where the frontier to find between catching up and letting go? Etc…

I found this too : when you have one or many “modes of exploration”, it becomes difficult sometimes to be in direct contact. You ALWAYS have a filter on, and that can be exhausting!

We have to find back a way to quit our introvert-analyzer inner computer to… touch things. I suppose it’s what great artists can do, having the great ability to move it like a lever, a slider, from 0 to 100%, from “I know this without any words” to “Analyze and peel it off to understand it”. Where is yours?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

To write this article, I needed music. I chose Weinberg by Kremer – of course. The YouTube link is under the sleeve, downstairs :

#Gifted Adults are not always “gifted”, they just operate differently

The problem with words : they put labels on you. If you’ve been “gifted” in your childhood, you’re pretty sure that you’re “gifted”. But are you really? Where and how?

There are plenty of colors, nuances, gradations, in many directions, in your gifted personality.

No you don’t find “two types of humans : the gifted and the non gifted”, right? It NOT only a IQ thing…

Take the whole brain engine, get closer, watch it. Gifted people can be :

• Funnier or darker.
• Faster or slower-deeper.
• More sophisticated or simply shining.
• Craving conversations with other gifted, or isolated.
• Big picture or mini-details seekers.
• Learn differently, exploring or thinking.
• Artistic or not at all.
• Intense or lost.
• Introvert or the contrary.
• Independent or leaders.
• Controlling or easy.
• Lazy or big workaholics.
• Anxious or happy.
• Successful or in living in ideas and patterns.
• Organized or messy-messy.
• Etc. Etc.

Almost each of these lines could become an article !

I like to think that gifted adults can be “more intelligent”, but it’s not necessary. They are all different! They… operate differently, that’s for sure. And they evolve, too.

It can really be a problem in society, sometimes. I remember this example in a company, given in a French book written by B. Millêtre (“Petit guide à l’usage des gens intelligents qui ne se trouvent pas très doués” – “Little guide for intelligent people who find they’re not that skilled”).

A big meeting : a new big project is exposed. 95% of the audience who consider things in terms of causes and consequences – “If this, then that” – will nod (or they are angry if it’s more work for them, haha). But there’s always one or two guys who will raise a hand because they immediately detected the flaws in the new organization. They see patterns, structures, they can almost “feel” the forces in play : the Big Picture. And of course, they will be taken for a pain in the neck.

Gifted is not necessarily socially gifted, right?

Have a nice day!

JP

Instagram : ___bodylanguage___

“A model is a lie that helps you see the truth” – H. Skipper

“A model is a lie that helps you see the truth” is a quote by Howard Skipper, an American doctor.

Here I try to extend this pattern, replacing “model” by cousin ideas : “pattern”, “structure”, “map”, etc.

So what? A “model” is not the real world, it’s a construction made to help us to understand the real world.

A MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY, right? A map is a LIE, it doesn’t give you changes, colors, moods, light, temperature and life. But it’s a useful, thought, for a purpose…

You can be very serious while modeling things (in Science) and an architect will build models (in cardboard or on computers), but you can also be a little casual “just to see what you’ll see”.

For example you can see each of these things : a school, a couple, or a battle, as : a machine, a living creature, a computer, a kingdom or a business company. If you “apply” your model, you’ll rule out something, but you’ll find interesting things too. Then, trash the model. Because it’s a LIE, of course!

A model is a construction made to help us to understand the real world.

It can be using a structure and also “a way to explain how it works”, moves and evolves. Let’s use the model of “a business company” to study “a married couple”. Who’s the CEO, how does the money flow, what are the goals, etc…

It can be more like a skeleton, a complex map of “what it is”, or a single archetypal word :

• Mauss studied suicide or gift and made entire books about these. A way to search for “what is common”, the “fundamental characteristics”.
• Simmel studied the bridge : it links two territories, it is a territory itself, it “shows itself” as a bridge, and it is a “will of connection” (over a river, for example).

Yes, this leads to Archetypes (Jung)

a statement, pattern of behavior, or prototype (model) which other statements, patterns of behavior, and objects copy or emulate

To Forms in philosophy (Plato)

pure forms which embody the fundamental characteristics of a thing in Platonism

and to the most precious diamond : the Symbol.

a symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different concepts and experiences.

(All quotes from Wikipedia – I bolded some words)

Questions :

Who’s right? Skipper who uses the word “lie”, or Plato and Jung who seem to seek a “pure form”? Is all this a search for a link, common aspects in different things, or are these just tools to explore a concept , moving aside difficulties and details? Are you more interested in details, or structures? Why do we say that there are only a few ways to tell a story (Google : Seven Basic Plots)? What are the “order” games like MBTI, Zodiac or Enneagrams? Is a symbol the tiniest and more radioactive possible model?

Let’s say you’re introvert, fast, jealous, a father, a murderer or a valet. Is it a lie, because it’s true but way too simple (and a label on your face) – then you list the subtilities, the movements, the reasons, etc -, or is it a funny truth which could lead you to make decisions, or find other archetypes to think about?

You can also read : Ecceity

Yeahh, overthinking, I know…

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

#INFJ & #INTJ & the Tango Feeling/Thinking

“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.”
Bergson

To say it very quickly, Henri Bergson, a French philosopher, says there are 2 ways to know something : Analysis is “turning around” the thing, it gives you a map, but Intuition is about “entering” it, it’s the only way to “feel” what is the thing. That makes sense, right?

Well, I linked this with the two MBTI families, INFJ (F is for Feeling) and INTJ (T is for Thinking).

What is YOUR way of appreciating things? Do you think, or do you feel?

I think I’m obsessed with the idea of weaving a braid with two opposite tools. Reason & Feeling, Numbers & Harmony, Improvisation & Schedules, Slow & Fast, etc. I constantly play with the idea of weaving them.

• Maybe you are, like me, a INTFJ?
• Maybe you like to be moved by a symphony AND to know how it’s built?
• Maybe you like to have projects AND to decide thing in a second.
• Maybe you invent poetry with your nose in the wind AND you organize words precisely while you write.
• Maybe you like to decide and organize things AND you pray God at the same time?

So… when I do tests about MBTI I find myself a INTJ, but sometimes a INFJ. I feel like the French knight with a sword in a hand and an axe in the other. I hope you appreciate my power! 🙂

Why thinking couldn’t weave feeling?

Thanks for reading. Have a nice weekend!

Instagram : nachoyague

 

 

 

 

 

“Staggering State” & Observation Amusée du Chaos

Amused Observation of Chaos is an attitude, sometimes the only one you can use. It appears when :

• You realize you have no more way to fix anything. Or you don’t want to.
• You probably warned who is in charge, who did not believe you. Whatever.
• The staggering state needs you to take back control, and you have NO control on the situation, so you begin to smile (well, you can cry, but WTF).
• It works for a short moment. Chaos and confusion are exhausting. Go away and nap.

 

Bonne journée ! Thanks for reading!

 

Instagram : azzrak

 

 

Seeking Approval as a source of energy?

Just google “seeking approval” to discover what you already know : this is baaad, and shame on you!

To be a normal adult shouldn’t be about doing things “just to get approved”, right? Nevertheless, some of us… do what they can.

Many Internet activities use this seek of approval motivation we all have in us, from the Facebook “likes” to the number-of-followers you are happy to have on Instagram, or on your blog.

OK, this is bad and childish and narcissistic, but it’s also incurable, deal with it! Therefore what can you do? Use it, and try to keep a little dignity. Keep your seekness invisible, or you’ll look like a duck-face “love my selfie” chick…

Seeking approval can be a source of motivation. If you work well partly because of this need, good for you! Be guilty, but not too much. Voilà!

But…

What’s the best : a bunch of thoughtless empty “likes” from unknown people, or one smartcunning criticism from an intelligent person you love? 

Thanks for reading! Follow my blog 🙂

Instagram : noamfrost

 

 

 

Goth Subculture Predictability

The good old world of romantic love imagery is a clear map. Everything is : Smiles, Pink color, Kisses, Flowers, Couples, Spring or Holidays and all kind of tender togetherness.

The good old world of Goth Subculture or Metal imagery is a clear map. Everything is : Mist, Skulls, Black color, Red Roses, Tatoos, Blood and Death.

You just have to move the lever from this to that. Hop.

Then, music, outfits, accessories, tatoos, it’s a whole moronic burtonian set of always-the-same I know what you’re doing…

I knowwww, sometime we just need to be… recognized.

If you need more subtilities, something less predictable, go away!

Why is predictability so repellent, to some persons?

Why “We’re different, let’s gather to… resemble”, to look alike peas in a pot, is so awful, for certain minds?

After all, Goths are said to be sensible persons!…

 

Tool & Dial : Predictability. What about ourselves? What about your product? How to find, in what you do (poetry, web, marketing, music, painting, photography?) the MAYA balance between being NOT predictable (because it’s boring) and being acceptable?

Thanks for reading!

#instamood #mist

 

The Art of Inside Sidestepping – “Social Dilettantism Protection Tent” #INTJ

This is a whole box of tools about Inside Sidestepping. I evoked it in an article about how to disappear in oneself for a short moment : Waldgänger. It’s about “staying where you are, but you don’t believe anymore”. An exercise INTJs love to do !

In love, at work, at a meeting, within a group of friends : you can use that everywhere. Suddenly you’re out. Suddenly you see how things work, and you become a watcher :

• It’s not rebelling, it’s about watching, and feeling differently
• It can be protection, sheltering
• Suddenly you don’t play the game, or you do “as if”, and you watch
• You let yourself be thoughtful, pensive, undecided
• The others don’t know you’re in your tent
• You can invent, build, and destroy your tent in a second
• You stay there, but you don’t believe, you’re a dilettante, a dabbler
• You can be sarcastic or ironic, or not – it’s not required
• Suddenly, things are not that serious, and they even can become surrealistic
• Being there is a recovery, a resumption, an escape, a relief
• It’s a way to survive, to have fun, a way to stay zen
• It can lead to a positive form of hypocrisy, a mask game
• Sidestepping is like asking to yourself : “Who’s misled here?”
• You can go back in the game in one second

You decide it, or you can be put there : if you’re pregnant, or sick, you go on living in the world but the way you see it is different. Your “inside sidestepping” carries on, for a long time.

Feel free to add ideas in comments. Thanks for reading!

Instagram : danurbel