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About this episode

Transcript Philosophy Unveiled 12Welcome to episode 12 of the series Philosophy Unveiled, by the author Lane Friesen. I’m Rachel and I’m doing the reading today. In the last few episodes, we discussed the findings of psychology, as developed in particular by Isabel Briggs Myers, and we suggested that the fixed element in this scheme of 16 personality types was cognitive style, as we uncovered it from history. We suggested further that her 16 types are neurological pathways through the hippocampus of the brain, between the two hemispheres, and that they control the dynamics of thought. Mental assumptions, as we said previously, form an auxiliary of thought, and this is what enables an MBNI mode [MBNI is our alternative name for Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers’ theory, because the actual name has been trademarked, and cannot be used] to spring into operation, with a dominant in some other brain region. Thought always takes place along the pathways that were determined by Briggs and Myers.An MBNI path can become cognitive in its own right. Alternatively, it can form part of a loop or working memory circuit which performs a certain function, such as syllogistic logic in the case of Thinking, and this loop then presents the result of its operation to other portions of the mind. It’s of course always the Extraverted portion of the loop, as in ENTJ, or ESTJ, or ESFP, or ESTP, that presents these results to the rest of the mind – that’s precisely why Isabel Briggs Myers saw these legs as Extraverted. We’ve already defined the loops of Thinking, Feeling, Judging, Classification, iNtuition, Reflection and Reason [or if you wish, Facilitator working memory]. There are at least 18 other very important circuits, and they all interact very tightly. Together, they comprise human thought in its sum total.I’d like to emphasize that MBNI as a personality scheme works best for the Perceiver, Mercy, Server and Teacher, who do pre-processing for the loops of Thinking, Feeling, Sensing and iNtuition respectively, and then it also works well for those who are in initial stages of mental development. That’s because it’s when some MBNI leg becomes cognitive in isolation that an individual can be characterized most purely as an INFJ, or an ENTJ, or an INTJ, or something else among the 16 choices. Whenever MBNI legs become cognitive in pairs, then they form loops, and it is these circuits which now determine personality. Finally, as loops learn to coordinate with one another, then cognitive style, or the region where the brain is conscious, can begin to predominate. These subtleties simply cannot be covered by MBNI in isolation.We suggested in the last episode that the Contributor is especially difficult for MBNI to classify, unless the Contributor is at an extremely low mental level – that’s because the Contributor moves very quickly into the use of multiple MBNI modes, and thus loops.For instance, exchange as we see it in Capitalism involves the Sensing loop, with both ESTJ and ISTJ working together in combination, and it requires the active participation of the Classification loop which handles imagination. So, in this session, we’ll be moving beyond MBNI, and toward cognitive style. In particular, I’d like to present to you a profile of the Contributor, as we uncovered it in history by looking at those individuals who excelled. The cognitive style of Contributor turns out to be quite common, especially in business, and I’m sure you will know individuals who have this form of consciousness. Let’s start with a few typical points. The Contributor lives at the very pinnacle of mental processing. Others find him extremely complex; they may despair of ever understanding him. He himself can feel scattered, or even fragmented.He is strong-willed and stubborn. When he meets another like himself, there can be real conflict.He is very aware of small, personal expenses. He may shop around for specials, trying to save a few pennies. Big expenses are just numbers and may not bother him. On the other hand, small expenses somehow seem more real. He may give away a million dollars, but then drive all the way around the block to find a parking spot for which the meter has not yet expired.He often compares himself to others. When he meets a new group of people, he tends to work out the pecking order, and where he fits in. He demonstrates the ‘right stuff’ and he looks for it in those around him.Let’s expand on this last point. Often, the Contributor is highly competitive. He likes a challenging mental problem or puzzle. If someone shares a riddle with him, he has to work it out himself. He may enjoy jigsaw and crossword puzzles, and chess, if he is good at these activities.He is great at winning an argument. Confrontation itself is not pleasant, but he likes a good verbal contest. An argument can be like a game; he likes the challenge of competing. It tests his intelligence. He may actually switch sides to get something going.Losing on the other hand affects his self-image and his confidence; he will refuse to compete if he feels that his chances of winning are too low. Fear of losing can actually cause him to sit back and do nothing at all!The immature Contributor finds it hard also to apologize. Admission of guilt puts another higher in the pecking order. Apologizing, like losing, affects his confidence.The Contributor is a long-range planner, attracted by opportunities. He will often specialize into some narrow region of expertise, thinking: “This is where I’m good! Don’t compare me to others except in this area.” He becomes the expert in his chosen field. Underneath that professional exterior, however, lies the same fragile self-image. He wishes he were confident enough to relax and be himself.He is the one who makes long-range plans. Probably he already has a fairly good idea of what he might be doing five years from now.His actions are usually compared mentally to his ‘bottom line.’ He looks for opportunities; for him, these are the things that he can do to reach his goal. Perhaps he wants to make money - this turns out to be the easiest way to keep score - or maybe he wants to be well-known intellectually. Opportunities pop out at him. He wonders why other people are so blind.The Contributor is either self-motivated, or he is not motivated at all. Faced with projects that originate from others - schoolwork or chores, for example - he can be incredibly lazy. But with personal plans, the carrot of vision and the stick of conscience drive him to work harder. He feels guilty sitting around and doing nothing. He usually feels that he could have done a better job.He likes to keep his projects secret until he knows that they will succeed. He doesn’t want others to alter his plans or to start making decisions for him, nor does he want his ideas stolen. If he’s going to fail, he won’t do it in public. If people ask him about his project, he won’t give the details. He wants to be responsible for his own success. When everything is ready, then he will unveil the finished product.He actually visualizes himself advancing through the steps of his plans. It is the same ability that allows him to practice a task in his head. He can imagine himself, for instance, skiing down a ski slope. He closes his eyes and visualizes his body traversing through every little twist and turn. He can both conjure and control this inner picture.The Perceiver thinks geometrically, but lacks the Contributor’s vivid imagination. Every picture for the Contributor seems to include both a mental grid and the image itself. He has the ability to write in a straight line and lay things out without much help from rulers and yardsticks. It’s there in his head. He is good at calligraphy or drawing signs and posters. If he wishes, he can have beautiful handwriting.As he plans, he covers his bases. He tries to protect himself from possible failures. He thinks of all the things that might go wrong, and of what he would do in each case, thinking perhaps: “If this happens, then I will do this.” Others may feel that he is a gambler. He disagrees. As far as he is concerned, he has covered every possible problem. Whatever he cannot do successfully he avoids in the future. In this way, his plans improve.It really bothers him when other people help him or do things for him. He feels indebted to them and under their control until he can do something for them in return. It’s no problem, of course, if things are part of a business deal. Every interaction, though, must balance out; he likes to be self-sufficient. If others have given to him and he remains obligated to them - for success, in particular - it can affect his self-esteem.Ownership for the Contributor is important. He makes a sharp distinction between what is his and what belongs to someone else. Every object is connected in his mind with some person: “This belongs to me, that is yours.” It doesn’t mean that he does not give. He knows precisely, though, when something stops being his and starts belonging to someone else.At the same time, he likes to join in partnership with others, sharing the profits and the risks. He respects those who can make decisions; he wants to work with them. Each partner has control over part of the project. If he took complete control, then the others wouldn’t be his partners; he couldn’t respect them as equals. As a result, control is shared. If he’s had a bad experience with partnerships, then now he probably avoids them.He makes choices that increase profits, and reduce costs. Optimization is a major part of his planning: he does things as quickly as possible, and tries to get rid of unnecessary steps. Once he has improved his method as much as he can, then he will no longer change it.In particular, he avoids social small talk. Perhaps he tells stories. This generally has some goal, such as telling others about adventures he has experienced, deals he has made that were successful, or enemies he defeated. It gains their respect. He may talk with prospective customers about the weather, or sports. Again, this has a purpose. But if he were to sit down with his marriage partner or children, just to talk about nothing, they would probably be suspicious and wonder what ulterior motive the Contributor had in mind.The Contributor can be a philanthropist who lifts others up. He goes out of his way to help others stand on their own two feet. He funds the gifted individual who lacks money, invests with the visionary who needs capital, and gives so that the handicapped child can have a brighter future. He does not worry about his peers - they can fend for themselves.However, he hates to see his tax dollars going to support those on welfare! He doesn’t want the government taking money that he has earned and giving it those who have not worked for it.He likely has a large house and maybe even a summer cottage. His home is his castle and is often used as a center of hospitality. He loves to have friends over for dinner.Challenge and adventure interact with his fears, and can generate drive. Deep inside his person, hidden away, is a darker side. He can experience real fears and anxieties, thinking perhaps: “The airplane will crash! In some way I will lose control!” His anxieties, however, are generally very private - he shares them only with close friends and family.He can enjoy reading mystery, suspense, escape and possibly horror stories. These play with his fears and his curiosity. He reads them to relax, after a long day’s work. He enjoys searching for the villain in a whodunit. He likes to see characters in an escape story faced with a challenge; he wonders how they will respond. Real problems are being discussed: he can learn something, and sharpen his skills.The Contributor is particularly attracted to challenge and adventure. Danger, for him, can be the spice of life. There must be the possibility that something could go wrong: it plays with his fears, and generates drive that makes him come alive. At the same time, he must be absolutely certain that he has done his best to guard against accidents, and that nothing really can go wrong. He plans carefully; then he climbs the mountain, flies the balloon, races the car, or perhaps joins the space program. He explores the outer limits of experience.The Contributor travels more than others, and enjoys the experiences that come with travel so much that he can handle living out of a suitcase and sleeping in a different bed each night. He loves to see the world, and how other people are living. Travel allows him to escape from pressure; he could easily spend a good part of his life visiting one country after another. When he returns, he may tell stories about his experiences. He shows souvenirs and pictures to friends.The Contributor’s confidence is very fragile. He lives at the top levels of thought. The rest of his mind is necessary, in his subconscious, to give him the tools he needs to think and to be successful. If he is on good terms with his mind, then he may believe in a ‘God of miracles,’ who helps to make him successful. If in contrast he has shut out parts of his thinking, especially Mercy strategy, then he can and often does become his own ‘god.’If he feels confident and in control of his life, he may see the outside world as ruled, in a similar manner, by some External Presence - he believes in fate or predestination. If life has been less kind to him, then he possibly is more superstitious, or a believer in ‘luck.’ In both cases, he ‘believes’; he becomes a person of real ‘faith.’I’d like to cover this last point in a little more detail, and in the process discuss the Classification and Contingency loops – they are critical for the Contributor. First of all, we’ll recall that Classification is a subset of the Judging loop, and we said that this Classification circuit handles imagination. This is where imagined objects can depart totally from reality.Let’s look at the components of Classification. Perceiver strategy in Introverted Thinking operates on a foundation of assumed principles; these are guided by circles of reasonableness which arrive at Perceiver analysis by means of a one-way path from Facilitator thought, which we know by now is guided by Facilitator working memory, or Reason. We labeled the feedback path from Perceiver analysis in Introverted Thinking to Contributor strategy in Extraverted Thinking as belief. Belief is the mechanism by which Perceiver principles guide Contributor planning. Contributor planning that is guided by Perceiver principles is said to be based in duty, and Perceiver belief which is accepted by Contributor thought in turn becomes Contributor faith. Contributor faith can maintain itself apart from a foundation in Perceiver belief; we say then that faith is blind. A Contributor, if he uses Classification and thus imagination at all, will always have a faith of some kind. That’s because the use of the Classification loop involves Perceiver strategy, and Perceiver strategy has principles, and it communicates them to Contributor analysis by means of belief, and acceptance by Contributor thought of that belief by definition is faith.Alright, that’s the right hemisphere; it works with Classification; the left hemisphere has a symmetrical loop, and we call it Contingency. If we wish to abbreviate things, then Contingency is C1, and Classification is C2.Left hemisphere C1 Contingency is based in Server value, in the same way that right hemisphere C2 Classification is rooted in Perceiver principle. I might add that, in neurology, these strategies of Server and Perceiver are symmetrical left and right hemisphere partners: Server strategy is centered in the left hemisphere superior parietal region; Perceiver analysis is located in the precisely symmetrical right hemisphere superior parietal area; these two strategies, Server and Perceiver, both interact very closely with Contributor thought, and you’ll remember that Contributor thought is located bilaterally – that means on both sides of the brain – in both the left and right hemisphere dorsolateral, area 46.The analog to Perceiver belief in the right hemisphere is Server decision in the left. Perceiver belief that is accepted by Contributor analysis in the right hemisphere forms Contributor faith, and it guides imagination and the optimization of means toward a long-range goal.Server decision that is accepted by Contributor strategy in the left hemisphere forms Contributor will, and in coordination with Teacher understanding, shapes general rules which guide long-range planning and the formulation of goals or ends. I’d like to emphasize this point: Contributor strategy in the right Perceiver-influenced hemisphere always works with means; Contributor analysis in the left Server-ruled hemisphere is aware rather of goals or ends. Sometimes the hemispheres get confused, and then means become ends. Other times, the Contributor consciously chooses ends that are dark; that’s also part of his world.Let’s tie things up. The kinds of rules that constitute goals or ends can be described as habits; these are also formed in the left hemisphere, under the direction of Contributor thought, and their presence makes the Contributor very skilled at working with his hands. When there is a crisis, then C1 Contingency forms these habits into reflex responses.OK, that’s a very brief introduction to the Contributor, and some of his typical traits, as we discovered them from history. In order to prepare us for future discussion, we’ve also hinted at some aspects of neurology.In the next episodes, I’ll introduce some historical examples, and illustrate, by means of direct quotes, how we discovered these Contributor traits. We’ll also discuss critical new circuits. That concludes episode twelve. Thank you for listening.

• Release Date

  Jan 8, 2008

• Runtime

  20:53