My Personality Lovers: Phillip Zimbardo and Erich Fromm

Myers Briggs personality types are my long time obsession. At first I was skeptical that there were only sixteen types of personalities in the world. That is a very strict understanding of personality types. Obviously these sixteen types really function on a continuum which leads to a variety of people. Perhaps even that is too rigid of a formula to place on a person. But get this, one of the theorized ideal matches for my own personality type, INFP, is the ESNJ. Now that doesn't make any sense until I give several examples. 

As I said before John Lennon is an INFP. This means introverted, intuitive, emotional (feeling), and perceptive. This means I am a hermit who knows a lot from a little and get my facts wrong often because I act on my emotions instead of my logic. However, usually my emotions are telling me something honest and the words I use to immediately express those emotions come out all wrong. Fuck, shit, twaddle fuckery. . . I think everyone can relate to that. I mean what is freaky about the INFP list of personalities is that it makes sense. All these people have a wave length that connects them. 

Edgar A. Poe, Jane Goodall, Shakespeare, Andy Warhol, Orwell, and so many more good names. For a fuller list check out Famous INFP's .  I think that Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost show strong signs of this personality as well. With no two ideas alike, they are all quite original writers. Did I forget to mention J.K. Rowling and Ray Bradbury?

Though there are a couple of theorized ideal matches, the one that strikes me the most and the lover that I search for is going to be the ENFJ. I know, I know. I'm being shallow. Yet, I'm fairly convinced of this. So my emotions tell me. I just can't see myself marrying Joseph Stalin, Rush Limbaugh, or Paul Ryan. The theorized ENTJ list has too many bad apples. As does the ESFJ: Palin, Santorum, Boehner, and the founder of Walmart - icon of American capitalistic consumerism, Sam Walton. I mean, can you imagine Orwell and Walton walking down the aisle? I don't think so. 

Now, if it were Orwell and Erich Fromm, that would make much more sense. I fell in love with Erich Fromm when I was exposed to him by my sociology professor. He is thoroughly concerned with the human and social condition under hedonistic societies that advocate for rugged individualism and the pursuit of happiness through mass consumerism. OMG I love cheesecake and video games! 

The Sane Society (Routledge Classics)

Don't you just want to give him a big ol' hug and kiss? I do. Though, I could do without Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, Hitler loved the personality type of my soon to be boyfriend. Hitler writes, "Goebbels is the one [of the senior Nazis] who is the most like me as a human being."  It freaks me out a bit, and so does Oprah. Seriously though, wouldn't Phillip Zimbardo and I be perfect for one another? ENFJ Celebrity Types

The Demise of Guys: Why Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It

Thanks for teasing these ideas. Below are some more resources and related content. 

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http://www.celebritytypes.com/

Humanmetrics Personality Test

Personality Page

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Consumption, Loneliness, and Personality 

 

The Canary Effect: Suicide Rate of American Indians

Political poppycock has been crafty in drafting ways to remove its direct responsibility from letting a communities with collective identities self-implode. In being cognizant of the suicide rates of queer identified folks I couldn't help but be appalled to hear a similar response to oppression occurring in American Indian tribes across the nation. Queer is a strange position as it is present across all backgrounds, yet the sort of queer story that makes the news is the stereotypical upper middle class white teenage male who commits suicide. Though, I acknowledge some outsider incidents covered, I was pulled to tears to hear in this documentary that a pact suicide where ten individuals hung themselves in an chronological order based on a random drawing of numbers was never covered in national news. This has forced me to confront a twisted privilege where one suffering supersedes another. To acknowledge this is to open a barrel of monkeys otherwise known as Pandora's box.



As exemplified by my blog post Bodies of Difference: Black - Gay, I am adamant about drawing the parallels between individuals who all experience the impact of discriminatory legislation. Though the history, details, and disparity between experiences lead petty debates that only bring forth illusive contentions, I'm already prepared to expand the conversation beyond those petty terms.

To expand this discussion, I feel responsible for bringing this to the attention of others. To acknowledge one's oppression is to recognize an emotional core that binds all of us no matter the identity. No matter which body of difference one might live in. I feel irresponsible for focusing attention on queer identity without really paying attention to the other desperate and dire situations which operate under more stringent conditions than I have or will ever be exposed. This manifestation of oppression is certainly one of dozens reflected by the American Indian experience. Though this experience is not my own, I can certainly empathize, or dare I say sympathize with this situation.

For me, recognizing the parallels between these conditions of "the imaginary", or that of reality which have potent emotional impact, has helped me make strides in personal growth in my own life. My daily interactions with other people begin to reflect my recognition of these similarities. To counter Baldwin's cynicism in regards to the queers' position which he feels, "is no more prepared to accept black people than anywhere else in society.", I argue that queers as well as other bodies of difference can relate more to the emotional and psychological outcomes of oppressed identities. By recognizing this, one moves into a position where they are more prepared to accept, empathize, and work together to change the conventions of the operation. 

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Too Much Lennon

Over spring break I started listening to a little too much John Lennon. Is that even possible? I'm fairly convinced that we have the same personality type. Celebrity Pages - INFP This is a little terrifying considering that Joseph Goebbels is my potential lover. Yet, not so surprising so is MLK Jr. and Erich Fromm. The latter who is the author of The Sane Society (ENFJ) Seriously though, wouldn't Phillip Zimbardo and I make a cute couple?

After spring break I kept on having too many "days like this" in which nobody told me there would be. I didn't sign up for all these things people convinced me that I wanted. Like a fancy car with a fold up roof, a fancy house with a fuzzy carpet living room, and a middle management office that a college degree would prepare me for. I thought I was in this to learn about myself and the world. To grow. Then Jr. year came along and smacked me erotically in the rear. It basically said, "Hahaha, we are done with all that theory crap you loved and now we are going to prepare you for that festering capitalism that you learned to hate for the last two and a half years." Basically, after contextualizing and figuring it all out, or at least pretending our best to while smoking anxiously with anti-system buds, I was being braced for exactly what I didn't want; ths illusion to become a strict reality.



I was just trying to sleep like I did over spring break with no rude cackling interruptions when a cacophony of screeching erupted outside my door. I was reminded that I lived in a total institution that cared one thing: my money which pays for my own middle management production. I am a sardine. Like a working class hero in an airplane I am at once the product and the purchaser. Overall, it just stinks and probably doesn't taste good either unless you've smoked tobacco all your life and your taste buds are ruined.

I'm taking a break from school because I've listened to too much John Lennon. I got a taste of freedom over spring break. I've read too many anti-establishment books with coinciding anti-establishment documentaries. Obey being one of them. (Death of the Liberal Class) I can't handle living with a gorgeous roommate who on occasions sleeps naked. It makes me anxious. Most annoyingly is my lamentation on lost chances at love. I'm crying over a mutated  transformations in relationship statuses. Situation undefined to situation defined. I'm talking and sleeping with my stuffed frog. The only thing I trust is my own writing and my own choice in philosophy books and literary canons. The only thing I trust is me.

I would rather spend my days masturbating to porn, theorizing, and pretending to job search while couch serving Minnesota. I gotta start being honest with myself, and others. Nobody told me there'd  be days like these. I didn't sign up for this, so I am taking the reigns and pulling back the dogs. "I'm getting off the merry go round to watch the wheels spin." To be more cliche, I've gotta figure my life out and I think part of that is paying attention to the real reflection of my existence. My blog, my books, my writing, my songs, my friends, a little me time to figure out who me actually is. Society had its go at telling me who I am. It didn't work on me. So now it's time for me to tell society who I am, and I'm quite unsure of what that might entail.
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Bodies of Difference: Black - Gay

I grew up on the Iron Range in Minnesota where at once a bustling center of diversity of Italian, Slavic, and Italian immigrants through the years, melted into a white working class. Though Barack Obama won the Iron Range and "Da Range" was partially responsible for producing Bob Dylan, this isn't an accurate representation of the strong social views which permeates the social consciousness and  isolates bodies of differences. Here I mean both queer or black. (Iron Range)

I spent most of my formidable years where racism, homophobia, and sexism ran rampant. The most socially neutral aspect of the region was the landscape. The Wood's family home was located in the middle of a boreal forty acre forest right next to the Hull Rust mine. I bounced between there in St. Louis where my family's country home amongst the sticks was and the periodically grove spotted farmland of Koochiching county where much of my mother's side of the family resided.

I write this intro to echoe ToddClayton's well received article where he begins by describing his white middle class upbringing, “As a white, middle-class American, I was the product of a predominantly white, middle-class education that didn't assign The Fire Next Time and Giovanni's Room, two of Baldwin's masterpieces, alongside 1984 and The Scarlet Letter.”(Gay will Never Be the New Black)

What a list of identities. White, middle-class, American, gay, male. I'd like to compare this to my own. Gay, single parent household, white, working class, radical Lutheran upbringing, male. I have one experience similar to Clayton, I didn't get to read Baldwin's visceral literary genius until I reached the Twin Cities during my Jr. year at Hamline University. Overall, my background is quite different and my perspective concerning the relationship between black or gay reflects this difference.

To begin I want to acknowledge a number of troubling things; my own racist, homophobic, and sexist upbringing; my privilege as a white male who frequently passes as heterosexual, the undeniable racism prevalent in the queer community, and equally so the homophobic attitudes that permeate black culture. Any frustration readers may have with my position is not a result of a true core of me, but of an ignorance I haven't become aware of. This isn't an excuse, but I acknowledge the possibility hoping that if so someone will tactfully bring it to my attention.

In being cognizant of these things, I adamantly disagree that queerness and blackness are fundamentally separate realities. Most abhorrently I can't sit back and allow sugar coated popular politically correct liberalness suffocate my attitude towards this subject. So long as in discourse the belief that the two are on separate world's of injustice, inequality, and hate - there will forever be this problem that Baldwin recognized of the queer community, “the gay world as such is no more prepared to accept black people than anywhere else in society.”

No measuring stick induced; both have endured a different set of oppressed conditions related to varying social, historical, and political factors. To be more rebellious and let the blatancy of an Iron Range working class background pridefully shine; I fail to see a difference between the components that result in A. - teenagers placing guns to their head, aspiring musicians jumping off bridges, boys barely men hanging themselves, young adults lighting an autistic “fag” on fire to watch him burn and B. - the historicallynching of black bodies, the disciplined whipping of slaves, and the current atrocity that is our prison system, and the economic/educational disparities between whites and blacks. (Black working class gays left out of our national gay rights agenda.)

Now, there is no doubt in my mind, measuring stick induced, that the African American black body experience has been more severe in its grip than this petty period in time in which the radical right has devised a more subtle way of murdering the bodies and souls of difference. As is evidenced by the burning of an innocent gay autistic teen and the shooting of an innocent Skittles carrying Trayvon Martin, both bodies of difference serve as a cutting board for “white” male dominance to assert its authority over anything that is perceived as a threat to its arbitrary goals. These social constructions appear as national narratives day in and day out. Sometimes a particularly intriguing story will receive media attention for weeks. The tragedies emotionally grasp those who identify with these constructions of difference and the psychological wounds that compliment them are the resulting reality.

By closing our eyes to the compelling similarities of the psychological wounds shared by oppressed bodies of difference squelches the opportunity for ubiquitous solidarity in “the fight against homophobia and racism [which] are undoubtedly entwined through their shared struggle for human dignity”. It is not an oversight to recognize the shared pain and consequence of similar realities nor can it be simply reduced to conflating the two identities. Though the historical and political elements vary, to recognize the shared emotional, physical, and spiritual suffering of oppression has the power to unite us and predispose us to break down our illusions of fundamental difference so that all can become at once liberated. 

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Supreme Court on Same-Sex Marriage: Hollingsworth V Perry

The Supreme Court heard arguments on the subject of same sex marriage today in Hollingsworth V Perry. I strongly encourage all who are interested in the process of our political system as well as the debates surrounding same-sex marriage to take an hour and twenty minutes of your time to witness the United States Supreme Court in action on one of the most “agonizingly difficult issue[s]” of our time. Supreme Court of the United States Hollingsworth V Perry. Instead of rehashing the perspectives I want to extract the elements of this case I find most intriguing. Those components include the weight social science is given in decision making, the paradox of redefining marriage as a social institution, and the problem of reducing marriage for the singular purpose of reproduction. 

As someone who studies sociology I am impressed that the court takes social research seriously in considering their decisions, but disappointed that they aren't swayed by the research available. To the court, the phenomenon of gay marriage is too recent and too ambiguous to decide. Justice Scalia weighs in saying, “There's considerable disagreement among sociologists as to what consequences of raising a child in a single-sex family, whether that is harmful to the child or not.” Echoing to some degree Scalia's inquiry is Justice Alito, “Same sex marriage is very new. I think it was first adopted in the Netherlands in 2000. So there isn't a lot of data about its effect.”

At once they are taking into account a socially scientific argument as opposed to a strictly religious one. Though the religious one is simply morphed into the definition of marriage for the purpose of procreation. A definition is key to this case as well as most all cases. The highest court is in the business of defining the laws by setting precedents.

Stating that same-sex marriage advocates are openly redefining marriage forces the opposition into paradox. The already shallow institution of marriage, a contract that binds a man and a woman together for financial benefits as given by the state, becomes more vacuous in its nature. Working with the opponents definition makes marriage simply a union between a man and woman for the financial benefits which aids in procreation. In essence the purpose is to get married and have babies. Any other elements are completely disregarded. This goes back to what my article in the Hutchinson Leader late in 2012.

“. . . marriage is more than a man and awoman living together in union. Marriage takes courage. Marriage takes passion. Marriage takes communication. These things make marriage meaningful. These things make marriage work.”

Justice Kagan and Justice Breyer do a good job of pointing out the problem of infertility under the strict traditional definition of marriage by which its purpose is to procreate. The state operating under this definition aims to regulate marriage on the basis of the ability to procreate. It's the age old problem and I am glad it was addressed directly. 

Justice Breyer asks a precise rhetorical question, “Now, what happens to your argument about the institution of marriage as a tool towards procreation? Given the fact that, in California, too, couples that aren't gay but can't have children get married all the time.”

Mr. Cooper should have answered - Well, Justice Breyer, I think my argument really sucks now and in a moment the whole courtroom will be laughing at me for implying old people have children on a regular basis.

JUSTICE KAGAN: Because that's the same State interest, I would think, you know. If you are over the age of 55, you don't help us serve the Government's interest in regulating procreation through marriage. So why is that different?

 

MR. COOPER: Your Honor, even with respect to couples over the age of 55, it is very rare that both couples -- both parties to the couple are infertile, and the traditional ­

(Laughter.)

JUSTICE KAGAN: No, really, because if the couple -- I can just assure you, if both the woman and the man are over the age of 55, there are not a lot of children coming out of that marriage.

(Laughter.)

American political reality and discourse can be humorous. But dangerously so. This decision in the coming months will certainly have unpredictable emotional consequences on all. In considering the arguments and pondering the questions the court posed I feel emotionally reduced. My identity has been confined to the space of one hour and twenty minutes. On one end, I'd like to say I'm not an experiment, but in terms of the mob mentality, I am a recent social construction pulled out of thin air. To be “gay” and to desire marriage is to introduce another manifestation/definition of the family. Even though homoerotic behavior has long been present, one must acknowledge that for many it is a radical idea for these relationships to be verified by the institution of marriage. By allowing for this new definition to exist, it broadens the definition of marriage to include more than the superficial notions of procreation and has the potential to expand the understanding of long term effects in the realm of social science. It is assumed that I believe these impacts to be overwhelmingly positive. As others, I await anxiously the final verdict.

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