Monday, January 21, 2013

Is the Christoper West Controversy a Result of Personality Conflicts: Part II


So some of my friends read my earlier post regarding how the Christopher West controversy may be a prime case of a personality conflict.  


In that post I mostly focused on iNtuitor (N) - sensor (S) differences.  One of my friends pointed out that some of the critisims of West's work were very valid from a theological point of view.  Of this I do not argue.  I am sure there probably are some fundamental problems with what West is saying.  It was pointed out to me that David Schindler was one of West's most staunch critics.  Supposedly he wrote a blog post of some kind of his criticisms.  I could not find the whole thing, but I did find some excerpts.  At first I did not think Schindler's criticisms would be personality-based, but as I looked at it more I changed my mind.  There may very well be a personality-based conflict here.  Below is my reasoning why.  I also want to point out.  Even if my personality analysis is off, which it probably is, and even if distinct personality types do not exist,  it does not matter from a practical point of view.  There are complementary ways of thinking.  In some ways that is what the different personality types are capturing.  Depending on which philosophy you tend to bias towards you will value different things.  These values are often morally neutral, but they can lead to different plans of action or different results.  Anyways here is my thoughts concerning the David Schindler-Christopher West conflict.  (The style may seem odd but that is because I took it from a post I sent to a friend.)

"
I could not find the David Schindler post either, but I did find snippets of it.  I would say many of the comments Schindler makes are not of the nature of what I am talking about.  Schindler may even be right about alot of the things he is speaking of, but most average people do not consciously think of the things he is talking about. He uses very technical language most people would not understand nor care to understand.  

Actually even in the Schindler case their may be a personality conflict between West and Schindler.  Let me explain.  I am willing to bet that West is an extrovert.  Schindler on the other hand is an academic.  I would not be surprised if he is an introvert.  Let us suppose for the sake of argument he is an intravert. Actually I would not be surprised if West is ENTJ and Schindler is INTJ.  Let's pretend this is the case for the sake of argument because I am familiar how these types of arguments play out and I can see some similarities with what I have read from Schindler.  INTJs (Shindler?) love being intellectual, focusing on details and precision.  They are good at studying individual topics in depth.  They are natural perfectionists in their thought.  They also have great skill at criticizing things.  It is almost their favorite thing to do from what I can tell.  The problem is they are often not good working outside of frameworks.  They need structure to operate.  They often seem uncomfortable dealing with poorly defined problems.  They also tend not to like to take action unless everything is planned out in detail.  They also like to think things through in detail before speaking.  ENTJs (West?) on the other hand are also intellectual, but in a different way.  ENTJs tend to know a modest amount about many different things.  ENTJs are generalists.  He finds totally new connections people have not seen before.  He has a very big-picture view of the world.  The big picture comes at the expense of precision and perfection in thought however.  West is totally unafraid to throw out half-baked ideas and see what people think of them.  ENTJs tend to think out loud alot and this drives INTJs crazy.  It is just how ENTJs think to work out problems but INTJs think they are speaking without thinking.  There are are pros and cons to both techniques.  He is also out with the people pushing his ideas in the hopes that it will make things better.  He uses new analogies to make things easier for people to understand why they should follow sexual teachings.  West is a doer and a man of the world.  He wants results.  At the same time though he does want precision, but if he focuses too much on precision and perfection he will never get any results.  He may very well welcome Schindler's input but not be totally sure how to implement it.  Sometimes too people with a big picture recognize problems that people focused on details totally miss and vice versa. 

At the end of the day TOB is the wild west of Catholic thinking (No pun intended J ).  This kind of field needs pioneers like West (ENTJ) to set down some framework for people to work with.  West will make mistakes but he will correct them as time goes on.  I would not necessarily count on academics to pull this off.  At least not at first.  The people need someone like West to put this stuff in a language the common person can understand.  At the same time, as West puts a rough structure in place there will be problems and it will need to be changed.  His original ideas will certainly have problems and will need to be refined.  That is where people like Schindler come in.  We need people like Schinder (INTJ?) to refine the ideas and techniques.  At the end of the day we really need both people.  Depending on how you look at it one or the other is right.  In a way I would argue they are both right.  It may sound relativistic but I do not think it is.  Here is why.  Consistently whenever someone has a vision of hell we hear that the number one reason people are in hell is because of "sins of the flesh." Clearly this is a big problem.  People accuse West of thinking about sex too much, but at the end of the day maybe that is appropriate.  If most people who are in hell are there because of sex then maybe we need to think about dealing with this problem alot so people do not end up there.  In a pragmatic sense the theology does not need to be perfect to get across the point that they should follow the Church's teaching on sex so they do not end up in hell.  Besides most people will not remember the details of the theology anyways.  They will only remember the gist of it.  Actually alot of people will not be swayed to the teaching using rational theologic logic at all.  Another accusation is that West makes TOB too romantic.  Guess what, Feeler personality types will almost certainly respond to romantic emotional appeals than rational logic.  Remember the Maya Angelou saying, “People will forget what you said, People will forget what you did, But people will never forget how you made them feel.”  At the end of the day all the matters is that people obtain salvation.  If romantic appeals are what does it then so be it.  Now at the same time small theological problems can cause problems in the long term and can lead to poor intellectual foundation.  As time goes on this will be more vital.  In the long term we need people like Schindler to fix these problems to keep the whole intellectual framework sound.  I would not count on West to do this.  At the same time I would not count on Schindler to get the message out to the people in a manner they understand.  We really need both of them, and it could very well be the case that the reason they do things the way they do is because of their personalities.  
"

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Have you met your doppelgänger?




This is a music video I came across awhile ago.  I thought it was really pertinent to this discussion because I like to think of it as a case of an ENTJ-ENTJ meeting.  The dragon in the movie symbolizes an ENTJ because he is scary looking.  For some reason many people are scared of ENTJs.  I have been told this my whole life and apparently it is a phenomenon common to ENTJs.  I do not really understand why this is because I feel friendly, but apparently I am not perceived as such.  The dragon in this story is also friendly.  He wants to be friends with the people in the town, but everything he does to show goodwill gestures go wrong and is misunderstood.  As a result, the towns deploys the military to the dragon's island to blow him up.  They find a very sad dragon when they arrive and they proceed to kill him.  At the end the general in charge of killing the dragon shoots the dragon's eye ball and sees the statue of friendship the dragon had made as a present to the town.  The general, who is also almost certainly also ENTJ, immediately recognizes the mistake he has made and he is probably sad he accidentally killed a kindred spirit, because he also knows what it feels like to be misunderstood and perceived as scary. 

One of the most interesting aspects of learning about personalities is coming to the discovery that there are people like me out there.  I always thought everyone else seemed quite a bit different than me.  For whatever reason since I have been in high school I have had quite a few INTJ friends and even with them I could tell there were similarities, but still some significant differences.  Then one day I tested a person I knew only as an acquaintance, and I was surprised to find this person was an ENTJ like myself.  As time went on I discovered a few other acquaintances of mine were also ENTJ.  Then as I studied other ENTJs more and I got better at identifying them.  It was really interesting to see what people like myself were like.  Now that I know a little better what I am looking for it is almost like looking in a mirror when I see another ENTJ.  One of the biggest things is that I can much better understand why people might perceive ENTJs as scary or cold.  Actually one of the most shocking discoveries for me was that Eric Cartman on South Park is ENTJ.  I really do not care for that character, but when I found he was ENTJ I could totally see how I might do things very similar that I did not like and those are things I might need to work on.  Another good example is St. Paul.  I really did not care for St. Paul for most of my life.  Not so much because of his personality, he just seemed like an interloper to me.  Anyways a few years ago I was reading about him talking about his adventures and I warmed up to him a little.  Then I discovered he was probably ENTJ.  He was almost definitely some kind of Choleric and the ENTJ is the Choleric-Choleric.  As I read some of the stories I could see it.  For instance even when he was a prisoner in the boat the guards looked to him for leadership.  It may seem weird, but this sort of thing happens to me sometimes.  I remember there were times in college where people who had decades more experience would start coming to me asking for advice.  Anyways, since this happened I am much more friendly with St Paul.  I am looking forward to meeting him.  Actually I think God the Father is probably ENTJ too and that is one reason I am looking forward to meeting him. In general I find my fellow ENTJs are pretty friendly.  We may look rough on the outside, but often we are soft on the inside.  Also we get alot done together and we are really interesting to talk to and we are all a bit on the adventurous side to some degree.  That is nice too :-)

Anyways, my feeling is you can learn alot by meeting people similar to yourself.  For people that are SJ or SP this is probably easy.  But for Ns it is probably more difficult, and for NTs more difficult still.  Another suggestion I have for NTs is that we are all pretty rough people and should just forgive each other if we make each other mad and let it go.  Many of us only mean well but sometimes we can really push people.  Even each other.  We may be low on feelings compared to most people but we do have them.  It is so easy for us to mess up social interactions even when we mean well.  There is only so many of us and we have alot to offer one another.  

I would be curious to know how other personality types perceive their own kind. 







Monday, January 14, 2013

Is the Christopher West Controversy Primarily a Misunderstanding Between Personalities?




A few years ago Christopher West came under some fire for going on ABC news and comparing Pope John Paul II with Hugh Hefner.  Here is the news story:

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Sex/story?id=7527380&page=1

Now this version of the interview may be easy to take out of context, but if you watch Christopher West's videos he makes no secret of his comparison between Pope John Paul II and Hugh Hefner.  He had been talking about that for quite awhile before the ABC interview.  Why was there no outrage beforehand?  I have always thought the criticism of the JPII-Hugh Hefner comparison was unfounded.  If you listen to it he is not glorifying Hefner in any way.  He is simply trying to make a deeper point.  I could not understand why people gave him such a hard time.  Are there things you could find to legitimately critize about Christopher West's work?  Yeah, sure he is human and he makes mistakes, but I am pretty confident his heart is in the right place.  At least I have no reason to believe it is not.

Last night I had a flash of insight that I think may shed some light on the matter.  I suspect this controversy is in many ways a personality conflict.  I think it is almost certainly an iNtuitor-Sensor misunderstanding and and for many people it may be a Thinker-Feeler misunderstanding.

For More info on iNtuitors and Sensors see this link
http://www.hillinghypnotherapy.co.uk/personality-test-online/personality-testing-explained/sensor-and-intuitor-what-is-the-difference/ 

For more information on thinkers and feelers I suggest this link
http://www.hillinghypnotherapy.co.uk/personality-test-online/personality-testing-explained/thinkers-and-feelers-what-is-the-difference/ 

First let's look at Christopher West  (I suggest you take what follows with a grain of salt, I am often wrong about this stuff. ).  I am guessing he is an iNtuitor, (N) type.  All of his work deals with finding connections between things.  For instance the connection between Theology and the Body and the Scripture.  He is a fairly abstract thinker and is very comfortable dealing with patterns and relationships between things.  My guess is he is probably also a Thinker.  He seems pretty detached from his work to me.  He takes it seriously but he looks at it from a distance and he is full of new ideas.  He is probably a judger because he is all about finding order, and he is probably an extrovert because he is on a mission to evangelize the world.  I would go so far to hazard that he might be ENTJ like myself.  The reason I think this is the following.  Faith is a very personal thing.  It is not something I liked talking about for most of my life.  I think this is because I am ENTJ.  Introverted Feeling is the ENTJ's weakest cognitive function.  This means we ENTJs almost do not have feeling functions.  If weaker functions get stronger as you age I expect I will naturally understand emotions when I am about 40 or 50.  They say ENTJs have strong deep sentimental streaks that no one knows about and they do not talk about.  I think this is true.  ENTJs in general are reported to be not comfortable talking about emotions and I can say for myself this is true.  If you watch Christopher West he usually seems almost in pain as he talks about the Theology of the Body.  I think this may be really uncomfortable for him.  If he were an NF he would probably be very familiar with dealing with things that have no logical explanation.  In a sense he is really going out on a limb and bearing his soul to the world.  If he were an NF I think he would be smiling and not flinch talking about emotions.  He is not like this.  He seems too analytical to me.  (Now I want to personality test him to see if I know what I am talking about :-) )

Anyways most people in the world are Sensors (S).  Sensors tend to like more concrete straighforward things.  They tend not to pickup on connections and relationships between things as well.  I suspect most people who saw the ABC interview were Sensors and just heard the words Pope JPII and Hugh Hefner in the same sentence and didn't like the sound of it.  They probably did not understand the connections and relationships that West was trying to present.  This may seem odd to some people.  Especially if you are N, but part of the reason I came up with this is that I noticed it in some people I know.  N-S differences are considered the biggest difference between people.  I can now totally see how this could happen.

I would not be suprised if Alice Von Hildbrand, one of West's most outspoken critics is also S.  Here is an interview with Alice. 



In the interview she is always citing other people's authority.  Mostly her husband.  I hazard to guess she is SJ.  Probably a feeler as well just because women tend more often to be feelers.  She uses alot of very flowery language which seems very F-like.  SJ types tend to want to uphold the status quo.  The Theology of the Body in many ways pretty radical so it is not surprising that SJ's might react negatively to it the first time they hear it.  I want to personality test her too to check my hypothesis out.  The gift of the SJ philosophy is that it has a stabilizing effect on society.  As time goes on I suspect SJ types will warm to the ideas.

So why didn't we see much criticism of West before the ABC interview?  My guess is that most people who were exposed to West's thinking were in college.  They probably heard it at a Theology on Tap or something like that.  College culture is very N-like.  It would probably be very open to new ideas like west.  Also, in my experience there are alot of NFs in Catholic circles.  For instance the usually rare INFJ seems to be everywhere in Catholic young adult groups.  It seems pretty common to me for the leaders of these groups to be ENFJ.  My guess is the culture in colleges was such that all the S types figured that was the status quo and they rolled with it.

As far as the thinker-feeler misunderstanding goes I think it is pretty simple.  Feelers tend to put themselves into the situations that are dealing with.  They empathize with things.   Many of them probably associate negative feelings with Hefner and positive feelings with JPII.  They probably do not like their positive feeling being corrupted by negative ones.  Some feelers literally seem to feel pain if something is mentioned that evoked a bad feeling in them.  Thinkers do not do this.  They just look at this detachedly.  Some of the criticisms I hear of the JPII - Hefner comparison seem very feeler-based to me.  People will make very emotionally charged remarks concerning mentioning JPII and Hefner in the same sentence.  Not that being a feeler is bad or anything.  It is just a different way of dealing with the world.

I could be wrong, but this is what I think.  I would be curious to know what others think about this.



Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Stairway to Heaven: An ode to the Virgin Mary


A few months ago our young adult group was meeting and we were discussing Catholic music and I could not help but bring up one of my favorite songs about the Virgin Mary... Stairway to Heaven.  Now immediately this started a bit of a controversy.  I heard all the usual cliché things... The whole band was totally high while they made that album, it has the devil talking in it when you play it backwards, etc. etc.  Well I have heard it played backwards and the whole devil thing is a pretty big stretch if you ask me.  And yes the members of Led Zeppelin were probably totally high when they wrote this song.  Interestingly if you read any books written by exorcists they like to comment that drug use is one good way to get possessed.  Well along that vein I do not see why the Holy Spirit could not also have some influence on a person when they were in a mentally compromised state.  It is not something I would recommend, but I have known God long enough to know that he plays by his own rules, and does whatever he wants.  If he wants to he can inspire Led Zeppelin to make a song about the Virgin Mary... Which is exactly what it looks like "Stairway to Heaven" is to me.  Now its widely reported these guys were influenced by Lord of the Rings which was written by a practicing Catholic.  You definitely see some of the LOR imagry in there, but I am going to ignore that for now.  The multiple interpretations of this song are part of what makes it interesting

The song is chock full of imagery related to the Virgin Mary and Christianity.  It is blatantly explicit at times.  It's not clear to me how anyone who is familiar with Mary could miss it.  Regardless I have gotten mostly a skeptical response for my observations, so I am going to go through the lyrics and spell it out.  Now this is a highly poetic song.  If you don't like what I see just forget it.  There are more important things in life to worry about.  My primary motivation in writing this is to give a few more people an outlook on this song that they may not have experienced before.  Here we go...




Lyrics to Stairway to Heaven

There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to heaven
When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for
Ooh, ooh, and she's buying a stairway to heaven




There's a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure




'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings





In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven




Ooh, it makes me wonder
Ooh, it makes me wonder



There's a feeling I get when I look to the west




 


And my spirit is crying for leaving

 


In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees
And the voices of those who stand looking
Ooh, it makes me wonder
Ooh, it really makes me wonder



And it's whispered that soon if we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason


And a new day will dawn for those who stand long
And the forests will echo with laughter


If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now
It's just a spring clean for the May queen









Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There's still time to change the road you're on
And it makes me wonder


Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know



The piper's calling you to join him


Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow and did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind?



And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold








And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last



When all are one and one is all, yeah



To be a rock and not to roll



And she's buying a stairway to heaven

My Interpretation:

This is talking about the hope Christians are expected to have.  The lady buying the stairway to heaven refers to Mary obtaining graces for us as a rest of her intersession.  Some say Jesus cannot refuse anything Mary asks of him.  This is why if "the stores are all closed, with a word"  she can get what she wants.  Think wedding at Cana.  



The “sign on the wall,” refers to things like the law, the Bible, the Church, the Prophets, natural law, etc, etc,


The two meanings here can refer to a number of things.  The concept of mystery is at the core of Christianity.  It could also refer to different people responding to different methods of communication. 




 This is just a generally philosophical statement.  No need to constrain it with my interpretation.  Come up with your own.  Mine has to do with self-doubts and questioning. 


The constant reference to wonder I interpret at the highest level as wonder about God and a yearning to know him better

I am going to postulate this refers to western civilization which Christianity had a major role in, but there could very well be other interpretations that are more interesting.   I am open to comments. because I think my interpretation here could use more thought. 



This refers to us and the innate longing we have for things bigger than ourselves.  To become better.
 

I think this refers to generally mystical things like looking for signs.  There are probably better ways to interpret this out there.  I will keep thinking about it. 




If we all get on board with Jesus’ message we will be led to reason.  Jesus is the piper. 


Basically this is a poetic way of saying that if we persevere we will experience eternal joy. 


My interpretation of this is that the “bustle in the hedgerow” is a person experiencing the discomfort and confusion and excitement brought on by conversion from a sinful life to a life of striving to follow God’s law.  The “spring clean” can be thought of confession and conversion.   The “May queen” is an explicit reference to Mary.  It is interesting to note too that the temo of the music changes here too.  I think this is to echo the discomfort and excitement.

This is a clear reference to the call for conversion.  In Catholicism there is always time to repent until you are dead.  This makes me wonder too. 



The head is humming could be any number of things, a person’s conscious, the promptings of grace, personal feelings and thoughts about things bigger than yourself. 


The piper is once again Jesus calling you. 


 The lady is once again the Virgin Mary.  The stairway alludes to grace which is the path to holiness.  The “whispering wind” is an explicit reference to the Holy Sprit.   


 As we go through our lives the sins (shadows) can just add up and add up.  It can lead a person to despair.  But Mary is there to help us.  She helps inspire Hope.  No matter how damaged things become.  In the end everything will come to resolution. (I also think the music changes dramatically here to emphasize the importance that Hope is called for in spite of our shortcomings and the suffering of the world.)



If you quiet your thoughts and feelings so your heart .  The “tune” is a relationship with the Trinity. 


When all members of the communion Saints are united in the Body of Christ. 

This brings up a lot of imagery.  To persevere in Faith, Hope, and Love, Peter is the “Rock” of the Church.  It could be thought of as a “baptism” of rock music. 

Of course she is ;-)

I found the lyrics for Stairway Here: