Zombie Apocalyspe, Emotion and Sin

It is no secret that zombies are very popular today.  What is it about swarms of grotesque, walking dead creatures that appeals to people.  I would like to offer a reflection why this might be based on a dream I had last night.  But first a little background on what I have been thinking about the last few days since my dreams seem to come from recent experiences.  

First, the last few days I discovered that the adoration chapel in Los Alamos has a book from Magnificant called "Praying with St Paul."  Now for most of my life St Paul has been one of my least favorite Saints and I did not care for him on a personal basis.  However in the last year or so he is now one of my most favorite Saints and I have wanted to learn more about him so I have been going in and reading the book.   So far one reflection I found very thought provoking and that is the shocking nature of the crucifix.  We do not think about it much but we are literally wearing recklessness of a guy being executed around our necks.  Imagine what people thought about that 2000 years ago.  Apparently St Paul was a big proponent of the Crucifix.  The modern equivalent would be to wear a t-shirt of a guy in an electric chair.  If you think about it this really is not that different than many of the heavy metal t-shirts out there.  It is not a very pleasant symbol.  We have just been sensitized to it. 


Second, 5 years ago I came across a situation that forced me to realize my view of the world might be incomplete.  I am naturally a very rational person and am not influenced much by emotion in comparison to most people.  However I came across a person who forced me to rethink my stance.  I began studying emotion and forgiveness in earnest.  Both it's strengths and weaknesses.  One person I came across during this study was Kina Grannis.  She is an independent musician from Los Angeles who gained a world-wide following on YouTube for her emotionally honest music.  I think personality wise we are in many ways opposites so I found it interesting to see her point of view of the world.  Every couple of months I might look and see what she is up to on her YouTube channel.  I did so last night and I came across.  Some collaboration she was doing with some former UCSD students.  Here it is.  It is called "The Last":





Now when I saw this I was impressed by their ability to use emotion to tell a story.  Now I went to UCSD for graduate school and in my experience it has a culture that is somewhat emotional and mellow in nature.  I can connect with some of the videos because they film them at apartment complexes I am familiar with.  It was not like my prior undergraduate experience at Colorado State which was much more rough.  I am not surprised these guys came out of this kind of ecosystem.  However a few things bothered me.  First, I have noticed that over the years Kina has subtly shed innocence.  She never claimed innocense as a trademark but as time has gone on it has happened.  She has subtly implied through her music that she is comfortable with not practicing chastity and this particular video reinforces that observation.  It is clear to me that we have different values systems.  It makes me sad, but I am not surprised.  Most people accept a non-chaste values system.  I am used to it.  That is also why though I am typically quite impressed when I come across the rare person who does.  Personally I am a big fan of innocence.  If you ever met me you might not think so but I am.  For instance I HATE swearing.  I hate it especially when I hear my brothers swear.  It makes me sad because they are eroding their dignity away when they do it.  Second, the story itself while heartwarming is not realistic.  If you talk to most people they will not have fond memories of may prior love interests.  Most of the time these stories are marked by betrayal and brokenness.  Sure you can learn something from them but at a very great cost.  It is debatable to me if the cost is even worth it.  My personal opinion is that it is important to guard your heart.  In reality emotion cannot heal these pains so I felt as if the movie was in some sense lying.  Kina and the other guy are in some sense lying to one another even because they have not made any kind of real commitment to one another.  I looked through comments on the video and I saw other people shared my point of view.  One of the most mysteries I spend the most time trying to gain more insight into justice, mercy and forgiveness and how this works in relationships.  Christianity seems to add a super-rational element to the discussion that is beyond understanding.  "Beyond I make all things new."  I am trying to find ways to understand this better in my own life.  For instance there have even been Saints you have made the claim that certain types of damage that can be engaged in during relationships that cannot even be healed by God.  God's justice and mercy are quite interesting for me to think about it is baffling. 

Anyways - let's get to the matter at hand...  Zombie's, now keep in mind this was a dream so it is a little hazy so please forgive ambiguity. 

In my dream I was transported back to my old house in San Diego.  Throughout the dream some friends and I were driving around town and I noticed that some of them were changing.  They were becoming agressive and they were hurting one another.  In particular they would tear at each other's skin especially around the face and mouth.  Generally with sharp objects such as knives and skewers. For all intended purposes they looked like zombies to me so that is how I will refer to them.  The people who were zombiefied were in various stages of zombification.  Some were only slightly zombies.  Others very much so and you could tell the difference based on how cut up they were.  The zombie's also really did not attack non-zombie's.  Only their own kind and it was proportional to how zombified the person was.  The most zombified person's were attacked the most.  The least zombified persons were attacked less so by other zombie's.  The zombie's sort of had a disease but not really. some of the zombies were able to get away from the lifestyle.  In fact some of my friends who had become zombified were able to get away from it and become normal again.  The zombies could not be described as mindless.  They had consciousness about them and the person they once were was still there.  It was more like they were totally enraged with hate.  Also, interestingly, the zombies did not really try to infect everyone to be zombies.  They mostly focused on their friends and family.  Effectively the zombies would form what were effectively family groups consisting of family and friends they had convinced to join them.  That is who they tried to pull down the most to live in the zombie life style.  They were not extremely violent about it.  It was more like a form of peer pressure they used to get people to join their group.  It is not really clear to me what exactly convinced people to decide to join a zombie family other than the fact they knew the other zombies as friends and family.  They did not hide the violence and torture they engaged in with each other and were quite open about it.  They actually seemed to convince others to join in.  Even though the zombies only recruited family and friends I could tell the epidemic was spreading across the city.    You just could not see it as you walked down the street unless you looked more closely and intimately.  In day to day life many of the zombies looked fairly normal.  The worst zombies looked only slightly cut up while they walked down the street.  You could particularly tell the home of a "zombie family."  When you did get into a house that was infected with zombiism the members of that family were in some sense literally torturng one another.  Their was typically one Alpha zombie in the house and a number of subservient zombies.  All the zombies would yell at each other and engage in tearing flesh off of each other's bodies and faces with knives and other sharp objects.

In particular one friend of mine (This person did not correspond to any person I actually know,  I just thought of him as close friend) was an alpha zombie.  As we were walking down the street together a rival group of zombies drove up in a white car and kidnapped my friend by throwing him in the car and driving off.  They wanted to make him a subservient zombie in their group.  They took him to the top of a building where the other zombies in their group were.  Myself and another friend were watching what was happing from the top of a neighboring building in hopes of rescuing him.  It turned out though that my friend was too strong a zombie for them and he took over as the head torturer of the group that kidnapped him.  I could watch him stab one of his kidnappers through the cheek with a knife and proceed to drag him around and take control of him.  I was worried he might be the worse zombie of all.  

The dream ended with me on the top of a metal roof where a zombie family was living.  In this particular home there were members in a much lower state of zombiism that did not participate in the torture or even hang out near it.  These persons would cook food and throw it to the more violent zombies to keep them in their state of death and their lifestyle of torture.  At this particular time we had just realized a particular chemical weakness of the zombies.  Unfortuntately the zombies realized it shortly after we did as well and had begun to take steps to work around it.  Basically the dream ended there.

Ordinarily I would just ignore a dream like this and think nothing of it, but I am kind of in a season of reflection right now so I decided to ponder it awhile and I asked God if there was anything worth learning from this.  Then I just zoned out and fell asleep again and when I woke up I had a thought. 

Zombies are essentially the "walking dead."  In some sense who else is the walking dead?  People not living in a state of grace.  I have often wondered what the world would look like if a person's state of grace were visible.  I wonder now if I have seen some glimpse of what that might look like.  So often I feel as though family/friends is either the ultimate conduit of virtue or vice.  Some family and friends just pull you down to a low common denominator and encourage sin.  This happens alot among people you would hope have your best interest at heart.  Think about all the unmarried couples living together or the friends who encourage others to steal or engage in various other things they should not be doing.  Sometimes even parents or aunts or uncles encourage sin at times.  No one is really innocent, and we have all led others to sin at some point.   It is not all bad though, sometimes family and friends do help get you out.  It goes both ways.  The low-order zombies throwing food to the worse zombies are kind of like enablers.  Somewhat involved but perhaps not to the same degree. In the end the worse zombies are only hurting themselves and those around them.  And the fact that people for no real reason joined the zombies was indicative of the irrational nature of sin.  There was hope and redemption too though.  As I said some zombie's left the zombie lifestyle.  I had friends in the dream that did this.  Even my friend who was one of the worst zombie's was trying to get out when he was more of his normal self on the street.   The thing is so many things look nice and friendly and sweet on the outside, but when you look closer things might not be so ordered. 

As time goes on I realize how much brokenness and hurt there is out there among people.  When you really try to follow a Christian lifestyle I have found you are shielded from alot of problems you may be totally ignorant of.  For instance I had a friend once tell me some problems he was having with his girlfriend.  I could not believe it because though I have had trouble with Catholic Ladies at times it was nothing like what he was describing.  After that I say give me the Catholic lady challenges any day thank you.  I definitely appreciated them more that day.  You don't appreciate this as much if you grow up Christian and hang out with Christian friends, but if you talk to people that have not had this benefit you can see real hurt.  Christians have their own hurt and challenges no doubt, but I would gladly take those problems over some of the more secular problems some people have shared with me.   Some people just seem somewhat hopeless.  That light of the world stuff is no joke. 

Ultimately what I cannot help but wonder is whether or not the appeal of the hordes of the "walking dead" resonates with some sense of spiritual death people are capable of feeling or want to avoid or see in others.  Do they feel they are spiritually dead and not realize that is what it is?   That is what I wonder.  It may be a stretch but maybe not. 

The Prodigal Son, Recovery, Relaxation and Growth.

Why do we sleep?  I was asking myself this question a few weeks ago.  I was particularly busy and I was wondering why we bothered with all this sleeping stuff.  I looking over the internet a little bit and as far as I can tell science does not really have a good answer to this one at this time. 

Last night I was eating dinner with a friend and she told me how she decided to give up eating one of her favorite foods for the sake of a special intention.  I asked her how long she thought that was going to go on, to which she replied, "Until I die if I have to,"  I told her, "God really doesn't work that way, he is usually actually friendlier than we humans are."  I told her she would probably be back to eating her favorite food by sometime next year.  God's "Yolk is easy and his burden is light."  In my experience we humans tend to be the ones to make things more blood and guts than they actually need to be.  I think it is a part of human nature.  Maybe broken human nature always trying to atone for things that we cannot. 

I was driving home this morning and I was thinking about the prodigal son and imagination.  I was thinking about the elder son.  In my life I tend to most identify with him.  A lot of people like to give the older son a hard time, but I just was not convinced that he was just some jealous/petty person.  I felt there was more to the story.  I have been reflecting on it all weekend. 

At first before the start of the weekend I realized explored the idea that the elder son was actually more respected by the Father.  The Father and the Elder son had a more adult relationship than the Father and the younger son.  In some sense the Father had to appease the spiritually weak younger son with parties much like a child needs to be entertained with toys.  This reminded me of people's conversion stories.  In the beginning they are usually very sweet and flowery.  Then later things get more difficult.  I thought he was simply providing the sons with what they need according to their current spiritual development. 

I realized there was a problem though and it was not this simple. - the father wanted the elder son to join the younger son at the party.  He wanted him to participate in the fun too.  He wanted him to also step away from the labor, he wanted him to go on the retreat.  He wanted everyone to take some time off and enjoy life and have the child-like spirit. 

Ideally is every conversion is an opportunity for rest and relaxation and celebration for everyone?  It may be up to us though whether or not we take it.

I think it is deeper than simply relaxation though.  In my own life periods of relaxation after more difficult periods are the time during which we revaluate what we are doing and where we are going.  This is the time we plot our new directions.  These periods are the rudders of our lives.  Small changes here greatly affect where we make our next steps.  This is the time at which we are really open to new ideas and creativity.  This is the time during which we can take risks.  This is where true new innovations and metamorphosis occurs.  These periods are times at which we truly transform instead of only making sequential progress.  Could every sinners conversion be an opportunity for the whole community to be transformed? The Father calling both sons to the party may be a call for both of them to be transformed and be brought to the next stage of their development.  The Father pleads for the older son to go.  I think he knows that what the older son is doing is good, but if he keeps up business as usually he will not get a chance to go on to the next stage of his growth.  He must go to the party and stop and smell the roses.  He must look for the next direction.  Much as the younger son has gone through his own hardships now is his time to rest.  Both sons have experienced hardships just of a different nature.  Both sons have been humbled.  One by living with the hogs.  The other acting as a servant to the Father.  They both must rest and recover. The Father wants them both to grow. 

Maybe sleep is God's way of reminding us all of the need to slow down so we can ultimately obtain transformative growth.  For many of us, if we could we would never sleep and just do, do, do.  For others, sleep is the more natural inclination.  There are some who would be happy just sleeping all the time.  Day and night remind us of both.  There are two sides to the coin.  Some people are naturally the Martha's always trying to organize stuff, others are the Mary's just trying to get in experiences.  This seems to come up over and over. Dante even maintained Day and Night in Purgatuario - Penitent souls could only travel up the mountain in the day by God's grace.  It was like there was an enforced retreat.  Learning to rest and enjoy is almost a requirement for learning to live in Paradise even in the demanding purification of Purgatory. 

"
But see now how the day is declining, and ascend

by night we cannot; therefore tis well to

think of some fair resting-place.
"
 Purgatuario:  CANTO VII -

Work and rest are part of the rhythm of life.  When we workout we must rest or we risk overtraining.  Too much rest leads to losing our edge.  In engineering and craftsman ship I find there is a time to put your nose to the grindstone, work hard, and hit the deadlines.  There is also a season to step back, relax, and review the literature, explore topics you have never considered, and even just daydream at times. This is why we have sabbaticals for professors. There is a concept of "Fast and slow" thinking that I believe maps to this. 

I think the homeless are a witness to this in some sense.  I have a policy of picking up hitchhikers to help they go where they need to go.  In my experience most homeless people did not get to be homeless by being responsible.  They often are very impulsive and somewhat scatterbrained.  They often have a tendency toward begin nomads.  I am not sure many of them would even want to live in a house if you gave them one.  They might just leave.  I am pretty convinced there are some people that are just born to be wanderers and would probably never fit into "established" society.  These people have a role to play.  I think they help remind us that we need to stop and smell the roses and look beyond ourselves.  They are almost like the lilies of the field. 

Every conversion is a party for everyone - To be happy is to be in tune with the will of the Father. It is a chance to learn to be in tune with the Father. 

I think this is part of the message Pope Francis is trying to get across.  He is downplaying things that we have held as important for so long.  He is downplaying our defensive position.  I have felt defensive about Catholisism my whole life.  I am tired of it.  But I recognize now to go through this metamorphisis we have to let something's go and trust that God will take care of them.  This is really scary, but honestly, are we really doing that great of a job of evangelizing the culture right now?  I think we are doing a pretty poor job personally.  We have tried our best and to some degree failed.  It is not futile.  Just the first step to humility.  Pope Francis is asking us to grow spiritually.  As Churchhill said:

" You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks."

When you really think about it all the important social issues we have been arguing over the last 60 years really come down to a root in greed and selfishness.  I feel when I was young I realized this but forgot somewhere along the way.  The root cause is what needs to be addressed and I am not sure that we have really tried to address it. 

Maybe some of us need to step back for a moment and just go with God's flow on this as scary as it might be. Not everything needs to be blood and guts on our part. 

My second trip to the floatation tank - A negative result

Back in the fall I took my first trip to the sensory deprivation tank.  It was an interesting experience.  The thing I remember most about it is that my sense of touch was greatly enhanced after some time in the tank.  I also experienced the sensation of my body falling asleep in many different ways.  Today I happened to be in Santa Fe, and I was driving by the flotation tank place and I thought - hey I need to do that again, so I stopped in and tried the tank out for another hour in hopes that I would learn more about how I can reduce the signal-to-noise ratio for human sensing and pattern recognition. 

First some notes of my state at the time.  When I was driving by I was feeling a little tired and I wanted to take a nap.  I figured that I could either take a nap at the park or I could rest in the tank.  I thought resting in the tank would be a good a place to rest as any so that is part of the reason I took that route.

Now in the time since I last went in the tank I have heard some interesting accounts from people.  First, some people have told me that they are able to very distinctly feel their pulse and their blood pumping in their body when they are just sitting at their desk.  I personally was shocked by this because I have never been able to just feel my pulse.  Some people tell me they are so sensitive to their pulse they find it distracting.  I found this interesting.  I have a hard time going out of my way to feel my pulse manually.  One night I tried lying as still as I could in a dark room to see if I could sense my pulse.  If I concentrated very hard I could, but it was not easy.  It felt like my body was going to sleep.

Now at this point I was somewhat familiar with the sensory deprivation tank drill.  I hopped right in and started floating.  I was much more comfortable with it than I was the first time I did it.  The first time I did not know how to let my body relax and so some of my muscles felt achy.  This did not happen this time.  I was very relaxed this time for some reason.  I did notice right away that my hand felt some pain.  It turns out I had a few cuts on my hand that were being burned by the salt water.  I thought this burning might mess up my "singal-to-noise" ratio, but after awhile I stopped noticing it.  The first time I was in the tank I was able to notice very distinctly that I could feel all the aches and pains of my body very distinctly.  At least for the first 10-15 min. 

At this point I just floated there in the tank.  It was pretty relaxing.  I think I just zoned out for the hour I was in there.  Supposedly in the first episode of Hawaii 5-O a sensory deprivation tank was used as a torture device.  I am not sure how this would work, because I personally found it to be pretty comfortable.  I have heard some people are uncomfortable in the tank, but I really do not experience that.  This time I did not experience a heightening of senses as I did the first time.  At least not nearly as much.  I am not sure why.  The tank was definitely dark and quiet.  Prehaps even more so that the first time.  I wonder if the temperature is correct.  I might bring a thermometer next time.  I read a story that the guy who invented the sensory deprivation tank got visited by aliens while being in there.  That definitely did not happen to me.  I have a suspicion that he had other things going on that I do not consider advisable.  I have a read that a recent study from 2009 found that some people experience various hallucinations.  I never experienced anything like that either.  Mostly I was just hanging out with myself.  I actually do not remember much about it.  Nothing notable happened.  I tried similar tests with my tactile sense as I did the first time, but I did not feel my sense of touch had been heightened.  As I mentioned earlier, according to the Meyers Briggs test I am a very highly intuitive person.  More so than everyone I have tested except one person.  I wonder if I am becoming even more intuitive and even being in the tank does nto heighten my senses.  Alternatively maybe being tired reduces the effect.  This is my first guess actually.  The first time I did this I was very alert.  It may help to be mentally alert.  I will have to test this more.  Also, I tried to just feel the pulse of my body while I was in the tank, but that was a no go as well.  I did not feel my pulse at all. 

In the last month I have been told I am a "sensual learner," and a "kinesthetic thinker."  This is probably true to some degree.  Recently I was building some mechanical structures, and I very much naturally like to feel out the prototypes to understand how tolerances and stiffness effect how things go together and operate.  When I was a machinist I could get some sense what a .001" slop in a 1/4 inch hole felt like.  I had a tactile feeling for what being .005" off on a cut felt like.  At the same time though when I was a wrestler it was very difficult for me to physically remember wrestling moves from day to day.  I found later that I learn these kinds of tasks more easily if I visualize them in my mind.  Regardless, I started thinking that given our current computational power, CAD, and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software we may be able to tactily let engineers feel what their models look like before design.  This could be very helpful.  What if the designer could see and feel the stresses/deflections as he manipulates what he is modeling, and then on-the-fly makes changes to improve the design.  This could be powerful.  It could also help with introducing artists and sculpters into the design of engineered structures.  I will be thinking about this more.

In summary this may be a kind of negative result day, but now I am getting a sense for the limitations of the tank for reducing "signal-to-noise: ratio in humans.

A Proposed Iteration of Mercy and Justice - Personality based Juries

One of the most unusual concepts out there in my opinion is the concept of justice. It is really hard to nail down what it is.  Especially in a practical sense.  How does one go about judging whether or not something is just?  There are so many factors to consider it can make your head spin.  Then at the end of the day we are practically limited by what we are actually able to implement in practice.  A classic example of this is the question of how a person should be judged who has a mental illness and commits some crime.  Many people think of a mental illness plea as a loophole for evil.  I strongly disagree myself, but I am not going to go into why now.    Things become a bit more complicated when you look at them from the Catholic point of view and you throw in the complementary concept of "mercy."  It is really hard to say even what is merciful and what is not. I am going to illustrate what I am talking about with a recent incident that brought all this to the forefront of my mind.  The incident that I have in mind is the recent suicide of Aaron Swartz.  Aaron Swartz was a computer programmer involved with the creation of both RSS and Reddit.  In 2011 he was arrested for breaking into the JSTOR academic database so you could download journal papers and share them for free on peer-to-peer websites.  It turned out that charges were pressed against Swartz and he faced sentences on the order of 35 years in prison, and 1 million dollars in fines.  Now granted the prosecution apparently indicated that they were not going to pursue the maximum sentence.  They wanted Swartz to go to prison for six months.  Regardless, Swartz could not take this kind of stress and killed himself.  If you want to learn about the details of the story I am going to let you check it out for yourself.  Here is one link that talks about it.

www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/01/guide-finger-pointing-after-aaron-swartzs-suicide/61015/

Now I could talk about whether or not the maximum sentences were just, but everyone and their brother talks about that so I will not talk about this.  I am going to talk about what I think was going on with Swartz.  First off, (based on my third hand account) Swartz was considered a suicide risk.  Now for alot of people the thought of six months in prison would not be pleasant, but I do not think it would lead them to commit suicide.  I can say however that in the time I have led various teams my observation is that there are some people that just really cannot take stress.  Even what many people would consider normal stress.  I have seen guys get really upset after having to drive past a place where they may have had a bad experience a decade earlier.  I have seen people who would almost breakdown if they could not complete what I would consider simple tasks, and I have seen plenty of others just give up on life after being subject to relatively minor medical problems.  More and more I am starting to wonder if this difficulty dealing with stress has some relation with personality type or Cognitive function preference.  

In the case of Aaron he was most likely either ENTP or INTP.  I would tend to guess INTP.  Either way these are both relatively rare personality types.  Most people would not understand their point of view.  Both of these personality types also happen to be responsible for many of the innovations and paradigm shifts in society.  Einstein for instance was INTP.  I cannot help but wonder if part of what made Swartz so scared was the thought that in his mind he felt he was doing the right thing, but he feared he would be totally misunderstood by society and a jury.  He had probably long experienced being misunderstood by most people. 

What I have found is that different personality types have very different ways of looking at the world.  They naturally have very different values even when they profess to have the same values.  This can lead to major, nearly unreconcilable arguments and conflicts.  It leads people to totally misunderstand one another.  Even when people are aware of these differences they have a hard time actually recognizing it in practice. 

This leads me to a concept I have been toying with lately.  In The U.S. we like the idea of trying people by a jury of their peers.  I would like to suggest that perhaps in the next iteration of mercy and justice we try people with juries entirely consisting of people with exactly the same personality type.  My reasoning is that people of the same personality type will be best able to apply mercy when it is called for.  They will best understand a person's point of view.  In some sense these people will be a potentially very good group of "peers."  Looking back I can say there are people who I have absolutely detested, who I thought were the most terrible human beings that ever lived.  Now I realize all I really detested was their personality.  They still do not amuse me, but I now realize that my dislike of these people was mostly due to how they viewed the world.  Their point f view has positive and negative qualities like every other, and may be more or less effective depending on the situation.  On the other side however, this group of people will also be the best on calling you out when you are acting inappropriately.  When people misunderstand you they can sometimes be too lenient. 

I sometimes wonder if Aaron Swartz would have acted differently if he knew he was going to be tried by a jury consisting of other people with the INTP personality type.  He may have felt much less stressed out and may have felt like he would be understood.  Having the same personality type does not necessarily mean you hold the same positions.  It just means you tend to look at and influence the world and self in a similar manner.  It would not necessarily mean everyone would get off Scott free.  Actually in some cases I wonder if the effect lawyers have to spin stories would be diminished simply because everyone would be on the same page.  Expecially if the lawyer had a different personality type from everyone else in the room.  People might just ignore the lawyer. 

I will be the first to say there are some problems with this concept, but I do think it is worth further reflection. 

My ENTJ Dog

It is often said that dogs adopt the personality of their own.  I think this is true.  My guess is that because dogs are pack animals they are trying to maximize relationship happiness, and being of a similiar personality helps make this happen.  As a result they adopt the personality of their owner in order to better relate to them.  Sometimes you hear about a person complaining that their spouse hangs out with their dog more than them.  I think what is going on is that the spouses have different personalities and the dog adopts one of their personalities and so the person relates more easily to the dog than to the spouse.  Anyways after some thought I realized my childhood dog actually became an ENTJ like myself.  It turns out I realized this all along. 

When I was in 3rd grade a dog showed up at our house.   We lived out in the middle of prairie and it turned out a neighbouring farmer had picked the dog up at the pound and brought him to his farm to be a watchdog.  Well no one was usually at the farm so apparently the dog got lonely and decided he had had enough so he broke his chain and left the farm to look for some friends.  We lived not too far away and were probably noisy because there were 7 people in my family at that time.  So he decided to come live at our house where the action was.  We decided to keep him.  I named him Cody after one of my elementary school friends.  This got expanded by my dad to Cody Ack Bear (middle name Ack, last name Bear.)  I think he intended Kodiak bear (my dad loves bears), but I did not know what a kodiack bear was so it remained Cody Ack Bear.  Cody was some kind of german shepard mutt. 

Cody was my constant companion until I left home for college.  I thought he was the best dog ever.  He was a very fast runner and very smart.  He liked to be with people.  He was quite brave and in some ways even contemplative.  I remember one time we locked him in a shop during a party at our house so he would not get in people's way.  He did not care for this and wanted to be with everyone, so he figured out a way to open a window and got out to join the party.  He figured out numerous ways to escape from cages.  One time I even saw him open a screen door.  He loved hunting animals.  If he found a rabbit he would chase it and if it went in a hole he would dig and dig and dig to get it.  One time he dug a hole so deep only his tail was sticking out of the ground.  He could be very tenacious.  He liked to get in fights with snakes too.  Sometimes he would bark and bark at then and then he would lunge at them grab them with his mouth, shake them around, and throw them in the air.    It was pretty entertaining to watch.  When he got the chance he liked chasing antelope too and he would chase them for a long time.  One thing about Cody that stuck out was that he had a bit of an independent streak to him.  He hated wearing collars.  If you put a collar on him he would find a way to take it off.  He really was not very trainable.  He knew how to "sit" and how to "come," but other than that he would not learn any other tricks.  He also liked to go on trips out into the prarie to look for things to eat.  He would drag all kinds of crazy stuff back.  In alot of ways he also had a serious persoality.  He did not play fetch or any other dog game like that unless other dogs were doing it.  Then I think he only took their ball to be difficult.  He really was not too interested in those kinds of games.      If you tried to get him to play a dog game he would look at you skeptically.  Cody was also very emotionally stable.  He was very patient.  I do not think I ever saw him actually get mad about anything even when people perturbed him.  I also remember Cody was also very noble.  He used to sit o the dirt next to our house and stare out at the prarie watching what was going on.  I do not think dogs know how to think, but he was probably contemplating the mysteries of the world as best as dogs can.  Cody was also very sociable but he was no pleaser.   I really thought Cody was the perfect dog and I admired him.

What really struck me when I was young though were Cody's weaknesses because they mirrored my own.  There was one thing in particular.  Cody was a pretty brave dog but he was not a daredevil.  You could tell he wished their were some risks he wished he was more willing to take but was hesitant to do so.  In some cases it was because I think he felt he was not in the right.  I saw this in some specific cases.  I would go running down the prarie roads with Cody and we at one time had a new neighbor with two big rottweiler dogs.  The dogs saw us running by and decided to try and chase us.  There were no fences out their, but I decided just to ignore them and keep running as normal.  I could tell the who thing was kind of making Cody nervous and he got shy and went to the other side of the road.  Ultimately the rottweilers ran right up to us, but I just kind of ignored them and kept jogging.  The just ran up really close, put their heads close to the ground, barked and than ran all the way back home. I think Cody got nervous because he thought he was in their territory and not his own.  Cody was a bit of a fighter.  Even when he was old and arthritic he fought off a pit bull that came to our house and started beating up a new dog we had.  But I think Cody had some sense of where he could and could not be.  When he was in the right and when he was not.  When he can make a stand and when he should not.  Some people make stands in cases where it seems to me they have no place to do so.  I had long admired this trait because I did not have it.  Sometimes I wish I were more of a daredevil and able to take bigger risks, but I realize it is not a strength of mine.  It is something I wish I had but really do not.  Now I realize some people are just more naturally inclined to that.  I could relate to how Cody felt.  I could see he felt ashamed he was not willing to stand his ground against the rottweiers.  Espeically when he saw those rottweilers were really just all talk.   

Now looking back I am pretty sure Cody was an ENTJ dog.  He had alot of ENTJ personality characteristics.  I think he adopted my personality.  When I talk to other people about their dogs they usually sound nothing like Code.  Alot of dogs are very friendly, learn to do tricks, play fetch the ball, and so on.  Cody didn't do that stuff.  That is part of what made Cody, Cody.  After I left for college I could tell Cody had changed too.  He hung out with my other brothers and sisters more.  I did not come home much, but when I did I could tell Cody's personality had changed somewhat.  Part of it was probably that he mellowed out.  He was starting to get quite old, but I think he changed somewhat to match my brother's and sisters.  I think to the end though he still had some ENTJ in him.

Sometimes I miss Cody.  He was a really great dog. 

The dog my family later got was named Bear.  He started hanging out with my INTJ brother and I think he is very much an INTJ dog.  He really does not like to be around people much.  Mostly he just stays in his dog house ruminating about his problems.  He also is not good at controlling his emotions.  He is not a very emotional dog, but he does occasionally have emotional outbursts.  One time he bit my INTJ brothers lip in half because he got mad which escalated into an INTJ-INTJ fist fight.  He is not a happy-go-lucky dog nor is he a pleaser.  He has an independent streak to him, but he is however willing to learn a few tricks unlike Cody.  I notice INTJs tend to be more likely to adapt to into established frameworks than ENTJs.  ENTJs do it, but they also create new frameworks as needed and when the opportunities arise.  I think this is why the new dog was more willing to do the tricks.  Another odd thing he does is that he enjoys wearing a leash.  Cody hated the leash and almost never had to wear one.  Bear thinks the leash is great.  He has to whole prarie to run around totally free, but he really likes it when people put the leash on him and take him for a walk.  I think this is because INTJs have a deep desired to be loved and included by those they admire.  ENTJs have this as well but it is easier for them to ignore. Prehaps to our own detriment.

So in conclusion I think dogs really do take on the personality of their owner.  My Godmother was very friendly ENFJ and she had a very friendly ENFJ dog that loved being social, going to the park, and dressing up in costumes.  Some people have dogs that like to run away.  I think those are P-type dogs.  Do you see yourself in your dog?

My glimpse of purgatory

One morning shortly after waking up I caught a glimpse of purgatory

It looked like a small, cluttered and cramped archaic workshop.

Well lit up by sunlight.

Streaming through overhead windows.

It was light and airy inside.

A pleasant, lazy, summer day.

The door was open allowing additional sunlight entrance to the room

A warm breeze slid through the workshop.

There were lightly colored maple butcher block workbenches,

The kind that are pleasant to work on.

On each bench a person whose body was partially encased

in odd and inconvenient arrangements of stone.

Was laid down as comfortably as the stone would permit.

The poses they assumed were generally awkward as a consequence of the stone

Craftsman stood over them with chisels and hammers and angle grinders.

Chipping away at the stone

Grinding away final remnants of shale from skin

Labouring to free their patients from mineral shackles

The patients would wince in pain

Clearly the operation was not pleasant

but they did not protest

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is things like this that give me inspiration to develop artistic talent. I wish I could paint it so I could share what I saw with others.  As I learn to be less dismissive of others opinions I feel I am becoming more receptive to the whispers of Grace.  

Working Towards Utopia - Changing Humaninty to Increase Economic Output

Given that we are currently in the middle of a recession I have been thinking alot over the last year about how we can possibly increase the economic output of the U.S..  One major place I have been looking is the workforce.  If you ever talk to employers or professors they will often cite that the thing that really makes or breaks a company in many cases is the quality of it's employees.  Since in general we need to measurably increase the economic output of the U.S. in order to deal with problems like paying for scoical security I would like to suggest a solution.  How about we try to change the personality characteristics of the population in order to maximize economic output?  If you look at personality characteristics in terms of work there are many personality characteristics that are beneficial for many jobs.  For instance, I recently read a study that found a strong relationship between being and inuitor and doing well in engineering courses.

Here is the paper from the journal of engineering education. 
http://www.ijee.ie/articles/Vol14-5/ijee1039.pdf

 So since we repeatedly hear we need more people pursuing Science Technology Engineering , And Math (STEM) fields we should probably take this result into consideration.  Especially since intuitors are relatively a small percentage of the overall population.  Intuitors only make up about 20% of the population.  Maybe what we really need to do is significantly increase that percentage to greatly increase STEM capability.  Maybe what we should do is engage in a research program that finds ways to makes people adopt intuitor characteristics.  In the past we have tried to fit jobs to people.  Maybe instead we should change people so they better fit into jobs.  This may very well increase the overall wealth of the country.  We may be able to take this one step further.  Supposedly almost all Fortune 500 CEOs are ENTJ.  ENTJs are calculated risk takers who have a inate drive to make great things happen at all levels of organizations.  They have the following traits which make them very attractive in the workplace

- Naturally hierarchical on the basis of merit.
- Naturally are very driven to achieve goals.
- Naturally find creative solutions to problems.
- Adaptable to a wide variety of work
- Natural learners able to pick up new skills as required by work needs.
- Have a get things done attitude.
- Can operate with a minimum of instruction and do not need details to execute tasks.
- Have less of a tendency to over-think and over-analyse problems.
- Tend to be willing to self-sacrifce for the greater good of the job.  
Brief mention of the ENTJ as CEO
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-46940101/thinking-of-getting-an-mba-here-are-five-reasons-not-to/

If we really wanted to make the economic output of the U.S. rise it would stand to reason that it wouldn't hurt to start out if we could just start producing more ENTJs or turn alot of the people we already have into ENTJs.  ENTJs are pretty rare.  They are  only 2-4% of the population.  Imaging the possibilities if we could up that number to 50% of the population!  The U.S. would have a massive economic edge on the rest of the world.  Innovation would go through the roof!  Economic output would skyrocket and my guess is alot more project would get completed on time and on budget.  Furthermore I suspect there may be a super-linear effect here.  I postulate that economic output does not scale linearly with number of entjs.  My guess is rate of increase of economic output increases proportionally with number of ENTJs which would mean economic output could potentially increase exponentially or something super-linear.    Then as time goes on we could tweak by producing appropriate numbers of other personalities as needed such as INTJ or INTP. 

One advantage of such a research program would be that it would be very easy to measure whether or not the program was working.  All we would have to do is see how the gross doemstic product was being influenced over time.  If it were increasing that would mean it's working.  Really simple.

So maybe we need to get to work on investing in this research program.  Breakthroughs in neuroscinece and psychology would probably help make this happen.  Then we could take children in elementary school and make ENTJicising them part of the standard curriculum.  A large percentage of the children would go through a program that essentially changes their cognitive preferences to that of an ENTJ.  There are probably a variety of avenues we could explore to make this happen.  They would be Extroverted Thinking - introverted Intuition machines.  Math and science scores would go through the roof!   Everyone would be better off because we would have more money.  If something can't be measured it doesn't exist right, so it seems like the way to go. 

Not a whole lot that could go wrong with that, seems like it could be a good idea?
???
One step close to Utopia in the Thomas More sense ;-)

“Love is a Decision” – A statement with no flesh on the bones

Learning in life thus far seems to more or less come in four years cycles for me. Four years of high school, four years of college, four years of graduate school.  I can associate a major, soul-changing, quest or life experience with each of these four-year cycles.  I feel as though another 4 year cycle is coming to a close.  Looking back the last four years have had a profound impact on how I view the world and the people in it.  What follows is my four year reflection on a statement that comes up occasionally.  The statement is “Love is a decision,” or alternatively “Love is a choice.”

About four and half years ago one uncharacteristically lazy San Diego summer afternoon, as the final months of my graduate schooling were coming to a close I was sitting in my living room and I took a moment to ask God what task was next.  I can be a very focused person and I often would not take the time to look around to see what was happening around me so for me this was a bit of an odd occurrence.  Thinking back on it this was totally out of character for me.  It was not something I had been inspired to do.  I was just inspired to ask what was next.  He immediately whispered an answer to me.  I diligently set to work to make it a reality in every way I knew how.  Admittedly I had very little experience in this particular area, but I generally did not let things like my ignorance or incompetence worry me too much me so I just clumsily moved forward.  Within a matter of months in the course of making this task come to fruition things started falling into place.  I was nervous, and felt very self-conscious and was more than a little bit scared.  Undeterred though I gathered what character I could and moved forward. Then in the course of attempting to realize my task I made a series of very bold moves that turned out to be one of the most memorable mistakes of my life.  Never in my life had I felt I had more acted as myself overcoming all my fears to do what I most thought was right...  I dug really deep, but I failed miserably.  It was a train wreck.  The details of what happened are not important.  All that is important for the current discussion is a reflection a on the statement, “love is a decision.”  This is statement that I had firmly believed with all my heart to this date.  Everything I had ever come across seemed to confirm and validate the idea.  Many people inherently hold the somewhat opposing viewpoint of love being a feeling.  I always kind of thought this was silly.  Sure feelings are associated with it, but love itself is not a feeling.  The idea that you knew who you should “love” based on the feelings they gave you also seemed quite silly to me as well.  I typically “felt” attracted to a wide variety of women for one reason or another.  That didn’t seem to mean anything.  Meeting someone based on feelings/emotions seemed to be similar to making decisions based on lust.  Furthermore, when you are a practicing Catholic (at least for me anyways) it was way more important to find someone who was actually a practicing Catholic and striving for Holiness.  Character in the face of adversity was what I was more interested in.  In my life to date it seemed to be about the most rare thing imaginable.  I had been involved in many Catholic groups throughout my life, but most people picked and choose what they would believe.  Most people rejected Church teaching on difficult things like contraception which I found particularly disheartening.  From my point of view finding someone who was a practicing Catholic who I was at least attracted to was good enough for me.  I did not really concern myself much for what their personality might be like or how they might make me feel.  This did not even register with me.  My reasoning was Love meant work and we would work our differences out.  I also discounted concepts such as the “soul mate.”  That just seemed to scream of emotions.  But now all of a sudden I needed to reconsider my stance.  My mistake made me realize I was missing something important so I set out to find out what it was.  

Shortly thereafter I started studying this problem from a point of view I had never considered before.  The point of view of feelings.  It seemed to me that in general “feelings” were more of a feminine concept so whenever I heard a more feminine talk show on the radio instead of changing the channel I would listen to it and try to understand.  Sometimes I would listen to songs with feminine emotional themes.  I read a number of books from the medical profession which seemed to have more of a “feelings” based approach to work.  I read about the experiences of medical students and residents.  I read books written by teachers and therapists because these seemed to be more feeling/emotion oriented professions.  I read accounts of cancer survivors discussing their experience.  I read books on visual design that discussed how emotions and feelings could be influenced by art.  I made some art myself.  I started reading about research on forgiveness.  I remember in particular coming across something known as the Stanford Forgiveness project.  I even remember going over Gen Patraeus’s counter insurgency field manual and finding a variety of areas where it discussed emotional and feelings based values.  I would occasionally ask female friends to recommend books that resonated with a more feelings based outlook on life.  I also nurtured a number of friendships with people who had a feelings-based approach to life and tried to understand why they thought the way they did.  Throughout all of this I think I slowly started to see why feelings or emotions might be important.  To be honest though it was purely at an intellectual level and in a lot of ways I was confused.  The whole world of feelings/emotions was still very alien to me.  I think I got more comfortable with it, but it was a world I did not fit into and a world I could not contribute to.  I would actively practice trying to be more understanding of people and listening to people.  I think I got better at it, and learned to appreciate emotions on some level.  I would occasionally read Catholic blog posts discussing the statement “Love is a Decision,” and some people would strongly defend the statement for the same reasons I would.  Others would totally dismiss it and say something along the lines of, “that is just something people say… Love is a feeling dear.”  I was hitting a roadblock.  It is pretty much a part of Catholic teaching that love is an act of the will, and thus a decision or choice.  Even the movie that describes the life of the very sweet and emotional St Gianna Molla was named “Love is a choice.”  I had made progress but things were still not clear.

I struggled with this question nearly every day for 3 years.  The mistake I made haunted me and I really wanted insight into what I had missed.  Along the way I was seeing parts of the world and human experiences I would have otherwise never had seen.  I was learning a lot.  It was a bit of an adventure.   Was there something important about feelings and emotion I had totally not accounted for?  Why were emotional responses so important to some people?

One day about a year ago I was faced with a problem that I decided to deal with by learning about personality types.  At the time I primarily focused on Meyers-Briggs type indicator.  As I learned more and more about it so many questions that had bothered me for years began to be answered.  It gave me a boatload of insight into who I was and why I was perceived the way I was by others.  I learned a great deal about the gifts and talents of others as well.  Light was shed on so many problems I had encountered that I would just study and study and study and learn everything I could about it.  I am still learning daily more and more about personality and psychology.  I find it fascinating.  

One important feature I learned about was the thinker-feeler dichotomy.  This was the most relevant to the question of “Love is a decision.”  What I realized was that I think and make decisions in a very logical rational way, but others actually think and make decisions with their emotions.  I had never appreciated this before.  Actually there is a technological equivalent to this.  I am a thinker so I make decisions using a logic engine type approach.  I can lay out all the aspects of my decision and explain to someone else exactly why I made the decision I did.  Alternatively, a feeler is like a neural network.  We do not always have a great amount of insight into why a neural network makes the decisions and classifications it does, but it can be successful at dealing with very complex classification problems.  Rational thinkers like myself though may not be as good at dealing with extremely complex problems because we are limited to our own insight.  Feelers may be less constrained by their own insight.  I could now see the possible advantages and disadvantages of making decisions by thinking and feeling.  Both had validity and were worth appreciating.  Feelers tend to generally be more people-oriented.  I think this is because people are much more complex than the physical systems rational thinkers deal with.  Interestingly enough I also came to the conclusion that most stereotypes about men and women are false.   There are plenty of emotional, people oriented men out there, and a number of rational minded women.  

Slowly I started to see the folly of my stance on “Love is a decision.”  It is not that I was wrong.  It is that I was not seeing the whole picture.  What I realized was that what I thought was “a decision,” was in many cases being masked by my thinking.  I could give rational reason why I might or might not choose to love someone.  Feelers on the other had would use a feelings-based decision process to make the decision.  It was just that thinking looks so much like decisions it is hard to tell the two apart. 

Here is where I think it gets interesting though.  My personality is considered the most emotionless of all personalities in the Jungian MBTI sense.  Despite this I know even we emotionless people want some emotion in our life.  We are just very careful and guarded about who we share it with.  As a result we do not practice using our emotions very much, and are not good at it, especially when it comes to externally expressing them.  Really though in many ways emotions and human interactions are what makes life worth living and interesting.  Feelings are the tool that make love for humans interesting.  The statement “Love is a decision” is a very spiritual statement.  God loves thorugh an act of will, and the angels experience love or a lack of love as well.  They do not have emotions or feelings.  The difference is though that we are humans.  We inherently have a material as well as physical nature, both of which have needs that must be respected.  There may be some people who literally need emotion support and the excitement of butterflies in their stomach to experience love.  Others need a person they can share intelligent conversation with.   Both of these are material needs that humans have.  Some people may need more emotional support than others and others may find more excitement in the intelligent conversation and that is ok.  One thing I realized though, is that emotions are inherently the tool with which we display and implement love to others.  Intelligent conversation falls short here as does a number of other human activities such as giving gifts or performing acts of service.  Being skilled in the art of emotions and feeling definitely has its advantages.  It can smooth out relationships between people, make life generally more enjoyable, and it just feels nice when it goes right.  It is kind of like the decision to love is the skeleton of the body, but the emotions are the flesh.  The skeleton keeps everything upright and together but it is the squishy parts that make the body interesting.  Of course conversely there is the problem of emotions.  For people who are feelers we often say they use emotions inappropriately to make decisions that might be better made using rationality.  It is kind of a case of when your only tool is a hammer everything starts to look like a nail.  But I digress…

I still firmly believe love comes from an act of the will or the heart.  Most of the time I do not thing we are making acts of the will though.  We are kind of operating on autopilot.  It is when we have no good reason to continue, and we really do not “feel good” about loving that we have more certainty we are actually making an act of the will to keep loving.  I think a really good example of this is in the book “Lord of the World,” by Fr Robert Hugh Benson.  He the Catholic faith is mostly obliterated.  Science and psychology have destroyed all reasons to continue having Faith.  People routinely leave the Church including priests, bishops and Cardinals.    Even the Pope has serious doubts and does not have any good reasons to continue, and he certainly does not feel like staying Faithful… but he does it anyway.  That is an act of the will.  In my own life I have seen situations where reason and feeling both suggested we should no longer continue, but we did anyways… and I am glad we did but that is another story.

So for all you feelers out there I would like to extend an olive branch.   Let’s meet in the middle and enjoy both the though and feelings and the decision to love.  We can teach each other.  On a side note I want to mention that as I have learned about personality I can even see how the concept of a “soul mate” even makes sense.  

Well that was a long discussion.  I find it amusing that that the Magnetic Fields paradoxally sang, “The book of love is long and boring…. It’s full of charts and facts and figures, and instructions for dancing”   – I will leave you with some feelings to enjoy :-).

Shedding some light on why God doesn't seem to adopt "The Fundamental Option"

About 15 years ago I came across an element of Catholicism that I had never been exposed to at any point prior in my life that was very difficult for me to come to terms with.  It has given me mental struggles for the last 15 years.  It is the idea that salvation is entirely dependent on your state of grace when you die.  In some sense no good or bad thing a person had done prior was of any importance in terms of whether a person ultimately chose heaven or hell.  This concept is known as "Every Voluntary Act,"  American culture tends to reject this line of thinking.  I suspect this is a result of Protestant influence.  American culture tends to adopt a stance toward salvation known as "The Fundamental Option."  The fundamental option basically says that as long as a person is for the most part a good person they will achieve salvation.  It doesn't matter that they occasionally cheat on their taxes or miss Mass on Sunday every once in awhile.  All that really matters is they are generally a good person.  This is not the Catholic understanding.  

So from a Catholic point of view once you are Baptized and you are in a state of grace if you die you will end up choosing heaven.  If you lived a saintly life then committed a mortal sin and died right after you would choose hell.  Alternatively you could lead a sinful life, then make a deathbed conversion and die and you would choose heaven.  People like to point out alot of various nuances to this system that we postulate may exist.  These nuances generally have to do with things like mercy, but for the most part this is how the system works.  In alot of ways it doesn't seem very fair and it also seems somewhat random and haphazard.  This bothered me for quite awhile.  Below is a snapshot I took from a document from the Dominican Sisters in Nashville, Tenn.  If I remember correctly they have a Sister that has a PhD in Moral Theology who generated this.  It explains the fundamental option and every voluntary act in more detail. 

 Roughly a year ago I started to study personalities and temperaments.  I mostly focused on Jungian theory/Meyers Briggs.  Academia doesn't seem to use this right now, but I am not too worried about that.  They use the data-driven 5 factor model.  I am not going to go into my thoughts on the 5 factor model now, but suffice it to say I have my scepticism.  Alot of this has to do with the purely data driven methods used to build the 5 factor model, but I digress.  The remainder of this discussion I will use Meyers Briggs terminology so if you are not familiar with it wikipedia can help you out.  

The reason I started learning about personalities is because I met someone with a Perceiver (P) type personality.  I have the opposite Judger (J) personality.  I discovered this was a major difference between people.  Most people believe that the difference between iNtuiters (N) and Sensors (S) is the largest between people.  I would agree, but looking back now my experience is in relationships that require interdependence, J-P differences can cause alot of conflict.  They seem to be pretty radically different views of the world. I have heard some people say that this can lead to people who start at the same place, but come to different ultimate conclusions.  Conversely some personalties start from different places but come to the same conclusion.

Basically, Judgers tend to want things decided upon and settled, where as perceivers  tend to delay making decisions in order to keep their options open.  Roughly half the poulation is judgers and the other half are perceivers.  Both of these stances have advantages and disadvantages.  For instance, it appears to me that perceivers are generally more creative, but they seem to be less strong on follow-through.  Judgers seem naturally more inclined to follow through on things, but they often do not have good creativity.  Also, I suspect from a Catholic point of view that many mystics may have been perceivers.  My notion is that being a perciever would probably make you more open to listening to the will of God.   There seems to be a general consensus that the Virgin Mary for instance was INFP.  I would not be suprised if the little Flower was INFP as well.  Thomas Aquinas sounds INTP to me (arguably he could be INTJ though as well).  On the other hand I suspect that alot of the more forceful saints were Judgers.  For instance St Paul and St Catherine of Sienna. 

Anyways, my observation is that perceivers tend to be a little more unpredictable (except in the sense that they consistently hate being categorized but that is a different blog post), change their minds more often, and tend not to take linear paths to get to things.  Judgers on the other hand tend to make decisions and stick with them.  At first as I started looking at this my impression was that perceivers seemed to be almost predisposed to sin because they changed their minds so much and lacked consistency.  Actually in some ways it seemed really unnerving.  But then I realized that I was looking at it from the Protestant "Fundamental Option" point of view, not the Catholic "Every Voluntary Act" point of view.  How would the Catholic vision of salvation treat the perceiver.  That is what I set out to consider in more depth.   (There is alot more to this, but I do not have time to go into it.  I am mostly trying to spark ideas and a conversation here.)

So I decided it was time I made a little model and ran a small Monte Carlo simulation to see how my ideas played out.  Basically I generated a sequence of random numbers pulled from a zero-mean, Gaussian distribution.  This sequence represents random inputs ( read temptations or the call of grace), that a person experiences throughout their lifetime.  Tempatations would be negative, and grace would be positive.  Then I modelled Judgers and perceivers using the finite impulse response filters (FIR) shown below.  Judgers are represented using a decaying exponential (over-damped, exponential with only real components), and perceivers have an FIR filter that consists of a cosine function modulated by a decaying exponential (under-damped, complex exponential).  I chose this model because I think of this as the judger simply narrowing down to a solution whereas the Perceiver is constantly changing their minds in an effort to keep their options open.  You could probably argue with me on this and you would probably bring up some good points, but I do this as a hobby, I do not have time to dwell on rigor, and I only have so much time to plant the seed of the idea so please bear with me. 

Now I took these FIR filters and I convolved them with the random sequence I generated to simulate temptations throughout a person's lifetime.  The resulting sequence can be thought of as a simulation of a person's state of grace throughout their lifetime if they had no free will and simply succumb to every temptation and call of grace they received.  The point in doing this is to see if there is any bias That predispose a judger or perceiver to any particular final state of grace.  I generated 10,000 random sequences and convolved the Judger and Perceiver FIR filter with each one separately.  An example of one of the simulations is shown below.  The top is the judger and the bottom is the perceiver. 

 

So notice that the judger grace sequence throughout a lifetime is primarily consisting of low frequency components as expected.  The judger is in some sense slowly changing their state of grace as they go through life.  They make up their mind and stick with it, and only slowly change their life.  The perceiver on the other hand has a rapid fluctuations between being in a state of grace and a fallen state.  Notice though that by eyeball the Judger and the Perceiver both seem to spend about  the same amount of their life in a state of grace as compared to a fallen state. 

Next I took the 20,000 time series and for each one I took the total time a person was in a sate of grace and subtracted from it the time a person was in a fallen state.  I then histogram the results for the judger and the perciever as shown in the histogram below.  The top histogram corresponds to the judger and the bottom histogram corresponds to the perceiver.

Now since this is a simple linear analysis using Gaussian random variables you can actually do this in closed form solution, but I used the Monte Carlo just to be more visual.  Basically the expected value (mean) of both the Judger and the perceiver net state of grace should be zero because a linear combination of Gaussian distributed random variables has a mean which is just the sum of the means.  We do see in fact that the mean for both the judger and the perceiver net state of grace is 0.  Over the course of a lifetime their appears to be no bias for one or the other.  This is interesting.  Obviously though the two have very different variances which can also easily be computed in closed form solution.  For the purpose of this model a large variance indicates that type of person has the potential to be very good or very bad.  There are probably a couple ways this could be interpreted, but one way would be to say that Judgers will be all over the board in terms of time spent in a state of grace, where as perceivers are all close to a net zero.  If we assume overall merit is proportional to time spent in a state of grace then Judgers have more potential to be really good or really bad adn Perceivers are generally on the edge.  I think this result points out a weakness in my model.  For one, many perceivers have gone on to be great Saints.  Mary is generally considered a perceiver, as is St Francis.  I tend to believe St. Therese the Little Flower was too.  Also, we do not know how "merit" is really accumulated.  We have no idea.  It is certainly non-linear.  God is a pretty nonlinear guy.  Think of the story of the laborers and the wages.  The labourers who came at the end of the day got the same wage as those who came at the beginning.  The Lord works in mysterious ways, but part of the reason I am looking at this is to try and shed some light on what he is doing and why.  In this case I think it is interesting that God does not use the fundamental option.  The fundamental option would favor judgers over perceivers because the fundamental option would determine salvation based on large variances in the net state of grace assuming that to achieve salvation you had to be above some threshold of time in a state of grace.  If the threshold was a net state of grace of 0 it would not matter if you were a judger or perceiver because the Gaussian distribution is symmetric.  If however you needed to be above some non-zero threshold of goodness then it would be a different story.

What is going on - I sometime wonder if a problem with us Judgers is that we find better ways to rationalize our behaviour for good or bad.  I wonder if this is what keeps us stable for better or worse.  I suspect this might cause us to have a harder time repenting when we do something wrong.  We have probably built a rationalizing framework to support our sinful decisions.  Conversely I wonder if perceivers do not have this kind of problem.  Prehaps they are less consistent, but in may be the case that they are more open to repentance when they make a mistake.

I want to point out one other implication of these results that I think is noteworthy.  Most good artists of all forms are perceivers.  The reason being is that people who are more creative are often times just more open to new ideas, experiences, and expressions.  They turn questions and situations inside-out to see things from new points of view.  They do not immediately crack down on ideas as good or bad.  Judgers like myself on the other hand can be kind of boring in alot of ways.  We do not look at things from particularly new and insightful points of view.  We generally are very linear thinkers.  Most real breakthroughs and paradigm shifts seem to come from perceivers such as Albert Einstein or Shakespeare.  Now why is this important?  Well if you compare Catholisism with most non-Catholic Christians, particularly Protestants and fundamentalists one of the biggest differences that stands out to me is the disparity in artistic output between the two.  Over the centuries Catholics and Catholic teaching has been responsible for inspiring, and commisioning a large amount of art.  There are poems, paintings, sculptures, songs, symphonies... The list goes on and on.  Catholic Cathedrals, basilicas and churches are works of art often times.  You really do not see this kind of artistic expression in Protestant religions outside of perhaps music.  Protestant reliions especially in the past seemed extremely anti-art.  They used to be against things like plays.  I cannot help but wonder if this is partially a result of Protestants adopting a "fundamental option" stance.  By adopting the fundamental option they are essentially rejecting the wild ideas of artists.  There is no room for ideas that do not immediately fit the framework.  It is almost like they have adopted an overly-conservative stance and lost a major element of human expression in the process.  Catholisism on the other hand seems setup in a way that can parse artistic expression.  Some is embraced, some is rejected, but there is definitely room for considering outlandish ideas, if nothing else in our universities and certain religious orders.  An interesting example is the Vatican allowing certain controversial groups such as the Neocatechumenal Way to operate.  At least temporarily.  In some sense those religous orders might be thought of as places where experimental worship can take place.  It probably is not suitable for the general public, but people in religious orders are professionals and can accept wiggle room that is not always appropriate for the general public.

Also I have a suspicion that pervcivers make better mystics as well.  Simply because they are in some sense going to be more open to the voice of God, whereas a judger would drown God's grace out in favor of their own known opinions.  I have mentioned to some people that I have some plans under way to build machines that have personalities.  I suspect the perceiver/judger personalities can be achieved using different filtering techniques.  A judger has a very narrow band filter on his sensor/thinking inputs.  As a result he has very high signal-to-noise ratio  because alot of the wide-band noise is removed, but he misses alot of interesting stuff because he filters out the interesting outliers.  The perceiver on the other hand might have a wide-band filter.  As a result he gets alot of noise in his measurements leading to low signal-to-noise ratio.  Spurious noise causes him to jump around alot from topic to topic.  Alot of these spurious signals are just noise that leads to dead ends, but every once in awhile something pops up that is a really interesting outlier.  This is where the paradigm shifts come from.  In some ways the perceiver is almost like a really sensitive radio receiver that needs to be cooled down to reduce the effects of random thermal noise.   Actually I think this is part of the reason monks live in the solitude of monasteries.  If many of them are perceivers they would would be over-stimulated in normal society.  However, by putting them in the solitude of the monastery it is like we are removing as much of the noise as possible so they can focus on the "quiet" signal associated with the voice of God.  It is interesting that you do not see a monastic tradition among Protestants.  

Alot of this is speculative.  Take it for what it is worth... an invitation to look deeper.  Nothing more.  I found these new ways of looking at things very helpful and interesting and I am actively exploring it further in the ways I can in my spare time. 

In future work I need to start looking at what happens if I randomly choose a time of death for the judger and the perceiver.  I suspect this can be done in closed form, but I will need to brush up on random processes.  Also, there is a problem because the analysis I just proposed implies that God operates Randomly.  This may or may not be a good assumption. Actually it brings up interesting philosophical questions, but I will deal with those later. 


Here is the git gist of the code in case you want to run some simulations. 
https://gist.github.com/4471392