Amateur Demographers
August 21st, 2008
n one of those “duh” moments I realized this week that everybody has different models for how people work and interact. It may be as simple as categorizing people by their interests, (Totally Breakfast Club, “You see us as you want to see us… in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct? That’s the way we saw each other at seven o’clock this morning. We were brainwashed.”) Or explaining somebody doing something by their astrological sign, or their Meyers-Briggs profile. Raven explained that he sees people as interacting with others either in a performance mode, an interview mode or an exchange mode, which is a really useful way of explaining why some people are easier or more rewarding to interact with.
So I try doing a theoretical experiment where I don’t use a model for how people are, and it just doesn’t work, to have every interaction as a new experience, not attributing the things I experience to the other person to some degree or another. Ready for the crude metaphor? It seems to me like the model you use for how people are/interact is sort of like a browser window, some explanations work better for some situations than others, sorta like my knowing that my current CSS looks ok with Safari and not so great with other browsers (and that fixing it is on hold while my tech support is absorbed in his paying job.) The thing is that we’re all getting more or less the same content but the model of interaction you use is going to impact how you perceive it. And if you can’t just take people as they are, not classifying them or categorizing them, because our brains just aren’t wired like that, maybe the best you can do is to be aware that you are experiencing interacting with people in this mediated way, and if it’s not working for you with the model you have you might try doing it another way, open up Firefox to look at this situation instead of Safari.
And I have this spiritual struggle with feeling like I am “judging” people when I fit them into my explanations of how we are interact — I think my own model looks at how much we have in shared interests, what needs are being expressed in the interactions (à la Marshall Rosenberg) the self-awareness they demonstrate. In trying to understand myself, what I am feeling and why, I keep being bumped into awareness of what other people are experiencing, an insight I didn’t ask for. It’s uncomfortable when some people seem to be advertising their insecurities by how hard they work to distract you from them. It’s like being a three dimensional person in Flatland, and seeing the insides of people. But that seeing isn’t condescending, because it’s seeing myself too and having a basis for compassion. It’s not being hurt by other people when I see that they are acting according to their own psychological imperatives and not aware that what they are doing could be hurtful. And it turns out that even the “judging” aspect of it doesn’t change my responsibility to treat other people with respect and kindness.
August 21st, 2008 at 11:12 am
I think writing fiction and drama has helped me come to similar conclusions, because to really get the characters to be three-dimensional you need to get into their pre-conceived attitudes and their “motivations” - as actors like to say. I realize more and more that I am seeing things as played in the movie in my own head, and my interactions with others are tempered by that — and sometimes I might be in a different movie in the other person’s head.
August 21st, 2008 at 12:11 pm
“…maybe the best you can do is to be aware that you are experiencing interacting with people in this mediated way, and if it’s not working for you with the model you have you might try doing it another way.”
NICE one! she said admiringly.
This probably would have helped me stop, when I was busily ripping my poor colleague a new one the other day. Maybe I was approaching the situation in performance mode, not exchange mode? Or as Artemis (or Kali or Black Tara or Ereshkigal) instead of gentle Hebe.
So there’s “judging” which restricts the other person’s possibilities (per the Brujo’s “contempt prior to investigation”), and then there’s a different “judging,” which is critical and evaluative without constricting–what DBT would call, observing and describing. And you can’t stop observing and describing…you *are* a *writer* for cryin’ out loud.
Maybe it’s the difference between judging (evaluating) and being judgmental?
All of which is to say: Yes! beaming.
And: “In trying to understand myself, what I am feeling and why, I keep being bumped into awareness of what other people are experiencing, an insight I didn’t ask for.”
Ha ha! (Sigh.)
August 21st, 2008 at 12:57 pm
PS: http://www.youjustgetme.com
August 21st, 2008 at 7:53 pm
I keep trying to figure out what my model for sizing people up is, but it’s making my brain hurt. I’m sure it relies heavily on what I perceive their emotional IQ to be and my own intuition, but that’s about as far as I can get. Sorting laundry is about as complicated a thought process as I can handle right now. It doesn’t matter what thought I try to hold in my mind, it always turns to “holy crap, I’m about to have a baby”. I’m looking forward to having a little more brain space available!
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:14 pm
PS I could never decide if I was the brain or the basket-case….some of both, I guess, though I more arguably resemble Ally Sheedy. I hope.
Oh and then there’s the five Buddha families/wisdom tradition typology! Ratna, padma, vajra, etc. Which are fun. And the three doshas, in ayurvedic medicine? The Jungian in me (or the INTP) adores separating people into little tidy categories, and can remain thus happily absorbed for hours, as with Legos.
May there be a whole hella lot less upchucking in thine household, very soon, dear.
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:33 pm
I am trying really hard not to resort to personality typing to explain why one child throws up, then gets up with a lot of energy the next morning and has a great day, while his brother lies in bed moaning for hours. Which reminds me, it’s easy to use birth order to explain everything. And I am all intrigued by enneagrams now. And, oh, let us not forget that the internet has gifted narcissistic us with unending personality quizzes (many of them on Facebook!) from which woman of Firefly are you to which Greek philosopher are you, which Roman emperor are you, which Jane Austen heroine are you… What if it turned out that one of those was the answer to everything?
August 22nd, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Oh, and since I am apparently commenting on my own blog instead of actually blogging today, I have to point out the “model of how we work” thing is so old, and I imagine that shortly after Plato went on the ancient Greek equivalent of Oprah with the Phaedrus people were picking each other up in bars with “You must be the other half of my soul, because my black horse is just going crazy around you.”
August 24th, 2008 at 6:13 am
I like your web browser analogy. Finding information on the Web can be a huge pain as your browser may return hundreds of links. Choosing the most relevant Web sites in a search is like the choosing a of a Cat’s name, and no semantics seem to help evaluate the relevance of each hit. Then, once a link is chosen, navigation is not always intuitive. You can get lost easily: you may not find the information you are looking for even if it is right in front of you, or you may return a dozen times to a page already visited. Like personalities, The Web is unstructured, therefore a search engine company adds structure and semantics to provide a mechanism which allows a more precise description of data on the Web. This is called a Conceptual Clustering Algorithm, and it groups objects in concepts according to the properties they have in common. Jock, Hood, Drama Queen, Princess. It is interesting to note the major difference between the human and the machine is the intrinsic desire to put personal values on these categories.
August 25th, 2008 at 10:22 am
I can’t remember which Jane Austen heroine I am; but as for women of Firefly, of course I am Wash (apparently an honorary female).
And I would totally be the moaning brother. In fact I think I *am* the moaning brother. Moooooanday.
How ARE you???