One thing I find when heading into Ti-heavy territory (and yes, it’s still worth going there) is that the general perception and outlook on things becomes pretty static and existential. You start to study people and processes as if they just are, and that’s it. Which—OK, that’s really helpful. It’s how we give things consideration.

And this is behind a lot of cutting-edge analysis: “Here’s how they are.” Well, you can do something about that measured state. You can act on it.

But in certain Ti-heavy circles, if you then ask, “how could the situation be improved, how can they be changed for the better? What ought they do instead?” you are looked at like you are from outer space.

Well, I did say it is rare for INTJs to really get into Ti-space, so you’ve been warned.

Still—let us NEVER EVER give up on this question of how things can be improved. Not to shove it down others’ throats, but even just for our own personal study.

This question of improvement seems to impart magical energy to INTJs. Being around that environment of “here’s how things are (and they likely won’t change)” perception for too long puts you in the same boat of those with dangerous and risky “debts to magic,” ™ as in the Ti-dominant personality who has essentially shut open-minded Ne considerations out of their life. Believe me, you don’t want to be that person.

Yes, we want to accrue a little bit of debt to magic, and accept things for how they are. Otherwise we can’t live in the real world. Sure.

But we also bring a lot of magic into life via the INTJ intuition. We are really good conceptualizers, us INTJs. The world needs lonely little INTJs to develop concepts, to improve things. That they themselves can’t look into the future and see what might be done isn’t really worth worrying about; what’s more important is that we, ourselves, don’t set that tool down.

This happened to me way back in university; I got sucked right into the existential mindset and wow, if there was ever a case of “the salt losing its savor,” there was one. Depressed, lonely, yet also restless, angry. Why even give people tips or advice on what to do, or how to live? This is how life is, and that’s it. Might as well just be straightforward.

So yeah, sure, improve stuff! We need that. It’s our life mission. To put it down—that’s madness.

Again, this issue is woven into human history and philosophy so don’t be surprised if you get some pushback. But be bold in pushing through that, even if quietly so.

It’s how we is.

Our is casts oughts, and that’s something for others to worry about. (What a fractal of a question, here!)

Filed in: Energy /121/ | Ni /42/ | Productivity /120/

Kelvins grass uplight standforth and sit in. We all grouse a bit and that patch over there is still dewdropped.

You reached out to me and in the tremors we found the tik tik tik even worth celebrating every moment within the rain shelter of it doesn’t rain.

Personally I tried reaching out and it didn’t connect, the thing was it was evening and we were at home dusking. To which you may reply you saw that on TV before and I’d say it was all more suited to musical.

The way in which this was expressed was the 12:27 a.m. and I should go to sleep. I said I was captured, but you said I was being fed, and why not sleep over?

However my body had near disintegrated. That we sat together was indeed special, but I have these other needs, to life, to live. I must remain, in other words. I must orb with other orbs, in that skin-sense.

Awake in the a.m. the other orbs call out and transfer energy to other orbs.

This wakes me up and I yell at them to stop orbing so loud, for crying out a.m.

Filed in: Intuition /63/ | Ni /42/

Images Above and Below: Journal & sketchbook art by Marc Carson

Drawing for me is more like “drawing it out.” Always has been. People ask me sometimes,

“who is it?”

Like, who did you set out to draw?

I have no idea. It drew itself.

That person or thing just came out of the page. My art is just me trying to celebrate that birth, to highlight it.

To show that nothing can become something, maybe.

Such irrationality—in the Jungian sense of “attending to the perception of a non-average emergence”—that’s a big part of what makes me, me.

Let it come out of the page. Then we will make it into something.

My blog posting method works much the same way. Start with anything. Save. Edit. Save. Edit. Save. Now it is something. Before, it wasn’t. I don’t recognize it, in the sense that I didn’t set out to make, it.

In between posts I worry—is this it? No more anything to share? But the truth is, it was never a thing. It was always a what. Typing that first sentence is like writing down a question: What are you? What is this about?

At work, my coaching method works much the same way. Clients tell me it turns into something they didn’t anticipate, in a good way; there’s this “I thought you were just a personality type guy” moment after we’ve done 1) solving problems together and 2) relating them back as far into the fabric of the universe as we can go, after we’ve gone full them, and that’s a unique outcome that I’m happy about, and I’m happy mostly for them.

For me it’s easily perceived as another sketch, another perception filled out. Worth doing. Fun to look back at later. A person who to me started out as a splotch on the page, a blurry orb, is now this unique thing. A thing with presence, strength, its own system, its own integrity, even purpose. Or at least—a new heading, a new direction and confidence. They know it, I know it. It’s good.

Others ask me, “why the blue pencil in your ear, in the photo up there? Are you supposed to look like an artist?” I haven’t talked to them about this other art thing yet; I had just finished a marathon drawing session when I took that photo, and I was proud of what I had accomplished.

Society can be rough, in this way, for those of us who treasure life’s dimensionality. Why do I have to have all this stuff in different drawers? To talk as if I do this, not that, and justify it if I do both? I like here-place’s “INTJ Blog”-ness in this way. It’s all just me; the reason is in there somewhere if you want to dig around.

Shout out to dscript.org

Filed in: Aesthetics /4/ | Se /25/ | Therapeutic Practice /147/ | Intuition /63/ | Sensation /40/ | Ni /42/

Just off the top of my head…here are my personality type guesses for the TV show Frasier, which is one of my favorites:

• Frasier, ENFJ
• Niles, INFJ
• Daphne, ESFJ
• Roz, ESTP
• Martin, ISTP
• Bulldog, ESTP
• Donny, ENTJ
• Bebe Glazer, ESFP
• Sherry Dempsey, ESFP
• Station manager Kate Costas, ESTJ
• Attorney Samantha Pierce, ISTJ
• Niles’ ex Mel Karnofsky, INFJ (This one has been a bit controversial when I’ve shared it and I believe she would certainly be an outlier for an INFJ, as some of her perception-judgment patterns are certainly not conducive to a healthy lifestyle.)

As the Story Goes…

Personality psychology is a really fun lens through which to view a TV show like this. In my observation, most Frasier plot lines go something like this:

• Se: A new and sensational issue is at hand!
• Fe: Something must be done to save the occasion / person / reputation / relation. I have an idea…
• Ti: (The idea is horribly sneaky, or manipulative, etc., and it fails hard)
• Ni: What was I thinking by being so (petty / manipulative / etc.)? Why couldn’t I have seen this coming? This is madness! (Followed by a return to a wiser & calming view of the big picture.)

I have some friends IRL who seem to follow this general pattern quite often! :-)

Filed in: People /74/ | Interests /112/

A while back I was talking with my wife about how the Indian Stalker seems pretty ISFJ by behavior. My wife is an ISFJ herself, and kind of had to admit she saw it too, in her humorous way, when she got to the part in the video with the ISFJ dead-giveaway feeding behavior thing that she does with me on every road trip. I love it!

That’s not the only thing that triggered my ISFJ-o-vision; there’s a whole complex of visual similarities and behavioral things that I also picked up. Feeling reasonably confident.

By the way it’s not super cool, I think, to call people like that kid a stalker. Because there are a lot of lenses through which that behavior can be observed and described. And we don’t know his story. In my imagination though, he’s totally sick of working for his SP boss, cleaning up his messes and getting blamed for everything that’s gone wrong. So feeling under-appreciated and oddly resigned to do something really random, he hits the road, in the broad Ne-aspirational tradition.

Ah, my eyes are welling up. I have an ISFJ son myself, dammit. And I always want him to feel appreciated. But his interaction style is so behind-the-scenes that he can go unnoticed. He is one of the best kiddos in the universe. One night we were discussing superpowers, and I told him, “Hugh, one of your superpowers is knowing what people need before they know it themselves.” And in quiet sobriety he nodded his head as if he had just been officially recognized. He knows he’s amazing at that, as is my wife.

Well, let’s go back to this kid feeding the guy while he’s riding.

That is an awesome thing, the food-feeding thing. I personally find it hard to do for other people. I’m not a super good mouth-feeder-guy. In fact I really love to think I’m better at teaching a man to fish, because I’m sorry but there’s no damn way I’m feeding some random guy by hand!

And, if you’re an INTJ like me, REMEMBER to NOT FORGET that the hand reaching out to you with food will come right after you just contingency-ate before that long drive. Especially if you’re on a diet. Hold off, don’t eat yet! (Being starved while hanging around with an ISFJ is like the perfect setup for an amazing sensory experience anyway. Well, depending on the individual, of course, but IMO as a group they are amazing in this aspect.)

After watching that video a few times just to soak it all in, it struck me that personality type is an amazing tool for anybody who likes to learn languages. Especially for a strong intuitive type like the INTJ. It helps you know a person without even having to like all their Facebook posts, and on top of that, after gaining a reasonable amount of experience you might not even have to memorize any vocabulary words.

Once you know someone’s type, you instantly know a lot about their motivations, their preferred interaction style, the broad direction of their aspirational tendencies, their favored mode of perception, their favored types of judgment, and you start to generally get a feeling for their language, as an individual. Any of the millions of individual traits that enhance this individuality are even more welcome, and add more fuel to the fire that can lead to great experiences in human-to-human communications.

So that’s a pretty big deal.

If you aren’t a people person now, but kind of want to be one, but not in that way, not in the Facebook sort of way—in just such a case, personality type is a fantastic language tool. When you study personality type you study psychology. When you study psychology, you study the broader language of all humanity, and its sub-dialects.

(BTW the title of this blog reminds me of the way my INFJ sister writes emails, in her poetic way. It started as a typo but now I’m keeping it.)

Filed in: People /74/ | ISFJ /6/ | Relationships /78/

My wife could tell you I’m pretty hung up on appearances lately. I keep sending her photos and screenshots of people of various personality types.

“Doesn’t Person A look SO MUCH like Person B?” I’ll ask. “Do you want to see the Youtube video? Here is the link!”

“Wow, yeah! SO fascinating,” she’ll reply. I’m never sure exactly how fascinated she is, but I’m 99% sure this is legitimate fascination. :-)

Anyway, I know I am fascinated by this and so I’m going to continue down this path. And heck, I probably couldn’t stop even if I wanted to. And exactly how would you stop the INTJ’s dominant mode of perception from working? And why would you even want to do that?! Anyway. It just does its own thing.

So I feel like I’m hot on the trail of a couple different ESFP appearance-connections, with groups of people for evidence. Same with INTJ, INTP, INFP, ISFP, ENFJ, and ENFP.

Dammit, give us something to work with here

OK fine. Here’s an ESFP example: (with some amazingly ghetto-theorist text captions; you’re welcome)

The two unwitting assistants here are Nataly Dawn of Pomplamoose, and Elaine Perliss, hypnotherapy instructor.

Oh and I just remembered that my mom looks a lot like Elaine Perliss, too. lol. Will have to dig up photos. I don’t need her permission because she’ll take it all in stride ;-)

BTW I lightened Elaine’s face with the levels tool, but mostly because the video is so dark that I wanted to make it easier to see for people who have darkened their screens. (Do you guys do that? I darken my screens quite often, but my eyes tend to get really dry. But INTJs tend to be sensitive to little things like that too.)

This one is funny because I sent Elaine’s photo to my wife and together we quickly named four other ESFPs that resemble her. Personal friends, sadly. Maybe they’ll allow me to take photos? They are ESFPs, after all. Anyway, it was just a moment about which I knew I’d be blogging soon.

Another Example

Here’s a photo of my dad, an INTJ dentist, and Greg Prince, also a kickass INTJ dentist:

You can see the video where I got Greg’s photo, here.

Improper Mormon Language Warning

Two Mormon dentists, both INTJs, AND they both look alike. Jesus Horatio Christ, with apologies to my more orthodox Mormon friends. I wonder what the f*** would happen if they were in the same room together?! Instant best friends? One of those “separated at birth” news spots on CNN? Or something a bit more X-Files?

Unfortunately, my dad’s long gone. But beyond the photo comparison, these two people also share a certain intensity to their communications. Watch Greg Prince for a while and it seems like he’s constantly acting as if his crazy-deep historical insights are as clear as day and you’d be dumb not to think so, too. My dad could be like that. See? 1 + 1 = 5! Chin down, eyebrows up, “you’d better believe it!”

I showed the photo to my ESFP mom, who looks like Elaine above, and who said, in true ESFP form:

Yes, there’s a great resemblance! Dad tied for 1st place in the National Written Dental test. Received A+ on the 9 piece bridge he completed at U of W. The largest bridge work ever done at U of W.

The largest! The best! Great! Woo hoo! Gotta love that Se. But yeah, these guys are no nitwits! The INTJ look of champions!

And also…

Photos kind of sell it short

One problem I’m facing is this beyond-skin-deep aspect. These similarities are not all still-frame photo similarities. In fact, still photos really sell the effect short, if that’s all you’re comparing. In this case, yeah, probably you’re not going to find video examples of Nataly and Elaine interacting with others using even roughly similar levels of intensity. (Wouldn’t we love to see Elaine rocking out, and Nataly teaching hypnotherapy though? We would.)

But when you do experience that sort of thing, say when you’re talking to someone in real life and realize how much they resemble another person at this deep and really solid core level that runs through their entire being, it’s really weird and cool.

So I guess what I’m saying is that there’s a psycho-sensory similarity, in a way. If you can take in the experience of that person, including their mannerisms, preferred means of perceiving and judging, AND their overall appearance, you can get a better idea of what I’m talking about.

And that kind of leads to the most annoying part. As always. This needs to be organized somehow. I’ve got a new theory in the works here—possibly; I don’t want to inflate my gigantic ego too soon—but now I need to organize all this “stuff”. Which takes judgment, and as perceptive-dominant types, us INTJs, well sometimes it’s just easier to think about stuff. To just sit around and be fascinated—great. But people these days, they want things to be done. Evidences provided. Youtube channels created. Blog posts to be regularly published.

Bah.

Oh yeah and another weird thing

I’ve also noticed some striking similarities between opposite types. I know some of you might think, “you probably confused opposite types” but we’re talking about ISFJ-A and ENTP-A, for example. Not super easy to confuse. And man, the visual similarities. Really obvious stuff.

Well, let’s see how it goes.

This feels a bit like a setup for some niche and unintentionally-ironic oriental diagnosis type thing in a way, but I do entertain a faint hope of overcoming some of the shortcomings of such a possibly-comparatively-limited model. I’ve seen and podcasted about some other models for this kind of thing as well, though there isn’t much meat to them that I’ve seen so far.

One last super-creeped-out note

I am pretty creeped out to think I’m going to find some INTJ out there who looks like me. If it’s you and you want to get in touch though, don’t hesitate. We will freak people out together, and it will be glorious, I promise.

By the way, my “INTJ Sub-types” model made the rounds in beta form recently, and the feedback was good. I need to polish it up a bit but I’ll publish it soon.

Filed in: People /74/

Recently, incurable check-out-these-Chronosonic-speakers aesthete and INTJ Canuck friend A. asked me my feelings on Alex Trebek, host of the American game show Jeopardy who recently shared with his audience his diagnosis of terminal cancer. I shared my feelings, to which A. replied that I should share them here…

So! Here are my feelings on Alex Trebek, as shared with A.:

Psychological Ground Zero

Trebek, to me, has been a fixture. He’s in my head for good. How can you not like the guy, at a kind of archetypal level, right? However after really looking into his life, I’m pretty sure he’s an ISTJ-A. Which is like normcore to the normcorth power on the one hand, but also “how to succeed in business by being born into it” in a nutshell (with some exceptions of course—we are talking type here, not individuals) on the other hand.

If you look at his life through that lens, and simultaneously sort through the information available on his life, really actually study the guy, it becomes clear really fast that he’s never really had to stretch in ways that other, very impressive people have.

Like you, man [I’m referring to A. here]. You have had to pull some serious own-psychology strings just to make it through the day sometimes, and your flexible persona really shows that.

Everyone Else Can Just Be Like Trebek, for all Trebek Cares

Trebek though, has never, ever been where you’ve been. He hasn’t done that. I guarantee you that when he feels a prompt to flex, he pushes back or explodes or just leaves, or all three. His wife seems to be shouldering this burden, the eyes-out life-exploration side of his psychology, for him. She not only explores the unknown; she enjoys it! Maybe he notices that and appreciates it; maybe he doesn’t. I hope the latter, fear the former.

Trebek, well, he’s comparatively grounded. As in, literal ground: He’d rather be out gardening. Just like his psychological compatriot Richard Nixon would rather be mashing potatoes.

And unfortunately this psychology has yielded Trebek’s firmly-grounded, stoic, and tormentingly passionless approach to having cancer…it’s hard to watch, almost cringe-level.

“I have some news to share with you. I’m just like 50,000 other people in the US every year. Also, I’m going to keep working AND beat this.”

So no big deal guys!

A Lesson: How to Use the Wrong Psychological Tools for the Job

Well, good luck with that. Trebek could get out of that studio contract so easily at this point, but I think he’s scared that a lack of work will kill him. Or: He just doesn’t know, so he’s not going there. This has a lot to do with the “exploring the unknown” factor I mentioned above.

In that way I think he’s doing his fans yet another injustice. In that way Jeopardy has always been about trivia, never the applied-humanity sort of wisdom and reflection which results in knowing and un-knowing. Jeopardy is all about knowing, and never about un-knowing. If you wonder in Jeopardy, you are lost. In fact, you are probably going to get a derisive sneer! Seen in this context, those sneers are terribly sad. Stay with what is known. Don’t deviate. Wondering will get you nowhere.

Heck, while we’re at it, feeling will also get you nowhere. You want to see an ISTJ make an ENFP uncomfortable for being themselves—for feeling? There’s your video!

And that’s so huge here, that ENFP Ne/Fi missing piece, and we know it’s so important to humanity especially in times of suffering and pain, that I have to speculate that it’s a big part of the grand system of personality that is going to escort him to an early grave.

Conclusion

I grew up on Jeopardy, man. I love that show. My wife always tells me when it’s on a TV somewhere, like waving a Scooby snack at the dog himself. “Trebek!? Where?!”

But I wish I had more of a say in where this cancer track was going for him. It’s really unfortunate that his chiseled-af persona is basically already a psychological coffin, and fear of the unknown (like what would happen if my life changed somehow! gosh) is obvs a huge part of that for him.

Poor Trebek—well, rich Trebek in one way. But poor in another. You will always be a fixture, but you could have really lived.

Anyway, I’m grateful for Alex Trebek and what he’s given us all. It’s clearly the best he had to offer. That he left some crucial, amazing, life-changing tools on the table because they were simply off his radar is not 100% his fault.

It’s a damn shame though, that’s for sure. I wanted a guy like Trebek to have the best I knew was possible.

Filed in: Energy /121/ | People /74/ | Openness /49/

I’m not the type of personality-type-guy to proclaim, “I perceived that your personality type is X, therefore it’s God’s truth,” so take this list with a grain of salt. However, I’m also one of the few personality type-interested people around who has been tested multiple times on my ability to type people. I passed the tests. And they were not easy. Man, there were some serious red herrings on those tests. (I’m looking at you, Susan Nash!)

So, cut that grain of salt in half, maybe.

But here are some Youtube people who I think “would make great ESFPs” ;-) and seem to be “ESFP-values-centered” individuals. Ha.

See if you can spot the Se (extraverted sensing) values: External objects, their importance, we need more external objects to compare and examine! Object-curiosity! However, the internal, deeper sensory qualities…the health aspect of eating all that fast food and chugging huge amounts of liquid…hey maybe don’t eat so much…this can be ignored (Si) in favor of that I want it all extraverted, broad psychology. And of course Fi (introverted feeling) values: I feel like goin’ out and having fun…oh and look, some people care about little ol’ me…so sweet, I care for people…individuality is important, let’s all be ourselves…love you guys, etc.

Furthermore, don’t miss that interaction style: Get Things Going. Give the viewers what you know they want to see. Leave it all on the stage. Make people feel energetic and happy and satisfied.

As an INTJ: This psychology is a big part of your psychology. And for a lot of you, it’s part of your unnoticed psychology. It makes demands of you and you immediately respond to those demands, and then later you wonder why you acted in such a shameful or embarrassing way. The more you can be aware of this side, find healthy ways to encourage it, the better. Related: Attending to the Turbo Lover (don’t ESFPs make good Turbo Lovers?)

And ending with a decidedly ESFP-values podcast called “System Mastery” we have come right back to INTJ, the home of the systems-view. :-)

Aside: As a tech guy, one of my favorite signs of an ESFP client is when they send me their password to something, and for the really Turbo Lover ESFPs it’s always some combination of words like GOLD and SEXY and MAMA and things like that. “GOLDSEXYMAMA1990”. Oh yeah baby. It’s gettin’ hot up in here with these passwords!

Filed in: Fi /35/ | ESFP /4/ | Se /25/ | Energy /121/ | Sensation /40/

The latest Marc’s INTJ Podcast is up!

Direct MP3 Download | Archive.org Apocalyptic Contingency Storage Resource Container Reference Link

Listen along as I discuss:

• Dealing with douchebag psychology at work
• Randomness
• UFO cover-up psychology
• Hot latin hits
• Hip hop

…and more! Enjoy!

Filed in: Podcast /5/ | Publications /44/

It had been a while since I made any music, so when I found some of my old songs over the weekend I started to feel really nostalgic. Just for fun I decided to blow the dust off the Mac, fire up Renoise and SynthMaster, load some TR-808 samples and put together a mellow retro-electronic tune.

The process was a little bit fiddly; at one point I was laughing while I watched the song playing backward, with no apparent way to stop it. I’m still convinced that this is a bug and not a feature. Force-kill, restart. On top of that, I had decided to make this happen over the weekend, full stop, no matter what, and since I only remembered a smattering of mixing techniques I learned from a Russian guy back in the early 2000s, smatter-mixing it was. No time to Google around for sweet mixing tricks like I used to do.

The song reminded me of one of my Ni-collages which had a computer and a photo of Seattle (my birthplace) in it, so I grabbed that and glossed it up a bit. “UltraPioneer” was one of the first names that came to mind and actually does resonate personally with some challenging experiences of late (hope to talk about those soon, nothing super terrible).

Anyway, this exercise somehow ticked my “therapeutic” box and I look forward to more of this kind of therapy in the future. ;-) This is just for personal enjoyment of course, nothing serious planned…

Filed in: Interests /112/ | Rest /22/ | Therapeutic Practice /147/