Fantastic frozen fantasies
Fluffy fascination
Filling feeling fingers
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Fat flakes falling Fantastic frozen fantasies Fluffy fascination Filling feeling fingers |
| date | 2001-001-18:07:19 |
| SelfConciousness |
Reciprocity is fundamental to my character. Like Terry Pratchett's witches, if you ever want to really irritate me, do me a favor I can't return. The only problem with this aspect of my character is that I tend to expect that other people will behave the same way. They don't. This is a problem, but it isn't a problem with my need for reciprocity, it's a problem with my judgement of other people's character. The solution is to beceome a better judge of character, to learn how to estimate how other people will behave under given circumstances, for I think that is what character is. A quick web search on "character judgement" and "judging character" suggests that character is still not much in the public eye, after dropping out of it thirty years ago. There are discussions of characters in role-playing games, an article on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a skeptics article on phrenology, and, web search engines being what they are, a bunch of pages on horse and dog shows. To get an idea of how far out of the mainstream character judgement is, thre isn't even a hit on MP3.COM, and there aren't any hits on porn, either. O no, I lie--the second page of hits Metacrawler returned does have a page from MP3.COM, something about "Judgement of Paris", presumably about the source of Hera's hatred for Troy rather than about the modern French judiciary. The few hits that seem to have to do with judgement of character are mostly about "building character" in children as a means of social indoctrination, not resources for adults who are, apparently, considered beyond hope. Searching on "taxonomy of character" yields more of the same, along with a smattering of pages on fonts and character sets. I think one of the watersheds that occurs in any journey of self-understanding is when you realize that you've come far enough that understanding other people is now as much of an issue as understanding yourself. The question is: how to go about it? The Greeks cared about character, but they did so in the context of a pathologically ill society of barely controlled extremes, a society with a sick fascination with unbridled passion and a dreadful need of self-mastery, a society were Apollo and Dionysius represented the poles of an untranscendable dichotomy. The Romans cared about character but only in the sense of making sure individuals subordinated themselves to the state, or, in the case of the emperors, were able to subordinate the state to themselves. The Christians--at least some protestant sects--cared about character, but only as it related to getting into heaven, and in later days as a means of social control, much like the Romans. This latter attitude was prevalent in 19th and early 20th century North America. As the Century of War dragged on, a few people began to notice that "character" was only a few steps away from "cannon fodder". Character and character judgement started to get a bad name. The modern self-esteem movement certainly endorses character judgement--self-esteem could be defined as having a positive, realistic judgement of your own character--but it is still in its infancy and focussed on teaching individuals about their own character, rather than others. The wealth of kooky ideas surrounding character judgement historically does not bode well for the field. Physiogomy, phrenology and metopscopy were all created to fill a need. In fact, it is the same need that the "personality types" literature such as enneagrams fulfill today. Hmmm... To what extent has the concept PERSONALITY taken over the concept CHARACTER? Is PERSONALITY just CHARACTER with the moral element removed? So if someone is always late they have a free-spirited personality, and an inconsiderate character? From my point of view, it doesn't matter what you call things. I'm no more interested in having my time wasted by a free spirit than I am by an inconsiderate--from the point of view of someone on the recieving end, the effect of the behavior, and its source in the persons nature, is more important than what its called. This is an important shift in the way I think we should judge people (my apologies for the rapid jumps about here--I'm thinking out loud and these topics are all more related than they probably seem just now.) Christians were very concerned with judging people as Good or Evil, and if they judged you Evil it meant you were absolutely, intrinsically Evil, all the way down to the core, and God in His infinite mercy and love would cast you into Hell to spend an eternity in torment. This is the sort of thing that gave character judgement a bad name. But I don't care about whether or not someone is a bad person--I don't even know what it would mean for someone to be intrinsically evil. I care whether or not someone is going to be worth dealing with, fun to play with, interesting and exciting and stimulating to be around. Or annoying, frustrating and irritating. The judgements I need to make aren't about whether the person is Good or Evil, but whether the person is creative or dull and kind or inconsiderate. |