The Third Party Vote: Optionality

Just a short one today. I'm trying to cultivate the discipline of writing more.


I have written quite a few posts (they remain perennially the most popular entries on the blog) about the Myers-Briggs personality profile and being an INTP. It's 2020 now, and personality tests are not a trendy topic compared to when I started writing here, but I have found they continue to be a topic of interest on instagram, which has many channels devoted to MBTI.

Apparently there is a smaller but dedicated Korean MBTI community?

One stereotype of INTPs, frequently mentioned in those instagram posts on the topic, is that INTPs lack motivation. More specifically, the motivation is all focused on information gathering, and not on "getting out there and doing things." As far as I can tell this is true; I find myself naturally drawn to gathering and systematizing information to further complete a "theory of everything," which feels like an autotelic and all-absorbing occupation, whereas I often have to make to-do lists and try to cultivate good habits and drink coffee and cue up the right playlists at the right times to spur myself on to being productive and making progress on other kinds of goals. (Such as anything involving paperwork)

So coming from someone who struggles less to see things worth doing and more in summoning the willpower to accomplish some subset of them, a technique I find helpful is the one I want to explain briefly in this post.

An Embarrassment of Motivational Riches

There's a lot of good self-motivation material out there for free nowadays. If the motivation you lack can truly be supplied by anything external to yourself, YouTube has hundreds of hours of different styles and flavors of gifted speakers and accomplished people urging you to get out there and do something, to get up off the mat and overcome whatever is holding you back, to break your larger goals down into small enough steps that you can get started immediately, etc.

I enjoy a good Tom Bilyeu or Jocko Willink interview myself, and have gleaned some valuable puzzle pieces about how life and people work from some of the very accomplished people featured there, which I find ways to apply to my ministry work. (While recognizing the goals being discussed on that and other channels are usually very "this-worldly," if an observation is true then it's true, and truth works cross-platform)

In terms of self-motivation, self-improvement, "hustling/getting after it" and that whole milieu, Solomon tells us that chasing after material wealth isn't worth it; not only because a love for money can lead to all kinds of evil, but that it's simply not worth exhausting yourself for a lifetime for what you can't take with you and what other people may spend badly after you're gone.

(Yet that truth doesn't conflict with the true observation that "A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit." Scripture also informs us that, generally speaking, when the righteous are diligent, they will also be prosperous, and this is considered a good thing, and society as a whole benefits.)

However many people have goals other than wealth; you may need motivation to work off that extra quarantine weight, to get skill certification and move into a new career path, or simply to accomplish that thing you've put off for two years already. But what about when that motivation is balanced more or less equally by our lack thereof?

"The Third Party Vote"

The 2016 election was a surreal experience, perhaps even more so to watch from overseas. One interesting thing to watch on FB was how people who were not excited about either choice mostly fell into two camps: either "lesser of the two evils" or "if we'd all just vote third party, it would solve this." Both camps had weak points which the other side pointed out, but the third party advocates were tenacious and I expect to see some of them back soon for election season 2020.

In trying to motivate ourselves to do a difficult or unpleasant task, we tend to fall into a similar dilemma. Not moving towards our goal is a bad option, but the effort or drudgery or willpower-expenditure involved is demotivational. We thus are trapped between two things we don't want: not making any progress, and some amount of suffering required to make progress.

In this situation, with one vote for progress yet one vote against it, we can benefit from a third vote. In this case, not a vote for a third party, but a vote by a third party. There is a third party involved in the decision, and we seldom give them a vote.

That third party is us, after we've made that progress and arrived at a different place. The you that has run the miles or applied for the grant or rearranged the shop or memorized the scripture passage. The you that now has increased optionality because you've put in the work to get there.

Give the third party involved in your decisions a vote...

Optionality, and the Coronavirus

Optionality is a topic I have not discussed at any length on the blog, though it is an integral part of the theory of Antifragility which I have mentioned quite a few times.

I will probably do a whole post on optionality in the future. For now let's consider it at a basic level--having worked to have more options at your disposal.

The coronavirus situation has caused untold economic damage and personal suffering in the US, partly because of a lack of optionality. Setting aside conspiracy theories to the contrary, the US healthcare system wasn't prepared to handle this kind of pandemic, and thus could only react in an extreme way (since nothing was in place to react at varying levels of extremity as appropriate), yet that meant both federal and state governments could only scramble to obtain resources for this kind of extreme reaction, for which there was no SOP (standard operating procedure) already in place. Hospitals couldn't obtain the supplies they needed and were under contrary instructions on what to do. It was most crudely effective shock test to the system imaginable (one the system failed badly) and yet new revised figures emerging all suggest it was a merciful one.

By contrast the optionality provided by things like more local manufacture of health supplies, a pandemic SOP and agreed-on chain of command, experience of previous pandemics, a smaller population size with fewer international points of entry, etc. helped Taiwan respond to the virus quickly and effectively. It is to be hoped that with the experience of 2020, the US federal and state governments, as well as the American populace, will know better how to respond. Some optionality will have been earned through experience, though at immense cost.

Optionality shows up in people's individual responses to the pandemic and quarantine as well. Some people with sufficient savings were in a position to "pivot" and use the unexpected time at home profitably, whereas those who depended on a weekly income were sorely hurt by the mandatory business closures and shelter-in-place orders. As the weeks drag on, some have even re-opened their shops in defiance of state governments, trying to provide for themselves and their employees with no other source of income. Their situation didn't leave them with any other options.

We can see examples of optionality in scripture, and the woman described in Proverbs 31 is an impressive example:

"She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come." (v25) 

She can laugh because she has worked hard, become a strong person, and knows she has options regardless of what may come. This is not only a question of material security because of all her "side gigs" (weaving, etc) as they'd say on some of those YouTube channels. Her hard work and the strong character she has developed, not to mention her position in the community and acts of charity, all work to secure her against future hardship. One given example is that she is not afraid of a cold winter, for she and her children already have warm clothes (v21-22).
I'm sure with little effort you can imagine various modern parallels. What does "laughing at the days" to come look like in 2020? Among other things, it certainly means setting your faith on a firm foundation and investing effort in doing lots of those things that are difficult, un-fun, yet give you good optionality in the future when you'll probably need it.

Conclusion: Vote for Optionality!

I said at the beginning that this would be short, and I'm rapidly failing to achieve that goal. So, let's wrap things up by combining this concept of optionality with the idea of a third vote: When caught in that balanced-dilemma moment of trying to decide whether or not to tackle a task you don't feel any motivation to complete, rather than just comparing the yes vote of our current level of motivation against the no vote of the effort and/or hardship involved and letting things stagnate there, try giving a third vote to that future self, who is in a place of better optionality due to your invested effort and time. If it's 2 vs 1, do it. You will thank yourself retrospectively from the future.

An INTP on the Mission Field: Not Being Understood

(This is Part 3 in my current series on INTPs and Christian ministry. Go here for Part 1, Part 2)

The Overcommunication Problem

Do you ever suffer from facting-at-the-mouth? You're having a normal sort of conversation with someone, could be a long-time friend or a new acquaintance, and suddenly an issue comes up you're interested in and, often mostly unbeknownst to yourself, suddenly from your mouth begins to issue forth a rich and dense thunderhead of information regarding that topic, with possible lightning-strike tangents to related ideas.

This is perfectly acceptable to nearly any fellow INTP, as we love a good tempest of information (very different from "brainstorming," which is sometimes difficult to endure), but I have discovered that other people do not communicate in this way. Some of them even have a fairly strong aversion to it.

As I brought up in a previous post, people talk, and argue, for different reasons. Some of them find the process mildly stimulating regardless of whether the sounds coming out are actually conveying any thoughts or sentiments they'll remember 10 minutes later. For an INTP who has not created some kind of mental subprocess which can keep this going while their brain stays in a safe place, this kind of discussion can be like torture. Imagine someone cooking, not to make food anyone is going to eat, but just because they enjoy pouring things in bowls and mixing them around, and it's all going to be tossed out when they get tired of it, and that this requires at least two people and they can sort of drag other people into this process in such a way that it's rude to decline.

But INTPs can do a much more wearying version of this. We don't realize it, because speech for us is among other things a fairly efficient (given the options at our disposal) method of communicating ideas back and forth rapidly, and that's what we like to use it to do. If we could legibly write on sheets of paper much faster than we could speak, you would occasionally see two INTPs sitting beside each other with legal pads, scribbling furiously and nodding.

What we do is this: once a normal, unsuspecting person brings up a topic that interests us, we lock into the conversation with laser-like focus and begin trying to upload information verbally to their brain in order to have the necessary relevant data in each other's RAM to be able to analyze it productively. We expect the other person to be doing this too, of course, since it's possible they have picked up some info we managed to somehow overlook, and so their look of slight alarm and/or physically observable attempt to back out of the conversation is confusing because that's signalling the opposite of the intense exchange of ideas we're revving up for.


To reverse the cooking analogy earlier, imagine someone suggests making pizza and you enthusiastically agree, then begin clearing out a space beside the back door and hauling in bricks. When they ask you confusedly what you are doing, you also respond confusedly.
You: "Building a pizza oven, of course. Didn't we say we wanted to have pizza?"
Them: "Oh. Uh... we're just sending Rachel to the store for frozen pizza crust. Which brand of canned tomato sauce do you like?"
You (Frustrated at yourself for misreading the situation and at them for rejecting your idea which would have resulted in a superior outcome, in this case much tastier pizza, you speak too quickly and don't really mean it the way it comes across): "Oh sorry, I thought we were having real pizza. Well if not then it doesn't really matter which sauce you pick, anything's fine with me."
(Awkwardness ensues.)

When you're used to doing things very thoroughly, that's what feels rewarding and satisfying, but a lot of people find it "too much." That can be what conversations are like for INTPs. We want completeness and a comprehensive "theory of everything" approach, or at least a theory which fits into our personal theory of everything. Sometimes that comes out in how we talk about anything. Laying all the groundwork like that is practically a parenthetical statement for us, and one that is sometimes not even necessary if the other person is tracking with us, but it can be baffling and tiresome to someone who didn't intend to club the issue over the head and dissect it right there on the table beside the coffee machine. They were just making conversation until the coffee was ready. To them, the interaction might seem a little like this... (Bill Murray in this case actually muttering the things an INTP might uncharitably be thinking)

Bill Murray is being a jerk in that clip, and sometimes people do put down INTPs fact-vomit tendencies to negative motivations, thinking we want to show off, or impress them with how smart we are. It's a reaction with which I became quite familiar, growing up, and adults are sometimes no different. But while sinful people will have sinful motivations, mainly we talk like that because we think everything is really interesting. If your brain kept shooting off on tangents while other people were talking, and you thought all of them were really fascinating, you might talk similarly. It's like ADD of the mind's association matrix. In response to the idea of "tea," say, my brain might go down any of a number of paths:

Tea -> Drinking Tea -> Calmness -> Serenity -> Firefly -> Joss Whedon -> Whedon's ability to realistically portray characters with religion despite his own atheism
|
Green Tea -> Oolong Tea -> Taiwan High Mountain Tea -> Nantou -> '99 Earthquake -> That mountain with the whole side missing that I saw on my trip to visit my friend and we also went to this cool aviary
|
Matcha -> More caffeine than coffee -> coffee caffeine content -> espresso -> The time that I was in the airport in North Carolina and at Starbucks I ordered a Doppio Espresso and the guy pronounced it with an incredibly strong accent and it was funny but I was worried it might be pretentious to think so
|
Matcha Pocky -> Pocky -> That guy in Fast and the Furious 3 Tokyo Drift was holding a stick of Pocky in his mouth and not eating it -> I can never manage to do that for more than a few seconds -> I should be more disciplined -> I didn't do pushups today
|
Japanese Snacks -> Octopus balls -> Danshui Taiwan -> Bitan is at the opposite end of the Taipei metro from Danshui as I was saying to someone a couple days ago but it's rarely visited because fewer people know about it, but it would be a good place for short-termers to visit for a more relaxing experience of Taiwan

So my coworker might still be in the process of pouring some tea, and I have now decided I will see if our incoming short-termers this summer want to visit Bitan. I might introduce it as if it's a new topic I just remembered I wanted to mention. In particularly irritating INTP mode (one that I try to suppress or train myself out of, conversationally), my brain might insist it wants to discuss Joss Whedon's ability to write characters with religious beliefs well despite his own atheism, and if I don't stop myself I might automatically begin working the conversation down the path my brain took to get there from tea. Maybe that's not an INTP thing but my own particular weirdness, but it's something nowadays I can usually stop myself from doing. (harder to stop in Chinese, however, because I have less control over observing what I say, because most of my mental effort is going into saying it correctly)

This is why it was hard to pay attention in class. Or not fact-dump in conversations.
And it's especially hard not to do this when people are praying in my second language...

Now, occasionally someone does want more information on a certain topic, and they might actually seek INTPs out in that situation. We -like- to have our brains picked, and I suspect (it's true for me, at least) we don't care so much whether someone profits from using that information for their own purposes. We're not in it for the money, we're trying to construct a model of the universe in our heads, and by consulting us and then acting on that information you're basically buying into our model. This both validates us and our carefully constructed views, and also means we are influencing the world of ideas, which is the kind of influence that matters to us. Anyone can win the lottery and have money, but explaining a system to an interested person and seeing the light go on over their head, or overhearing someone telling someone else an idea that you originally told them, in a way that demonstrates it's already become part of their own world view, that's the sort of thing that gives us the warm fuzzies. (That no one else believes we are capable of experiencing)

Being Misunderstood

All this leads to a very common phenomenon among INTPs: feeling misunderstood.
I was once talking with a girl I was interested in, and the topic of pets came up. She said she couldn't imagine me having a pet unless it was a snake, or maybe a robot. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, things with her went nowhere, but did result in a pretty cool trip to Mexico)

I was a bit surprised at that response, in that I didn't think I came across to people that cold-bloodedly, but then I am surprised at least half the time I hear other people's descriptions of me, because none of it usually sounds like how I think of myself.

That in itself is probably quite common ("O, wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as others see us!"), but INTPs may specifically suffer from the feeling of not being understood and the wish or desire that this could be different. The problem for us, I think, is twofold:

1. As described above, we don't communicate normally (whatever that means).

It's hard for other people to get to know us, a fact very commonly mentioned in descriptions of INTPs. I suppose that because it's hard for us to let them. We bring up abstract topics and give them a thorough scrutiny and talking-over, and that's conversation for us. I don't really know how to talk about "myself," and am not much more able to talk to other people about themselves either.

As an example: Though I think I've improved over the past few years, when someone tells me they are sad, there is always that temptation to begin talking about sadness, as a concept. Sometimes the best I can do instead is to approach the conversation as discussing the topic of "sadness as it relates to [other party in conversation]". Since this involves talking through it (being P and not J, we're less likely to offer any sort of direct or implied judgement regarding the cause or appropriateness of their sadness), sometimes the other person may even find the conversation helpful and feel better afterwards. If I can succeed in not actually saying all the stuff my brain is writing into the conversational prompt regarding all the ideas that branch forth from what the other person is saying, it's not unusual to be told I'm a good listener.

2. Our whole approach to life is centered around understanding.

For an INTP, understanding is an endless quest. We want to know everything and why it ticks, and how it relates to everything else. We want to understand other people too, and sometimes can do surprisingly well at this along certain lines, since knowing someone for a while lets us build a sort of behavioral model for them, and that information goes into how we do this for other people too, so we can get quicker and more accurate at it as we go along, if we keep training in the discipline of actively engaging with various kinds of people. I'm thinking that a wise, old INTP would be an excellent judge of human character, because he's had a lifetime of observing people and building a mental model of their behavior, what different sorts of people are like and what they tend to do and how they react to things.

Because of our deep desire to know, we also have a deeper than usual desire to be known. The unknowability of our personality then presents a big problem, since we find it hard to let people know us yet desire greatly that they should. Those people who are willing to put forth the effort to get past our barriers and know us well are often rewarded with our devotion and gratitude, though in their child-like intensity these can be burdensome as well, depending on the depth of relationship desired. It must be admitted that a sense of proportion is not really one of our strongest features...

In Cross-Cultural Ministry

Setting aside all the accusations that the Myers-Briggs types are invalid to begin with, which I don't find to be the case, as if nothing else it's a heuristical model of considerable value, there is the fascinating question of whether the Meyer-Briggs scale can be applied across very different cultures. Their own info on that is here, but it's minimal, and the question is one I'd like to revisit in a future post.

Since an INTP on the mission field is probably immersed in a different culture and different language, the chances of being understood are even less likely. And in terms of meeting like-minded people, God can bring anyone into our lives according to His timing (something that happens all the time here), but by default INTPs are probably not the local people you're going to run into, except possibly as your language instructor. And given their conversational propensities, if they don't already speak English you're going to need a lot of language ability to talk with them. Depending on their level of introversion, INTPs are not necessarily going to rush to meet a foreign face either, though they may proactively make your acquaintance if they have good English themselves and you're a chance to practice it.

There's also the issue of coworkers. Feeling your national coworkers or local ministry partners don't understand you is natural, given the cultural and language gaps that probably exist. I probably seem entirely rational half the time and totally inexplicable the other half, to them, though as my Chinese ability has increased I've been able to do some of the "looking at it from my perspective, it's similar to how a Taiwanese person would feel about X" explanations which have helped, or at least moved things a bit closer to the recognition that Westerners are not mysterious entities who do strange things for our own incomprehensible purposes and can only be reacted to, not understood.

But your Western coworkers are another matter, because we expect them to "get" us, since by comparison we all seem more like to each other than like our target culture. That expectation can lead to a whole range of problems, however, since even in the same national culture there are widely different regional cultures (it's likely that someone on a team from Maine and someone from Texas will have to be working across fairly significant cultural gaps), and also it doesn't account for personalities. I've been told repeatedly by experienced missionaries that some of the greatest difficulties encountered by missionaries are conflicts with fellow missionaries. It hasn't happened yet, but I am led to understand it probably will. (A bridge that can be crossed in as Christ-like a manner as possible when I come to it)

It's certainly possible you will have a team leader who is brisk, brusque, and who sees your objections or analytical comments as not contributing to the discussion or getting anything done, and shuts you down. Or, your team leader may be sensitive and empathetic, and resist the "negativity" that involves rejecting any ideas or making anyone feel left out of the conversation. Either one can be frustrating, but cross-cultural ministry offers even fewer opportunities to pick your own coworkers.

So it's important to realize at the outset that you are probably not going to be understood, and frankly it's likely that most people place a lower priority on the whole concept than you do. So a big part of INTPs coping with cross cultural missions is something I've mentioned before, simply growing thicker skin and dealing with it.

However...

It doesn't actually matter. People won't understand the weird way your brain works, or why you can talk for hours with some people and only have short, awkward exchanges with others. But your intense need to be understood is already fulfilled, by a God who created you, and understands you better than you understand yourself. It may sound like I suddenly shifted into Sunday school mode, but I haven't. Because within the realization that God knows you better than you know yourself lies a key to overcoming a significant weakness of the INTP personality.

Jesus did not say the greatest commandment is "Know Thyself." (That's not even from the Bible, in case anyone was confused, and it predates the Latin version -referenced for example in The Matrix- being from an ancient Greek sage whose precise identity is unknown. See! That's what we do. That's a miniature example of what I'm talking about at the beginning.)

Jesus did say, however, that we were to love God, love others, and make disciples of all nations. The Bible is essentially a primer, compiled across various authors, genres, and centuries, that tells you who God is, and what He wants us to do in this life. So:

A. God knows us better than we know ourselves
B. He commands us not first to know ourselves, but to know and love Him, and love others
C. In following His commands, we will in the process find the fulfillment we sought in wanting to be known.

This is true for a reason I mentioned in a previous post. INTPs often play by the rules of reasonableness and logic, but aren't aware that there are social rules which aren't in the guidebook that came with our personality. The same is true of Scripture: God doesn't answer us according to the varying ways we seek fulfillment (ways that differ by personality type, among other things), He commands us according to our nature, and as we follow Him we find our fulfillment.

In our tight circle of logic, we come to the end of ourselves. In following what seems natural and instinctive for our personality, we eventually run into a dead end, because Eastern philosophy is wrong, the answers are not inside us, the answers come in following the God who created us and knows how we "tick," and knows that what while we have X, and Y, and are naturally (and logically, but based on our limited information) seeking Z to fulfill ourselves, what we actually need is Blue, or 2, or Circle. We need something from outside ourselves, something we couldn't arrive at or guess through our own efforts, even the powerful analytical and intuitive efforts of which INTPs are so capable.

So when we stop trying to find fulfillment through being understood, and depend on God to love Himself and love people (not something we can succeed in doing by trying under our own power), we find several things happen:

1. We stop caring so much about being understood, about receiving the understanding of others, yet discover our drive to understand can aid us greatly in serving God. Our personality comes from God too, and is a gift from Him to serve Him in our particular way; it is only the defects that are from sin. Solving the defects cannot be done by means of the particularities of our personality but by turning to the God from whom our personality is derived.

And actually when under conviction, we find that being understood is terrifying: the truth is far worse than we feared. We wish God might not know us so closely, see weaknesses and evil we haven't even uncovered yet. The bad news is that we are perfectly known by infinite Goodness, and that damns us to hell because we are not Good. The good news is that there is one man, Christ, who is Good, because He is God who is Good, and if we ally ourselves with Him, His goodness will count for us too.

2. The trap of introspection grows weaker the more time we spend outwardly focused. The melancholia, self doubt, and recursively negative introspection that often accompany the INTP personality type are difficult to shake because they trap us into trying to get to the end of them, whereas they are actually endless. I tried for years; it ended in total despair, and damage to my psyche or whatever that part of me should be called which I'm still recovering from now. Simply having your mind fully occupied with something that doesn't leave you processing cycles to get sucked back into the Darkening Corridor may only be a temporary solution (sometimes temporary relief is enough), but the more you do it, the more you'll find your mind can stay in the sun.

3. When the black hole of nihilism is filled with God's infinity, it overflows. That God's love is infinite rolls off the tongue nicely in a praise song, but think about what we're saying. There is a black hole at the center of our being, that abyss into which unredeemed men dare not look, from which they distract themselves with everything from TV to building empires. When we surrender to God and enter His kingdom, that hole of endless Nothing becomes filled with Himself, and He is more Something than the Nothing is Nothing. He can overcome it, He can fill the black hole up, break back across the event horizon, and pour out into the universe unstoppably. That's what He does in our souls.

What is the opposite of a black hole?

The transformation can be even more obvious in an INTP because we feel the gravitational pull of that black hole very strongly. We construct our vast and sturdy array of logic to withstand it, and logic is very strong. It is the wisdom from which the world was created. But one tiny error, one imperfection, -inevitable, due to our humanity- and the weak link will begin a chain of failures, the girders of reason warping under the strain, and the whole thing comes crashing down like a house of cards. It can be rebuilt in our minds over and over; we are made in the image of God. But it is never sufficient.

Christ does not withstand the black hole's gravity with His strength, He fills it up. It stops sucking in the light and begins flowing forth with it, becomes an every-dimensional fountain, like our souls do when filled with Him. We are changed; the dry stubble of our souls becomes the bush in the desert- a vessel for the holy fire which though it burns does not consume, but brings life. Embrace God, and surrender to Him. If you struggle with the inner darkness, ask the Light of the World for help. And to those caught in the icy shroud of depression He can send His holy fire. He did it for me. The solution to the deepest and darkest problems of the INTP soul is not a perfect syllogism, but the very presence of God.

And so was the plight of man for generations.
Their souls remained frozen.
Enslaved in darkness.
Until the day that fire fell from Heaven.

"Fire Made Flesh" - Becoming the Archetype

An INTP on the Mission Field: The INTP Struggle Is Real (...And Needs to be Sanctified)

We return to the topic of being a (Myers-Briggs) INTP on the mission field (More posts here, and here), and the unique challenges and opportunities that presents. If you're not an INTP, don't leave just yet! I will attempt to explain why being right for us is not simply a matter of pride but part of a deadly struggle against nihilistic chaos, and how seeing part of the bigger picture is necessary for our growth in godliness. If it doesn't apply to you, it may help you understand that odd person in your life.

(Note: I am aware that a recent viral article attacked the validity of the Myers-Briggs system. I proceed on the basis that this way of roughly describing people's personalities corresponds to observable reality, is known to many people, and is in my experience a very useful heuristic.)

People often misunderstand INTPs. We tend to come across as know-it-alls, and as people who "just can't admit that you're wrong." The problem is that we typically aren't wrong, at least factually and logically, which is what we mean when we talk about being right or wrong. (Therein lies much of the problem, which we'll get to a little later on)

Typically, though, the person making that accusation has just presented a half-concocted premise riddled with logical errors and not even communicated using the most effective language. Then (we perceive) they are asking us to agree with them that not only is this a good and reasonable assertion, but it is superior to the one we've spent weeks both consciously and unconsciously formulating, testing, attacking to find weaknesses, etc.

Imagine that INTPs think of all ideas as cages for truth, and our brains are full of hypothetical velociraptors who systematically attack the cages trying to devour the tasty truth inside. Now along comes someone with a less carnivorous idea filter, and attempts to disagree with us using an idea that just occurred to them. Our mind-velociraptors simply laugh hungrily, imagining the helpless truth on which they would feast were that idea offered up to them, and wonder what sort of pathetic mental dinosaurs test your idea-cages.

Your obliviously incessant non sequiturs... smell delicious

(If, on the other hand, your truth-cage looks strong enough to hold up, we joyfully release our velociraptors to have a go at it. We -want- to find people who have solid ideas and can defend them well. It's hard not to have wonderful multiple-hour conversations with those people. We don't mind that this makes us a bit strange, we're having too much fun)

Or, if Jurassic Park analogies aren't your thing, imagine hanging a picture at a bad slant, on a bent rusty nail, with a photo frame missing one of its four sides and the glass shattered inside, and then being sad or angry when we can't successfully cover our eye-twitch enough to lie that we agree it is indeed a beautiful picture, masterfully hung. We don't understand... why can't you see how obviously inadequate it is and yet how quickly it could be fixed? (Feelings? Hurt?... Huh? Weren't we just talking about how to hang a picture?)

I'm not saying that's an entirely fair assessment on our part. I am saying, that we usually play the game very expertly and very fairly by the rules by which we think the game is played. When you accuse us of breaking the rules of the game, we take that accusation very seriously. But the problem is not that we're wrong about those rules, they're important rules. The problem is that there are other rules too, which are sometimes missing from the rulebook which came with our personality.

For example, I discovered at some point in my 20's that people get into the-debate-sort-of-arguments (the kind that are about ideas, not something someone did that made someone else angry) for all kinds of reasons. Up until that point, I had not imagined there was any other reason to engage in this kind of discussion besides 1) clarify/strengthen your understanding of the topic and 2) refute someone who is making false statements.

The idea that one might do it to enjoy the sensations that accompany an intense discussion regardless of the topic had never occurred to me. Or, insanely, because one simply likes arguing and would just as soon switch sides because it's "not about who's right and who's wrong." (As far as I'm concerned, one might as well have said this about choosing sides in WWII; that statement communicates nothing to us except that you're possibly a menace to society and certainly should be permanently excommunicated from the world of ideas)

The issue of who is right/wrong (here meaning correct/incorrect to whatever degree those terms can be applied) is very, very important for INTPs, but for a different reason than you might think. It's certainly a matter of pride on one level, but not the most important level. Being right is critically important because we are involved in the very serious, Sisyphean endeavor of making sense of reality. We are born into this world and the mental wheels start turning. You can see it in our eyes before we can walk. We are systemizing and categorizing causes and effects, noticing patterns, building a model of how everything fits and works together.

To be right means to have staked out a small spot of order and comprehension in a chaotic and random series of events and circumstances. To be wrong means to let that potential victory slip back into the darkness. Being wrong is very valuable in but one way: it eliminates a false possibility, narrowing our options and bringing us closer to the truth. If our error is brought to our attention and we recognize it, we are highly unlikely to make it again. That would be giving ground to the enemy a second time. Ain't nobody got time for that.

So to be wrong is to lose a small battle, though it may be a strategic victory if it leads to new information. To not care that one is wrong, however... must be either wanton apathy or outright treachery, through carelessness or nihilistic evil opening the gates that Error may come in. And Error is followed by Malfunction, and Malfunction by Damage, and Damage by Suffering.

(I have been speaking tongue-in-cheek, but only slightly)

Now, you may be wondering how any of this applies to life on the mission field. It applies very deeply, every day. Because the mission field is fraught with being wrong. Nearly every day, at some point one is wrong about culture, one is wrong about language, sometimes one lacks even the communication tool to clarify one's error. Sometimes one lacks even the means to discover if one was right or wrong, and that can be the most frustrating thing of all. One can at least humbly admit one's error, as painful as it may be, when one is aware of it. One of the most difficult ideas to face on the missions field for me is that I've acted wrongly at various times and to various people and I don't even know. They might be struggling to forgive me for an insult or wondering how a missionary could be so negligent in some area and I have no idea that I've communicated an insult or neglected anything.

The Taiwanese varieties of Chinese culture can make this more difficult because here to be polite is to not provide error feedback. When you are making mistakes and people are pretending not to notice (but of course really noticing and sometimes discussing it freely among themselves), it takes longer to discover those mistakes and try to correct them. One may even feel somewhat betrayed: "Why didn't you just tell me?"
(Or very betrayed: "Why didn't you tell me... before the church split/ministry failed/coworkers quit/friendships were irreparably damaged ?") It's a particularly frustrating clash of cultures, given that it's caused by the very attempts of both sides to demonstrate appropriate behavior.

I have directly asked my coworker and his family to not be hesitant or polite about correcting my mistakes, either in language or culture, because being polite according to my culture is sparing me the embarrassment of making those mistakes repeatedly in the future by pointing them out to me directly now. (When I explain it in this way, I can often see the metaphorical lightbulb coming on over people's heads...)

Being wrong constantly is wearying to an INTP, and it adds stress for us in a special way that it may not for other people, although admittedly that's partly balanced by the ecstatic joy of having vast oceans of knowledge to absorb merely by living here, so long as we get adequate respite time to assimilate it all. (when denied that respite time to cool off and recalibrate, we overheat quickly and can shut down)

An INTP wanting to go on the missions field will need an extra dose of humility and teachability, the ability to keep one's mouth shut when helpful, and may need to develop thicker skin in general as we tend to see the criticism we offer as non-personal and objective, yet take it personally when on the receiving end. They will need to learn how to remain in a situation where you make mistakes repeatedly and are forgiven because of the depth of relationship that exists between you and another person, and not on your correcting your mistakes, which you may never discover. They may need to cultivate especially good people skills if they do not already possess them, since an INTP typically builds relationships by sharing ideas with others, and limited communication ability impedes this considerably, especially at the beginning. Being someone people enjoy being around apart from the content of information shared helps considerably. The temptation to withdraw into one's shell when communication isn't easy may otherwise be much more difficult to avoid.

An INTP on the mission field will need to rely heavily on God's grace, and learn to forgive themselves because God does, and not because they dealt with a mistake or sin properly after committing it. They will need accountability and loving support from brothers and sisters in Christ as appropriate in order to keep themselves from getting stuck in a rut of depression and/or discouragement.

The desire to be right is not wrong, but for us it can distract us from what right and wrong really mean. Not logical and factual correctness, but what pleases God vs. what does not please God. Taking someone to task for a foolish error may be done with 100% factual accuracy, and even without pride, but it may still not be done in a loving manner.

Certainly, the words of Paul in his letter to Ephesus are spoken to us as much as any other Christians:

"Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ..." (Eph 4:15)

Speaking the truth is a deep instinctive desire for INTPs... but only by doing so in/through/via/according to love will we truly grow in maturity in Christ. I'm still learning, but I rejoice to see how much God has already changed me in this way, and am confident that He will do the same for you.

Lessons Learned for an INTP on the Mission Field: "Shut Up and Listen"

I have learned, and re-learned, a variety of lessons in the past 7 weeks I've been in Taiwan.

Chinese lessons from my last time in Taiwan. As hard as they sometimes are,
language lessons are probably the easiest lessons you learn on the field.

 

I've learned why there were more firecrackers going off in our community several days after Chinese New Year than there actually are on Chinese New Year's Eve night (They're set off in front of businesses as the work starts again for the new year, to ward off bad luck and evil spirits, even for those business owners who don't strictly believe in the spirit part).

I've learned that there are numerous Quaker churches all around the world, and Taiwan has quite a few. (The most are in... Kenya!)

I've re-learned that the subway doors open on the other side for a particular station on the metro line that runs nearest to where I live.

On a more relevant note:

I've learned that transitioning into an altered identity as a physically obvious outsider who still participates in Taiwanese culture to an as-yet-unsure-extent will be both easier and harder than I thought.

I'm still learning which friendships survived the years of my absence from Taiwan and which haven't.

I'm learning that God wills my good more than I wish for my own good.

One of the most important lessons, though, has required regular reminders.
That lesson is, to shut up and listen.


When I think I already know what someone is saying, shut up and listen.
When someone is telling me something about Taiwanese culture I learned the first time I came, shut up and listen.
When someone is saying anything I know is incorrect (and it's not harming anyone), at least at the beginning, shut up and listen.
When other people are talking about something and I know the answer they are trying to think of, shut up and listen.

More subtly, in Taiwanese culture, when someone asks me for my opinion, sometimes it's still better to not say much. Wait long enough for others to speak.

This is not difficult for some wonderful people because they are loving, humble, don't care about being regarded as a consistently accurate and reliable source of information, and often care about concrete things more than abstractions. God has been answering my long-term prayers to become a little more like those people, though I still have a long way to go.

In the Myers-Briggs personality system (MBTI), I am an INTP. One of the notable features of this personality type is the ongoing automatic quest to assimilate all the knowledge around us and construct a model of reality with it. It's not something I can really stop, and not something I -should- stop; it's a gift God gave me that He intends me to use in His service.

But when not put under the yoke of the 1st and 2nd Greatest Commandments, this drive to obtain, categorize, and synthesize knowledge becomes sinful, and can lead me to think of people more in the abstract and less as eternal persons created and loved by God, or simply to give more thought to the information in someone's communication than demonstrate love and respect for that person.
It doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen.

Worse, when paired with my spiritual gift of teaching, when not kept in check it can go altogether awry, and I begin to mistakenly think my job is to make sure everyone has views on the world as accurate as my meticulously fact-checked and continuously updated and synthesized model of reality. This tends to result in (especially after too much coffee) unsuspecting friends or coworkers being the subject of a massive, very detailed information dump, which is rarely helpful to them. To their credit, they are often obligingly patient.

(Some of you may be laughing now, having experienced it. I can offer a retroactive apology but unfortunately cannot promise it won't ever happen again.)

Godly Example Story: The first time I lived in Taiwan, there was a nearly-retired missionary who I accompanied in various ministries. As a new arrival, I was busy soaking up Taiwan cultural knowledge, and at one point this missionary made a statement which based on something I had recently learned seemed to be incorrect. I pointed out the error and he simply said "well, you may be right." Later I realized that he had been right, and I was wrong, and he probably knew that. But rather than prioritizing "setting the record straight" and making sure I acknowledged that he was, in fact, correct, instead he simply let it go. That made a deep impression on me at the time, and I am trying to follow that example.

There's a great verse in Proverbs that talks about shutting yourself up when necessary:

"If you have been foolish, exalting yourself, or if you have been devising evil, put your hand on your mouth." Proverbs 30:32

(My air filter mask for bad air days and motorscooter rides works fairly well too.)

As a man who fears God (in the sense of being overwhelmed by His glory and majesty, and awareness that only the redemption made possible by Jesus Christ stands between myself and all-too-deserved judgment), I don't tend to find myself devising evil. Self-exaltation can be more subtle, however. We don't grow out of that quickly, it just takes on more and more outwardly appealing forms, like praising others and the false sort of humility.

But in those moments when I might be about to be foolish, may God keep reminding me to shut up and listen to what He's saying to me, both in the silence of His presence and the wisdom of others around me.

Hope you are all well and blessed.