Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Labels



There are a number of what I call “rising tides”, certainly in the so-called western world.
Here are a few:
-          Narcissism
-          Intolerance of difference
-          Preciousness
-          Obesity
-          Anti-religion
-          Anti-religion not yours
-          Labelling

This last one is of interest to me as it often confusing. For example, many folk mix up what they think is race and what they think is religion. Then you get the opposite in retort. So someone who condemns Muslims will be called "racist". Yet Islam is a religion including many ethinic groups, as is Christianity.

Labels, in general, are of little assistance if we want to understand social threads and collective beliefs and beahviours.
 And here I am working with Jungian based psychological models, which are often used by labellers to shove people into boxes. I sometimes think to introduce myself with: Hello, I'm Jon Doust, lapsed high Anglican, heterosexual, Bridgetown born, blue eyes and minor tourettes. Or my other full label – ENFP ML PT & DS. Let me fill this out:

E – extraverted
N – intuitive
F – feeling
P – perceiver
ML PT – mercury and lead post trauma
DS – depression susceptible

Indeed, on an odd occasion, I have done so, but only to create a brief moment of bewilderment, followed by a quick and sometimes uneasy laugh, because the listener, unless granted permission, doesn’t want to belittle my afflictions.

As for me, it is important that I belittle my afflictions because that is also an essential part of who I am. Perhaps the two greatest gifts handed down by my family were an ability to create humour and the willingness to laugh at oneself.

My father taught me to laugh with cutting and biting sarcasm at the prickly, pretentious and pompous and my mother and her mother taught me the value of arranging laughs at your own expense. And the openness and willingness to laugh at yourself when mocked by others.

This was not always easy, as I was the only intuitive (N) in a family dominate by sensates (S), people who lived in the real world, the here and now, the grounded folk who could fix an engine, balance books, understand the necessary steps to move from A to B. I, on the intuitive aside, was a day dreamer, a floating, wandering freak who always seemed to have a weird answer to a logical question.

Which brings me to two more labels - pessimism and optimism.

I always ask a group where they sit on that scale and I never say where I do because I have never been sure.

My Jungian profile - ENFP - would suggest I lean towards optimism, but I don’t seem to. So where am I? Am I an innately designed optimist who has been battered by early growth in the womb of a depressed woman, arriving in the world and suffering the poison double - mercury and lead. (See early blog – Jung and Heavy Metals) That was not all, because on our farm we sprayed with Agent Orange (245T), malathion and god knows what else. There is no way that splash of chemicals had no impact.

Or am I an innate optimist who suffers from prolonged periods of pessimism due to life circumstances, or an innate pessimist with an, at times, overwhelming desire to be optimistic and positive, about everything and anything.

Mercury and lead poisoning symptoms are very similar and include inability to concentrate, quick to temper, anxiety, depression and, logically, behaviourally, can lead to bad decision making. In my case, it lead to dumb choices involving alcohol, drugs, sex, and surfing. 

What does all this mean? Why can’t I decide on a precise label? I may have said this before – psychology is not an exact science. Although I may struggle to decide which is my strongest preference - pessimism or optimism – it does help to recognise which one is dominating at any given time and of its impact on my life - mood, opinions, behaviour. And that soon enough, all that might change when what has been the inferior preference becomes the dominating.

As Jung might have said to me: Embrace both, Jon, the dark and the light, that way neither can destroy you.

Complicated? Dammit! Let me try this.

I’d much rather be an optimist but sometimes I’m depressed.

There. Let’s move on then.

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