Hey everybody, I wanted to say a quick Thank You for your kind emails and donations lately. It really helps to read them all and I look forward to getting to know more of you.

Lately I’ve been starting a few different projects:

• A new, long-term, life-values project based around charitable giving
• A new variant of chess involving dice, wizards, and dragons
• Building new models to support resilience in difficult interpersonal situations

It’s been fun, but on top of other work stuff, it’s been slow going, so sorry if I haven’t written back to you yet.

Another Thing

Sometimes, when I blog about a well-known person who is an INTJ, I get emails from their supporters. A lot of these emailers make the assumption that I’m on their side. (Like, who wouldn’t be, if they were smart, is their attitude.)

This morning I got an email from a fan of one of those INTJs that was frankly a bit disturbing. It made me feel bad for the well-known INTJ in question—they are in trouble, whether they think so or not, and it’s hard to watch.

Unfortunately, sometimes we INTJs, whether unknown or famous around the world, can get caught up in positions and perspectives that I would say are worth questioning:

• Fear-based perspectives, fear-based politics (local, national, or international)
• Paranoia (subjective Ni over-extension, especially when exhausted / worn out)
• Attempting to bring the whole past forward (as opposed to its best parts, leaving out the worst parts)
• Mapping patterns of history / the past wholly onto the future (as opposed to doing so in a nuanced manner and allowing for dynamism, evolution, and change over time)
• Mapping subjectively-fascinating metaphor onto shared-objective situations (“my violent hobby is definitely the answer to your group’s political problem”)
• Raising the stakes, when the stakes should probably be questioned or massaged down in some ways
• Perceiving win-lose outcomes and quickly making enemies, as opposed to working to create win-win outcomes
• Massive, troubling goof-ups of the Fe blind spot variety

This stuff can just happen. I mean, I personally remember all of this happening to some degree in my own past. So I’m probably not above any of it, but I try to be aware of it.

Anyway, just a reminder to self, and to those who may be interested, that the opposites are always worth the pursuit:

• Identifying a new hope and building the structure to support it (INTJs are usually closet idealists—and this is a phenomenal complement to our structural gifts)
• Brainstorming new, positive, transcendent solutions to difficult problems
• Starting new projects that create a win-win situation for the parties involved
• Thinking inclusively, reaching out to others, and building on their strengths
• Looking beyond the limits of the critical voice to find an even better communications approach

This kind of work usually requires inventing models and systems that never existed before. But that’s what INTJs and other intuitive-minded folks are really good at. We can grapple with a thing that can’t be seen, heard, felt, tasted, and has no smell to speak of. We can take an idea and help turn it into a really awesome reality.

I hope we can all do, or keep doing, more of that.

Anyway—I don’t mean this post in a harsh way, just tossing some seeds into the winds and hoping more of it takes root. Take care everybody —Marc

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