Twenty-Three

Musical leanings occasionally produce sufficient pressure for one to sit up, look around surreptitiously, and do a memetic exercise (or should that be psychomimetic, haha!) based on '23 things about yourself'. Random stuff follows; beware!

1. I'm a midnight child. The dark has never held fear for me, and if you examine the 'font colour' tags you will see my favourite colour a lot on this blog.


2. I teach biblical studies. My youngest student ever was aged 4 and my oldest, about 55.


3. The cello is my favourite musical instrument; it seldom gets out of hand, and it takes a bow easily and without a fuss. It is mellow, sometimes yellow, and quite a fellow. Lovely voice, beautifully melancholic.


4. I belong to several professional organisations, all with the acronym ACS. Some are linked here. I mention this because those are my mother's initials as well.


5. I have never dated someone of the argent, bezants vert persuasion before.


6. My favourite prophet is Jeremiah, he who was imprisoned in a cistern for his pains.


7. I have a great fondness for rough-cut potato chips, or crisps even, with bits of skin on.


8. I have been to Uzbekistan; Tashkent, to be specific.


9. I found out I could read Catalan when I visited Andorra.


10. One of my favourite words is 'baryon'; it sounds somehow Germanic, Hebraic and Hellenic all at once.


11. Over the years, I have specialised in teaching communication engineering and computer science.


12. My blood type is O, which means I am not as biologically specialised as some people I know.


13. I love animals who can be independent while living within pack or clan structures. Cats, wolves, for example.


14. I have two nieces. It is tempting to call them 'niece' and 'niecer'. Except that I once worked in an organisation called NIECER.


15. Science has always been one of my favourite subjects. I was just never any good at it in school. Used to get 20s and 30s when the maximum score was 100.


16. I'm a carnivore by nature. I can eat huge amounts of lamb, mutton, beef, venison, and pork, and other meats as well.


17. My favourite poet has a surname that is ten letters long.


18. If I hadn't been a teacher, I would have been a lawyer. Some say a rabbi. Ha.


19. I have a catalogue of all my books. It informs me that I have 6803 books on the shelves at the moment.


20. My first science fiction novel was Arthur C Clarke's Islands in the Sky.


21. I once consumed a Big Mac™, a large fries and a Coke™ in forty-seven seconds. Burp.


22. I was born in a former swamp, my flat is in a former swamp, and I am often swamped.


23. The first poem I ever memorised was William Blake's Tyger.

Why 23 things? I don't know. But here is a link which might be of interest. Enjoy!

Leadership & Princess Diana

Like most people of my generation, I heard of her long before I heard of him. Unlike most of my generation, I was curious enough to find out more about the mysterious Dr Marston.

I was rather amused by the realisation that Dr William Marston was the true name of 'Charles Moulton', the creator of Princess Diana of Themyscira – the Wonder Woman of DC Comics fame. As I delved further into his past, I learned that Marston was the originator of the DISC profile as well as the inventor of the systolic blood pressure test for truth-telling. He had not only invented Wonder Woman, but he had invented her magic lasso of truth as well!

In fact, the 'modern' DISC profiling system was invented by Marston in 1924, and he had published two books on it in 1928 and 1932. DISC stands for Dominance, Influence, Submission, Compliance – and the significance of these four traits becomes truly apparent and highly entertaining when you put them together with his theory about Wonder Woman. For Marston said this about the male fans of his comic-book creation: "Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to, and they'll be proud to become her willing slaves!" And this wasn't the only thing that the inventor of DISC said about bondage, young people, discipline and submission. I shall leave you to examine my sources and follow the tale wherever it leads you.

My conclusion after reading all this was that seemingly innocuous personality profiling exercises can have extremely sinister possibilities when one is well-read enough or curious enough to discover the implicit philosophy embedded in them. It is part of the terrible reifying myth of personality testing. In this day and age, when people are too lazy to discover themselves and only too willing to let online tests or simple pencil-and-paper exercises perform the task of self-revelation, personality testing has reached something like cult status.

Sadly, I have to admit that I have been DISC-tested too.

My profile claims that I am an influencer/advancer/inspirer, with high 'D' and 'I', below-average 'S' and extremely low 'C'. The profile includes this quotation from Baroness Thatcher, a leader of the Reagan era: "Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't. I'm extraordinarily patient provided I get my own way in the end. I don't mind how much my ministers talk, as long as they do what I say." I think that one of those sentences is true of me, and I'm not sure of the rest.

I have an alternative profile, according to the kind colleague who introduced me to this test. This profile stresses the fact that I have a slightly higher 'I' score than 'D' score. This second profile claims that I am a leader/decider/strengthener, and it invokes the late Sir Winston Churchill. I cannot say much more about this great statesman than what he says himself.

I must end by saying that no matter how flattering it is, I do not place myself anywhere near the same area of comparison as these titanic compatriots of mine. But it is something to think about; that if Marston was correct, I could harness the steely obduracy of Mrs Thatcher or the iron will and mercurial rhetoric of Sir Winston. Well, we live in hope. And if these things be gifted to me in any way, I shall be too grateful for words.

Appraisal

This is about appraisal, and the language thereof.

I think one of the most difficult things to do is to reflect on one's own being and be assured that such reflection indeed reflects the self, without adornment (from Latin ornare - to embellish or decorate) or denigration (from Latin nigra - black, hence to blacken). The highly self-critical (from Greek kritias - a judge) tend to see all the weak points and isolate the strong points as ornaments rather than structural members; the highly tolerant tend to see all the points as having validity (from Latin validus - having influential effect, strength) without judging them too critically.

There is some good advice to be had, however, in some parts of the Bible (from Greek ta biblion - the book) which deal with reflecting on the self and the powers which are inherent (from Latin heres - an owner) to it. I'm looking at Romans 12:3-8.

It's an interesting passage which enjoins us (in verse 3) to look at ourselves in sober (from Latin sobrius - moderate and reasonable) judgement, and not more highly than we ought. It does not command a weak and feeble self-denigration and humiliation (from Latin humilis - insignificance, obscurity, submissiveness, abjectness). Being humble is one thing - it is well-defined here - but humiliating oneself is really to look at the image of God in which we are made and to say, "Oh, how dreadfully bad/useless/pathetic I am." The former is sober judgement, the latter is immoderate devaluation.

But how to avoid such a pitfall? Surely pride (especially in the Satanic direction) is a worse error than humiliation, you might think. I do not think this is true at the human level. Pride is as immoderate and lacking in sobriety; it is as bad and untrue a valuation to think of oneself as higher than one is, as to think of one as so low that God must have made a mistake; pride can lead a person to deny the power of the Spirit, but so can an extreme sense of self-worthlessness . This is the implicit point of the whole of the next five verses.

The Book says here that each of us is gifted, according to an unknown but certain and definite measure of grace. We need to evaluate ourselves so that we know what kind of specific grace it is that we have. It is here that many people fall into error again. It is clearly implied here that not all the gifts are expected of us - Christ had them all, as the perfect model of all things; we are not able nor expected to be all things. It is this passage which explicitly divides the gift of service from the gift of leadership (and more) - thus showing that not all leaders are gifted servants, nor fully encouraging, nor unfailingly generous. Not all leaders are excellent teachers, nor wisely merciful, nor consistently prophetic. In fact, a multiplicity of gifts is likely to be the exception rather than the rule.

So what should a person with the gift of teaching do? Teach, of course. Leave the leadership to a leader, leave the mercy to the merciful. Yes, we can all show mercy; but there are few who can do it without pity, laxity, condescension or any of the other distortions of mercy. Yes, we can all teach; but there are many who cannot teach well. And a leader, assuming he has that gift, should lead - you can do no less, and in some cases, you should do no more. For both can be errors: too much can be as bad as too little, when the task before you is fitted to the gift(s) given to you.

This is not to say that we should not be prepared for any and every kind of good work. We should indeed be prepared. But not all vessels are equal, nor filled with the same measures and kinds of essence; not all tools are equal in effect or purpose, weight, size, sharpness or balance. And this is what we should be concerned about - the full, true, accurate and beautiful expression of the blend of powers and properties which is unique to each one of us.

It is a lesson that many people forget, to their regret and that of those around them.

Mosaic

Here is an intriguing character, a choleric and cynical fellow with an uncooperative and violent attitude to life. For Act One of his life, he is brought up as a prince in a polytheistic society. He commits manslaughter and exiles himself for Act Two of his life to a nomadic pantheistic one. And for Act Three, he becomes the unwilling leader of a bunch of stiff-necked monotheists. He has three thousand of them killed on his own initiative in the early years. He dominates them ruthlessly, curses them, accuses them of making his life miserable - and he becomes an icon forever, in the hearts of these same people.

Go figure. And why do some people say I am a bit like him?

Reorientation

I remember many things people have said about me in my youth; I have reminders of them, having assiduously retained report books and testimonials and diaries. But as I finish my last year as a thirty-something young man, and look ahead into the murkiness of the forties, I wonder how much was me and how much was acting.

Take for example that venerable Myers-Briggs test. For years, comments from relatives and friends, and even successive readings of the MBTI proclaimed me to be an INTJ. But looking at my diaries and notes, I realise that while I was intensely introverted as a child, I also had a naughty streak that eventually became a full-fledged bridge into the external world.

As one ages, one's creativity can variously become a source of inspiration, embarrassment, irritation, encouragement or perplexity to one's colleagues, friends, family and other acquaintances. Mine seems to have tilted the balance between introversion and extroversion - so far, most indicators show the extrovert very slightly ahead. Coupled with other maturing indicators, I seem to have become an ENTP. How very odd!

The judgemental introvert of the past has become a perceptive extrovert. According to this version of the test, the mastermind has been replaced by the inventor; the free-thinker is now the innovator. Does it stop there? Who knows? Perhaps I should just accept suggestions for Act III.