Sx/So - Sexual/Social instinct

9:22 AM 7/5/10

'They' are currently talking with me to find out about the Sx/So instinct, to see whether I fit with that one.  (I could be a Sx/Sp.  But it seems that Sx is my top instinct.  I'm guessing that, before long, they'll decide I'm actually a Sx/Sp.)

They were asking me this morning what social movements I represented BEFORE I got Objectivism from my brother John (zombieite on Flickr). Back then, the ideas I had came from the mainstream culture, from books and television and school.

I used to read Steven King a lot. 'IT' was my favorite. There were other books and movies with similar themes. The idea was: Magic is real. The world has strange things in it that you never imagined. Don't forget, you don't know everything. So it was a belief in the paranormal, the weird, the magical. I also had 'Don't forget your childhood' beliefs. Don't ever grow up. Don't become old and bitter and hopeless. Remember what it was like to be trusting and hopeful and honest, like you were as a child, before you were hurt by the world.

I also happened to find an assertiveness training book that belonged to my parents. It was called 'When I Say No I Feel Guilty.' That book represented something to me. It meant that we could change and control the way we talk and the way we act, if we want to get better results. It gave me specific ways to change, instead of just saying 'You should stand up for yourself' without giving any advice about HOW to do that. The book gave you role-playing scenarios and examples of real conversations people had. So I am also an advocate of role-playing, and an advocate of learning specific techniques instead of trying to follow vague advice. That influences what I believe about schools and education, about how they should teach, about WHAT they should teach.

I also was an anti-Santa advocate when I was young. I used to go around telling people there was no Santa Claus. I got in trouble for doing that, and I wrote about it in my diary. So it fit with me when Rachael gave me a book called 'The Trouble With Christmas.'

I found other books occasionally, but abandoned them later on and didn't really make them part of myself. One time my family was shopping at Sam's Club - I think back then it was called 'Super Saver' or something. I noticed a book called 'Breathing Lessons' by Anne Tyler, and picked it up, decided it looked interesting, and bought it. I then read all the books by Anne Tyler and I remember doing a book report about them for school. But I never really made those books 'me,' because they felt too depressing and hopeless. Her books always have some character who desperately tries to make progress, tries to make some kind of a change in their life, and they always fail, and go back to living the way they used to live. This theme happens over, and over, and over in her books. Failed attempts to make things better or different. I didn't want to embrace that belief system, the 'resignation' belief system: resign yourself, endure the life you have, because there's no hope of changing anything - have fun for a little while, if you must, but eventually you will be destroyed and you'll fall back down to wherever you came from. I don't like that belief system.

'They' feel pretty sure that I'm a sx/so. The ichazo's instincts are very, very important. I used to see the ichazo's instincts as just some unimportant, brief little note mentioned in the enneagram books, and the enneagram itself was more important, while the instincts were just a minor detail that you didn't really need to know. But they are much more important and central than that.

It frames how I see everything. Everything I care about and everything I do is shaped by these instincts. I 'fall in love' with some charismatic person who represents a radical belief system. It might not be a famous musician, or a famous author, or someone on TV. Instead, it might be an ordinary person who I meet at school or at work, or someone I read on the internet, and if I fall in love with that person, I take the ideas and the culture that they represent, and make it my own, at least for a while, and I keep some parts of it forever.

That might actually make me a devotee, the sx/sp, instead of a sx/so. However, for a variety of reasons I will keep it as sx/so for a while to see if everything fits.