Essay: Self Governance

Yes, that is me.  My dad took the photo in 1976.

We all must overcome our indoctrination; we must take off our glasses.

We must learn to self-govern.

What does that mean?

 

The first word is "self."  For me to self-govern, I must understand myself.

I learned my Myers-Briggs Personality Type relatively recently.

Many people learn their types as they participate in the corporate world, but for some reason I never did.  I learned about it from a friend in the coffee shop I have been frequenting since my wife died over three years ago.

The test is not scientific, but it is a useful tool to help us think about ourselves and how we interact with others.  Science, itself, is just a tool for gaining insight into the reality we live in.

My results

When I took the  64-question self-interrogation and read about my results, I was astounded.  I finally understood why I am so different from other people.

We had some fun with this in the coffee shop.  After I helped my friends accept my insatiable desire to analyze everything, a few of them agreed to take the test and provide me with their results.  Having that information helps me make sense of our interactions and tendencies.  It has led to deeper relationships.

It is easy to see why business enterprises encourage their employees to use tools like this to help get people into roles where they can be the most effective and productive.  It is also useful for conflict resolution.  Some personality type combinations get along well, and some just do not.

Spiritual realities are also very relevant and have nothing to do with personality.

As I was trying to analyze the dysfunctional situation I found myself in in the last Michigan Assembly (Version 3.0), I utilized the personality-type tool.  I made a guess that the former Michigan Coordinator had a "Captain Kirk" personality type, and presumed we should be working well together because mine is "Spock."  At the time, I wished he would have confirmed that presumption by taking the test, but to my knowledge he did not pursue it.

I have since had second thoughts about what his personality type might be.  He graciously entertained my relatives and me while we visited his home last August, and that included very tasty food and drink.  He seems to love entertaining people in that way, and has put numerous examples on the Internet, which I just saw.  This was not something I had included in my analysis, which only focused on his interactions with the Assembly.  As I recognized in a previous article, we just do not have enough information to make judgments about why people do things, and it is unfair to try to do so.

Instead of ENTJ ("Kirk"), I think he is more likely to be ESTP.  I did recognize him as being an entrepreneur at the bottom of page 4 of the personal letter I sent to him, so I think my intuition may have known more than my conscience did.  He is a lot of fun to be with.

People in the Michigan Assembly can do what they like, but I suggest people learn about their own personalities and share that knowledge with others so that we all might understand our relationships better.  Perhaps it is something the Ombudsman Committee can use to help resolve differences.