Being an introvert doesn’t mean that I am more or less rational than an extrovert. Nor, does it mean that I am more or less irrational. In the effort to try and understand myself and others, I have done a lot of studying and taken innumerable sorts of personality tests. After all, the objective is to “know thyself” as Socrates once stated thousands of years ago. You’d think that we would have had it all figured out by now.
Yet, here I am, a man who is seventy-one years of age, and still wrestling with this task of trying to know and understand myself. Why am I so invested in naturism? Why do I slip out of my clothing at every possible chance? Why do I let other people know this about myself? Why? Why? Why? Obviously, I don’t really have an answer to give to you, my readers. However, I can shed a bit of light on personality. Knowing the kind of person one is gives each of us a good starting point.
For example, in my last post, I talked about the attitudes of introversion and extroversion. With that knowledge tucked away in the background, there is a similar polarity in how we gather information, which then leads to another polarity in how we arrive at decisions using the data. I want to talk about how we gather data in today’s post. As I mentioned above, there is a polarity similar to that of introversion and extroversion. At one end is the use of sensation to gather data – what one sees, hears, tastes, smells, and touches. At the other end is intuition, where data is gathered more globally in nature.
100% Intuition ……………….. 0% or X ………………… Sensation 100%
As with extroversion and introversion, one is not locked in an either/or situation. Depending on many factors, each of us uses both to gather data with which we will then be able to make decisions based on that data. And as with extroversion and introversion, there is a resting point where for the individual is most like herself or himself. For me, that is at 80% along the Intuition sector. For the record, reason plays no role in the gathering of data. The data flows in and reason only comes into play when it is time to deal with that data. Because of that fact, both Sensation and Intuition are called irrational in nature. We perceive data before we work with data. How we perceive the data falls somewhere between the two poles. And to make a point, that place shifts constantly.
I walk down a road, wearing my clothing. There comes a point somewhere along the way where the data tells me that I am safe to remove my clothing. That data comes from a big picture, not from what my physical senses are telling me. When I trust my intuition, I make better choices for me. When I ignore my intuition and just use sensory data, I have been known to get into trouble – the empty road didn’t alert me to a truck that was moving my way, behind me, unseen. There is no right way or wrong way for the collection of data. Neither method is fool proof.
So, with that said, how do you typically gather information which will eventually allow you to make decisions? As for making the decisions, that is an entirely different post.