In Love with Ourselves
After lurking for a few days around copious quantities of personality message boards, I’m seeing I need to pull myself back yet one more time before I get too absorbed. With the onset of the Internet, personality testing seems to have become all the rage.
Our infatuation with personality tests seems to be connected to the little pleasurable jolt we get sitting down with a fortune teller and being recognized for who we are, having someone be able to describe us in a consistent manner, to assert that maybe we’re not as unpredictable as we sometimes feel, that there’s a method to our madness, that the fact we sometimes don’t understand why we do what we do is still explicable if you simply know where to look.
At least, that’s my “glass half full” opinion. Veering into darker territory, I’d point out that it’s a lot easier to explore oneself than to commit to changing oneself. Considering all the tests I’ve taken and theories I’ve explored, I know more about myself than I ever wanted to know, but what good has it actually done me in terms of making me a better person?
Knowledge as a substitute for action is like swapping a cat’s warm milk for a dish of antifreeze – it still tastes sweet going down but will ultimately poison you.
All that a test can provide is direction, but I have to do the walking.
And I think much of the time the testing is done not for the purposes of self-improvement but for the same reason that Narcissus stared into the bright reflection of the crystal pool: Afraid of what it costs to commit to change, and uncertain of the future, we instead fall in love with ourselves.
Our infatuation with personality tests seems to be connected to the little pleasurable jolt we get sitting down with a fortune teller and being recognized for who we are, having someone be able to describe us in a consistent manner, to assert that maybe we’re not as unpredictable as we sometimes feel, that there’s a method to our madness, that the fact we sometimes don’t understand why we do what we do is still explicable if you simply know where to look.
At least, that’s my “glass half full” opinion. Veering into darker territory, I’d point out that it’s a lot easier to explore oneself than to commit to changing oneself. Considering all the tests I’ve taken and theories I’ve explored, I know more about myself than I ever wanted to know, but what good has it actually done me in terms of making me a better person?
Knowledge as a substitute for action is like swapping a cat’s warm milk for a dish of antifreeze – it still tastes sweet going down but will ultimately poison you.
All that a test can provide is direction, but I have to do the walking.
And I think much of the time the testing is done not for the purposes of self-improvement but for the same reason that Narcissus stared into the bright reflection of the crystal pool: Afraid of what it costs to commit to change, and uncertain of the future, we instead fall in love with ourselves.
posted by Fortunato at 11:50 AM
