How Many 'Types' Of People Are There?

Obama, Trump and Biden are different types of individuals, presidents and people. Also in the UK: Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss. Looking at other world leaders, you may be surprised at how many different types of people there are - two extremes - from military Putin to marine dancer. Humanists only say one thing. Others suggest two, three, four, seven or 12, and some say they don't bother to count them.

Homo sapiens

We are all a species and any difference in character or culture, sex or age is superficial. Everyone has the same rights according to their own national constitutions (the UK does not), and according to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, not all rights are respected everywhere: they are statutory, undeclarative and are considered ideal. . This concept of a single humanity has a political value but little explanatory.

Duality

On the contrary, dualism was the dominant theory of human nature in the Greek and Judeo-Christian cultures (that is, in the "Western" tradition). This dualism has its origins in the pre-Socratic metaphysics of Parmenides and Pythagoras in the 10-point tables of opposites, and is mainly of historical significance, but also of great philosophical significance, setting the stage for how we (and "Westerners") do things. Think about it. They are in first place in the ranking of the 10 points of the Christian controversy. The main antagonist is good / evil. But it all comes down to God / Devil, Sheep / Goat, Left / Right, Up / Down, Light / Dark and Truth / Lie. St. Paul added masculine / feminine, law / sin and will / body. He does not identify woman with sin or with the flesh, but others did, especially Tertullian. Christ's teachings reflect Judaism and are reflected in the Quran, but this dualism has created the religions of "us / them", "good / evil" and "friend / foe", creating today ideological and military conflicts within and between religions. Various sects and religions persist. This is the lack of duality.

The philosophical and religious dualism has been strengthened by centuries of religious, military and political conflicts. Friedrich Nietzsche then went even further to show an overturned dualism: the death of God and his being the Antichrist. He denounced Christianity and democratic egalitarianism as an unrealistic ethic: the hunter not the prey, the superman on the pack, the conqueror not the vanquished, the hammer not the anvil. Unpopular in 19th-century Germany, his works became popular in 20th-century Europe and America due to their association with social Darwinism and racism.

Along with the cosmic dualism of the ancient Greek cosmologists, the moral dualism of Christianity, and the inverse moral dualism of Nietzsche, the American anthropologist Ruth Benedict described cultural dualism in Cultural Models (1935). It contrasts the cultural challenge of the Pueblo Indians of the southwest with the superiority of the Plains Indians, including the Sioux and Lakota. He attributes the first to Apollonius, the Greek god of the sun and reason, and the second to Dionysus, god of wine (the Roman god is Bacchus).

This cultural dichotomy is to some extent related to common views on the comparison between English and Irish or French. The British traditionally have a reputation for being reserved, calm and quiet people. But there aren't that many Irishmen: they are wild and sometimes they want wagons with rice. This is the difference between Saxons and Celts (or perhaps oppressors and oppressors for centuries) or described. Likewise, the British who invented Puritanism were not known for their "joviality".

Another more interesting dualism is that of the English class, as described by anthropologists Nigel Gebs in The Homeland (1989) and Kate Fox in Looking at English (2004). The Hungarian scholar Arthur Koestler wrote a subtle critique of the English language in The Lion and the Ostrich. The British hid their heads in the sand when danger approached, like the proverbial ostrich in the 1930s, but fought like lions when it approached, as they did in the 1940s.

Benedict described the Japanese in his latest book , The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946: 2).

Both the sword and the chrysanthemum are part of the image. The Japanese ... are both aggressive and non-aggressive, belligerent and aesthetic, both stern and polite, stubborn and adaptable, obedient and resentful, loyal and treacherous, courageous and timid, conservative and hospitable towards the new mores (1946: 2). ).

Too many conflicting dualities, at least this time. One might wonder if much of this falls in the middle, as he has no direct experience with Japanese people and culture due to the war. But the elegance and beauty of the Japanese tea ceremony, the art of flower arrangement, the poetry of haiku, and the ritual art of shunga clearly contradict the cruelty and ugliness of pre-WWII atrocities. But the war brings the worst not only to the Japanese, but also to the people.

The polarity in Japanese culture is the same as the polarity between Japanese and American culture, Benedict explains in his book. They look like mirror images of each other.

three ways

In La Repubblica, Plato proposes the trichotomy of three types of people: gold, silver and bronze. They were suited to various tasks in the Republic depending on their qualifications: reigning philosophers or kings, soldiers and craftsmen, peasants, shoemakers, builders, etc. These, in turn, were set in motion by different parts of the body: the head; The heart, then a symbol of courage rather than love, is separated from the head by the neck; And the womb, separated from the heart for life. The three types are distinguished by their different goals, personalities and values: wisdom and virtue, courage and heroism, physical pleasure and emotional satisfaction. Using the example of a charioteer trying to control two horses that want to run in different directions, metaphorically one up and one down. It was a perfect combination of political hierarchy, mining, psychology and biology. This was in line with the idea that everything is connected and everything is one, which dominated the pre-industrial revolution and the worldview.

During a debate at the Oxford Union, Germaine Greer debunked the idea that profits and gold are above everything and asked the audience if she had recently visited a marina and seen what was floating on it: shit. However, it can be difficult to distinguish Plato's worthy golden men and women from other narcissistic sociopaths until the latter are caught and brought to justice.

Sigmund Freud also chose three very different personality types, characterized by two distinct stages: the stages of mental development (id, ego, superego) and the stages of psychosexual development (oral, anal and anal). Freud loved the trinity, but also its duality: instinctive for the trained ego, organized for reality, sensual for rationality. The third level, the superego, is spontaneous self-criticism combined with reflection and guilt.

Due to their subtlety, complexity and intellectualism, often based on Freud's revolutionary couch, I am not sure that most psychoanalysts follow Freud in these concepts. They seem a bit imaginary. Jung appears to be the most popular of the four types.

After all, ancient texts say that there are three types of people: those who know how to count and those who can't. (one)

Three is a magical and mystical number in Greco-Roman and Christian culture. (See Brewer's Dictionary of Phrases and Myths.) More recently, these three concepts have reappeared in Marx's dialectic, leading to the unification of a classless society, Emile Durkheim's three main types of self-destruction, and Max Weber's three types of power . Alan Dundes made his mark on American culture with Folklore Interpretation (1980).