Perceiver Strategy 73Second, the mental storage shed of facts must contain material which is
useful. Suppose that a person absorbs facts about hockey players and Star
Trek episodes. His Perceiver storage shed may contain reams of
information, but it is helpful only at hockey games and Trekkie
conventions. Unfortunately, the mind seems naturally to avoid facts which
apply to the present and to focus instead on information which relates to
other times, other people, and other places.A The Perceiver person, in
particular, can fall into this trap. He will know all of the facts and rules that
pertain to others, and be able to judge exactly what they should do and
what they should believe, but turn strangely silent when it comes to his
own home, his personal beliefs, and his own actions.
Finally, any information which is placed into the Perceiver storage shed
will need to be labeled properly. The Mercy storage shed labels
experiences with a feeling of appropriateness. In contrast, the contents of
the Perceiver storage shed acquire labels of reasonableness. These tags, as
they link, allow the mind to judge whether a particular fact is possible,
impossible, reasonable, unreasonable, likely, unlikely, common or rare.
It is easy for us to feed our Perceiver storage sheds with inaccurate
labels. Suppose, for instance, that I „suspend feelings of disbelief‟ while
watching a movie or reading a novel. Or suppose that I swallow facts from
others without checking them. This programs Perceiver automatic thought
with spurious information. Intuitive thought becomes less dependable. As
the old computer adage says: “Garbage In; Garbage Out.”
In the same way that the Mercy storage shed is responsible for certain
traits in the Mercy person, so I suggest that the Perceiver storage shed also
influences the Perceiver person. First, there is a strong desire for brevity.
Just as the Mercy person finds it distasteful to deal too bluntly with
experiences and emotions, so the Perceiver person hates to have facts
explained in excruciating detail. He dislikes longwinded explanations.
State the information once, clearly; that is enough. While writing this book,
I had to learn how to use more words and more illustrations. I found out
that it is sometimes necessary to state things two or even three times before
the point is sufficiently understood. Even now, I am sure that some readers
will accuse me of being too terse. I‟m sorry. But there are so many ideas,
and I refuse to devote my entire life to writing them down.
The need for brevity extends to the humor of the Perceiver person. His
jokes tend to be one-liners—short, pithy statements. He cringes at the
endless „shaggy dog story‟ type of joke preferred at times by the Exhorter
person (who, by the way, finds it difficult to stop talking). If the Perceiver
person retells the long tale, he will throw away the unnecessary bits and
reduce the story to its essential core.
A We will look at reasons for this later on.