A

Mercy plus Perceiver 89

Finally, I would like to make a brief comment about marriage between
Mercy person and Perceiver person. Because conscious thought in each
partner interacts strongly with conscious thought in the other, Mercy
persons and Perceiver persons who meet will tend to feel a mental bond.
As a result, it is common for individuals with these two cognitive styles to
marry each other.
So, who does get married? Our observations about married couples and
their cognitive styles suggest the following principles: First, people with
the same cognitive style will not get married (with the occasional
exception of Contributor persons). This would be like marrying a mirror
image of your own self. Look too closely and you start to see all of your
own wrinkles and shortcomings. Yuck!
Second, people with the opposite cognitive styles also will not be
attracted to each other. By opposite, I mean on opposite corners of the
diagram of mental symmetry. Therefore, Teacher and Mercy persons
almost never get married to each other, and Perceiver and Server persons
very seldom tie the knot.A People who do get married seem to be conscious
in mental rooms which are „adjacent‟ to each other—by working together
these individuals complete mental circuits. Therefore, with the simple
styles, the combination of Perceiver and Mercy is very common, as is
Teacher and Server. Composite styles tend to marry other composite styles,
with Exhorter-Contributor and Contributor-Facilitator being most likely,
since these combinations tie together stages one and two, or stages two and
three of the mental loop of drive and imagination.

The Definition of a Fact

We have compared Mercy thinking with Perceiver thought. We have
seen how Mercy and Perceiver strategies divide the task of working with
experiences and facts. I would now like to examine exactly how Perceiver
thought takes Mercy experiences and transforms them into facts. If our
discussion seems to be a little dry and esoteric at the moment, I assure you
that several extremely emotional topics are looming just over the hill.
Therefore, it is important for us to lay a solid foundation so that we can
traverse these issues without slipping in the mire of wishful thinking or
getting splattered by the muck of controversy.
I have mentioned that Perceiver thought can observe Mercy
experiences by looking through a sort of one-way glass which separates the
two rooms—Perceiver strategy sees Mercy thought with all of its
individual experiences. As situations occur within the Mercy room,
Perceiver strategy will pay special attention to the connections which form

A On the other hand, suppose that a person developed his mind around the

concept of mental symmetry. In that case, he would actually be attracted to
his opposite.