310 A Programmer’s Guide to the Mind
First, I suggest that the Teacher individual has a deep need for
intellectual subtlety. In order to see how this trait works, we should
compare it with the Mercy person‟s desire for subtlety. The Mercy
individual hates to deal directly with emotional subjects—it would be like
drawing a portrait by taking gobs of paint and throwing them onto the
canvas. Sure, the viewer may get the picture, but the effect is so crass, so
unsophisticated, so unsubtle. The Mercy person would much prefer to mix
up exactly the desired shade of color and place it carefully in precisely the
right place. The result is a drawing which is subtle, and which
communicates a lot using a little.A Therefore, when the Mercy person
expresses himself emotionally, he tries to pick the combination of words
and experiences which will communicate the exact mix of feelings which
he is sensing.
Teacher subtlety operates in a similar way. When the Teacher person is
attempting to state some theory or get some concept across, he dislikes
having to state all of the individual pieces in his theory, because this
approach triggers overworn explanations which already are stored within
automatic thought, somewhat like buying another flat-headed screwdriver
when you already have 47 different flavors of generic flat-headed
screwdrivers cluttering up your toolkit. It is much more subtle and elegant
to find the word which conveys exactly the right shade of meaning and to
use this term to communicate the idea.
For instance, when my
Teacher brother was learning
Hebrew, he spent countless
hours memorizing esoteric
words in order to gain a large
vocabulary.B That way he could
move beyond the stage of
A This implies that Mercy mode is operating poorly in visual artists who
draw by splashing gobs of paint indiscriminately onto canvas. This type of
modern „art‟ has become popular during our age of science and technology,
in which Mercy feelings are suppressed in order to exalt objective thinking.
The result is a world full of Mercy unsubtlety. This connection between
subtlety and Mercy thought is illustrated also by the toys which we give to
little children. Because Mercy thought in our youngsters is only partially
developed, we construct playthings for them with simple shapes and gobs
of bright colors.
B Words are some of the simplest Teacher theories. „Animal,‟ for instance
is more general than „elephant‟ or „mouse.‟ A Teacher person can develop
theories composed of concepts which are too general for words. It can be a
struggle for him to express his thoughts. This is another reason for a large
vocabulary.