Since stereotyping people based on how they speak or how they dress is becoming less socially acceptable (finally), it seems that a ton of people have latched on to the practice of stereotyping people based on arbitrary labels for personality traits. Oh, youre introverted! You must also have these fifteen personality traits! Terms like left/right brained, introverted/extroverted, or, in this case creative. This article seems to be implying that all creative people have these traits. I find that, generally, when someone tries to convince me that all x people are/do/have xyz other things I begin to wonder how much of it is a need to label things and how much of it is actually based in fact. A few direct examples that cause problems with this particular article: Is George Lucas both humble and proud? Was Jackson Pollock both rebellious and conservative? Was Agnes Martin both extroverted and introverted? Furthermore, it seems to me that the practice of associating one personality trait label with a few dozen others just serves to reinforce the perceived legitimacy of the involved labels. For instance, I used the terms introverted and extroverted above, while, personally, I think those two terms are ridiculous simplifications created to provide a duality amongst people where there exists none. People are different. If you are dividing all people into two groups, the standard you are using is so overly simplified it no longer has meaningful correlation to reality. I speak here as an art major who writes code for a living. I dont fit into very many of these labels. I doubt any of you do, either, and I think, when someone reduces their personality to a series of simplistic labels, they demean the richness and complexity of the person they are.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 19:25:03 +0000