This article is a little fucked up, that´s the first and last warning you´ll receive.
Today, as part of logging my development, I again completed a “personality test”, in this case a Big Five Self-Report Test. Note that I don´t accept most aspects of psychology, but damn it, they are the biggest science concerning things that happen in your mind and they give you numbers to work with, though those are sketchy. Source of the test: https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/IPIP-BFFM/
This test measures, among other traits, Agreeableness (how polite and compassionate you are), conscientiousness (your work ethic and cleanliness) and your creativeness (5th factor).
First, my results:
As the scores above are given in percentiles, here are my absolute score values on a scale of 5:
Ext: 3.5 ; Emo: 4.1 ; Agr: 2.2 ; Con: 3.3 ; Int: 4.8 ;
I want to discuss the first 4 factors, as the 5th one doesn´t surprise me (don´t you wish you had my confidence?):
Factor I. The relative and absolute scores match up perfectly, indicating that people judge themselves well on extroversion. My score of 70, which is higher than my usual 50s, is increased due to me interacting little with people lately (grinding is what I call it). I tend to become more benevolent towards people when I have less contact to them. Whenever I have to deal more with people, I immediately remember why I dislike it. This is congruent with some of Nietzsche´s texts.
Factor II. Here, comparison of absolute and relative stats shows that people judge themselves to be less stable than they are from an objective perspective. This might be due to the value people place on a “Grindset”, always performing and bearing the stress that comes with it. As Jordan B. Peterson would phrase it, “bearing the heaviest load you can carry”. Since most people definitely aren´t grinding, they have to overrepresent the stress that they are going through. Since a damn lot of people exaggerate their emotional turmoil, this shows you the following: In order for the previous effect to be countered at least marginally, this means that some people judge themselves to be tougher than they really are. No surprise there.
Factor III. Believe it or not, I actually scored higher than my usual 0th percentile. Here the absolute and relative scores are severely fucked up. If you use my absolute score of 2.2 / 5 and convert it to relative scores, that should be around the 44th percentile. So either everyone´s a fucking saint but me or the following is true: Most people view themselves as they would like to be (unless they are severely depressed) and being compassionate and polite is seen as a good trait. In Germany, we call this “Gutmenschentum” (“good-human-ness”) and it means something like virtue signalling. Here´s my counter punch: Why can´t you just hire anyone for a position working with clients? Because most people aren´t that friendly. In the last 2 apartmens I lived in, 2 thirds of my neighbors couldn´t bother greeting me, how is that polite? Just the fact that I greet my neighbors puts me higher than the 1st percentile. Here´s the thing: Almost no one sees themselves as a morally bad person. The only exception to this rule are people who live in a constant emotional sense of regret, aka. a bad conscience. Examples of this are the christian whipping himself from the Illuminati Trilogy featuring Tom Hanks, Roosh V ( www.rooshv.com ), also a Christian now, and David Berkowitz, aka. Son of Sam, who now operates a christian blog at www.ariseandshine.org . This concept of sin carried like a tattoo from christianity was heavily critized by opponents of that religion, including satanists, on a side note.
The guy from Da Vinci Code; Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7pioagkX5k ;
While I´m on the topic of gory movie scenes and serial killers (smooth transition), let me tell you how aggression and even violence are parts of the Human Condition in 2 points:
1. Human nature has always consisted of two aspects: Cooperation for the sake of technological progress and violent warfare. Funny thing, the second thing might actually change in the next decades, but not due to people becoming more good-natured, our genetics don´t change that fast (in a few years when study of epigenetics has progressed, I might regret that statement). The reason for this is much more likely that western governments have formed rather stable relationships among each other (for now). Some might ascribe that to a “world government” and how you wouldn´t make your own chess pieces fight against each other. I think the reason why we see less violence is the constant decrease of testosterone. As you could read in my “An Ode To Aggression”, testosterone doesn´t lead to aggression, but it increases the potential, the ability for aggression.
Next point: Are innovation and aggression tied together in any way? If you get married, your testosterone levels decline. Also, once you marry, science proves all of this, your productivity declines, measured in amount of research papers published by scientists. This has been adjusted for age. I can´t prove a direct correlation between testosterone and productivity, someone more educated probably could, but I can indirectly establish a connection between testosterone, aggression and productivity. Science has found a correlation between creativity and delinquency (aka. aggression) in young men. When are you most motivated to work hard? When you´re “hungry”, not content with your situation. Those are the similar circumstances in which you are likely to become aggressive. Another aspect: Why are wars fought? For personal gain, or protection / advancement of your community. Why are new things invented? For personal gain, or advancement of your community.
As a soft introduction to the following gory material, compare 03:44-04:17 of the following interview:
2. Note that the most extreme examples are often the best to learn from and consider the following: At any point in time, there are thousands, if not more, serial killers roaming the streets. Thus, it shouldn´t come as a massive shock to find yourself being the victim of a violent crime. Once the threat is over, any emotional reaction that doesn´t resemble a deadpan “ok… that sucks.” shows that you have been deluding yourself about the nature of humans and any trauma resulting is a sign of a gap in your world view that now takes some time to fix, causing severe distress in the mean time. Now, this is an extreme example that barely anyone can relate to, so let´s choose a different one: Gore.
This is a real picture of the infamous “Porsche Girl”, aka. Nikki Catsouras. What´s so bad about this picture? Butchers and pathologists see similar things every day and they can get used to that An even gorier example is the following clip starting from 01:25:
Why does this clip repulse so many people? It´s probably the fact that they killed a real, live turtle. But that´s what human beings have been doing since the beginning of time, we´re just not used to it anymore. This getting used to is the only factor responsible for your tolerance and use of violence.
Let me elaborate: If you grew up in the 50s and are sent to shoot the vietcong, or were raised during the crack epidemic, or you´re from Czecznia, you have some experience with death. Everyone around you has weapons, some have killed before and armed conflict is common. Are these people worse human beings than pacifists? No, because both types of people are humans, and both aspects can be a part of human nature.
You can have someone working in a slaughterhouse who´s never started a fight in his life, but he kills animals as a job. You can have a person who was beat up as a kid, but was always too weak to defend himself. That person will either grow up to be Conor McGregor, or to believe that pacifism is the right thing to do, unable to accept that they´re weak.
Human nature involves violence, gore, death. Accept it, but don´t grow into a depressed piece of shit over it.
What´s the point of this unbelievably long tangent? My score in agreeableness shows that I have accepted these facts. Does it mean I don´t greet my neighbors? No. Does it mean I never help anyone? No. Does it mean that I am a physically violent individual? If the situation calls for it.
Compassion comes from the greek words for “suffering with someone”. Does suffering with someone make you happy? No. Are people suffering with you if you have a problem? Only good friends and family, and those are exactly the people that I don´t get aggressive with.
In ancient times, there are stories of funerals filled with women (and sometimes men) weeping their eyes out and doing crazy things out of grief. Nowadays, they are filled with people wondering whether the restaurant afterwards will be any good. Is that compassion?
Fucking finally, factor IV. Transforming my absolute score to a relative one would result in the 66th percentile. Again, if you use my previous thesis, it´s not surprising that people judge themselves to be more conscientious than they really are. Now, my score is unusually low even for me due to the following reasons: My cleanliness, which makes up half of the conscientiousness rating, has suffered lately, as I was busy as fuck and didn´t clean my dishes, tidy my apartment etc. Thus, on one half of the rating I score basically zero and on the other one pretty damn good, cause I was working my ass off.
Conclusion:
I suggest you don´t fully buy into personality tests, but inspite of their mistakes, they can be useful tools to see long-term changes to your personality, when adjusted for the environment at the time. Took a text as long as the new testament to explain for some reason.