Posted by Ilmar on November 24, 1998 at 08:41:05:
In Reply to: Riso posted by Peter on November 24, 1998 at 03:40:03:
:
: : I believe I recall a few Fives who didn't like his rigid models of humanity.
: I'm a Five, too, and I dislike Riso...
: : Most Fours don't seem to mind it.
: Which is interesting. On the surface, you would have thought that Fives (with their love of abstract sytems) would have been happier with Riso than Fours (with a more 'personal' edge), but...
I'm a Five like Peter; he's expressed my thoughts on the subject exactly. When I first came
across Riso I thought he must be a Five or a One, because of his abstract schematics. Which
shows the value of our social stereotypes. :)
I read that Riso was a Four on this enneagram board. (Rohr says Palmer's a Six in his book, and a pupil of
Palmer (Karen Webb) said so at an oral workshop). It does seem plausible to me, however, comparing his style
of writing with other Fours. I don't like to associate beliefs with enneagram types,
but there does seem to be a family resemblance between Fours in the way they write about theoretical matters.
They tend to put their heart into one theory, so to speak. The head-type habits of examining all sides of
an issue and of irony are uses of fear - good or bad according to context.
I don't want to say there aren't great Four thinkers - I think St. Augustine, Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky
are all very great thinkers and probable Fours. They're very acute on the need for emotion or desire rather
than reason. They aren't good at examining both sides of a theoretical issue, but they have the courage of
their convictions which Fives tend not to have.
: Oh, Fives don't mind accepting that reality is rigid _at base_, and tend to be very keen on nice, structured sytsems - its just that every Five instictively 'knows' that surface 'life' is messy and complicated and unpredictable...
Peter's on to something here. The enneagram writers that I like tend to look at deeper motivations and don't
structure their accounts of surface behaviour.
Ilmar