The Society of My Mind
After Malcolm introduced the cast of himself and Brienne talked about the people in her head who make her do things, it was probably only a matter of time until I also tried to partition my personality into characters. It was fun naming my tendencies and drives; I feel like I can encourage and wheedle a society of my mind more effectively than my usual muddled self-conception 1. I wonāt present the characters in dialogue because very little of what happens in my head takes the form of a conversation. However, Iād like to introduce the variously-gendered gang:
Striver loves to work hard, be challenged and feel accomplished.
What is it responsible for? Striver values productivity and busyness. It motivates me to take on projects and cram my schedule to the bursting. A major reason I have an engineering degree is because Striver hoped getting one would be satisfyingly hard.
How can I make it happy? Striver likes giving lectures, making impressive technical things, and successfully navigating overbooked days. (And trivial things, too, like carrying armloads of groceries.)
What are its failure modes? Striver is not realistic about how much I can do. This leads to small frictions (last-minute cancelling of plans) and large ones (feeling like I ānever do anythingāĀ and am therefore worthless). Striver thinks hard work is virtuous and wonāt reflect on whether work actually advances its goals as long as it feels sufficiently productive.
Mercator creates visual and memetic patterns and organizes them neatly.
What are they responsible for? Mercator likes coming up with elaborate plans and theories; much of my systematizing impulse originates with them. They are exacting about aesthetics and so get to be in charge of fine-tuning and taste.
How can I make them happy? Intricate tasks with lots of immediate feedbackā debugging code, precise figure drawing, arranging roomsā make Mercator happy. They like both the brainstorming and honing parts of analyzing people, politics, prose, etc.
What are their failure modes? Mercator pursues the elegant or otherwise aesthetically appealing over the practical. They are easily frustrated in the necessary stages between dreaming of a beautiful plan and tweaking its execution.
Grace is a hostess. She wants to smooth everyone's experience of the world.
What is she responsible for? Any social competence I have is but by the grace of Grace. She is in charge of relating to peopleā how to pay attention to what others might be feeling or wanting and how to go about providing it.
How can I make her happy? Grace wants to create good experiences for people. Hosting parties and other events is great for her. She thrives on empathy and enjoys giving advice and support to friends.
What are her failure modes? Grace is about smoothness; she tries to be what she thinks people want and will encourage lying or other disingenuousness in support of that aim.
Beatrice thinks everyone is important and wants to be careful not to hurt anyone.
What is she responsible for? Beatrice is the guardian of my core beliefs. Direct appeals to her are your best bet if you want to win an argument with me or change my behaviour 2. She doesn't drive very often; though Beatrice cares plenty about people, most socializing is delegated to Grace.
How can I make her happy? Beatrice likes listening to people and receiving new opinions. She enjoys trust, connection and doing her duty. She gets very angry when people are dismissive of others and feels good if she can argue against that.
What are her failure modes? Beatrice used to mostly steer me with guilt, which hurt. She has mellowed with time and now mostly fails by giving disproportionate weight to certain styles of moral argument.
Felix is a self-satisfied, in-the-moment sensualist. Heās basically a smug, happy cat.
What is he responsible for? Felix lets me get out of my head and enjoy the world. If Iām worrying, I can let Felix steer and heāll make me a snack or remind me of the shiny things within immediate reach.
How can I make him happy? Felix revels in unhurried sensory experiences: wandering barefoot outdoors, smelling cardamom or smoked paprika, staying under the covers on a cold morning, or feeling wind through hair.
What are his failure modes? Felix will enjoy what is happening in the moment at the expense of paying necessary attention to the future, causing him to ditch plans, disregard commitments and be otherwise inconsiderate.
Markov is verbal momentum. They chain actions in the direction of conclusions.
What are they responsible for? Markov doesnāt manage everyone, per se, but they maintain a sense of direction. Striver or Mercator might decide I want to do a project, but Markov carries out their vision.
How can I make them happy? Markov relaxes when given smooth, progressive flow of information, anything from checking off lists to freestyling parody lyrics. They appreciate feedback and flow states.
What are their failure modes? Markov resists changes to their current motion, sometimes avoiding useful course-corrections orĀ failing with abandon when there is no smooth redirection available.
What characters are your upper-level mental agents? Most of the people Iāve talked to identify at least one pleasure-seeking partition with a short time horizon and one partition oriented towards social connections, but how name those characters is very telling. Iād enjoy hearing about your society of mind!
Having a less coherent vision of myself seems to be useful for my thinking. If you feel overly dissociative then this exercise may not be helpful for you.Ā ā©ļø
Example: I wasn't vaccinated as a child and vaguely felt I ought to get adult vaccinations, but didnāt do so until @nanoishuge pointed out that I wasnāt doing my part to protect the people whose allergies or immune systems prevent them from getting vaccinated.Ā ā©ļø












