I picked up a book, An Introduction to Existentialism at the used book store down the street (best $3.98 I ever spent). I’m really impressed with it so far. I read a few chapters in the airport and on the plane ride back, and kept thinking, “Man, I need to blog about this.” By the time we landed, there were too many of those thoughts to blog about, so I had to settle on just one.

Long-time readers and friends probably know about my disdain for Idealist philosophy. That same conviction is actually the binding force of Existentialism—rather than a comprehensive system, it is a reaction against another system of irresponsible optimism.

Idealism gave birth to the concept of Utopianism. Those who knew me in college know how much I was into books like 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451—books that were literary reactions against Utopianism. That was actually a precursor to my Existential tendencies. I just didn’t see utopia as the answer to man’s problems. I didn’t see it as a very realistic or even desirable goal.

This quote, taken from Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, sums up pretty neatly why I fall into this camp:

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So I’ve been doing some thinking lately about Harry Potter houses (Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin) and Keirsey archetypes (Artisan, Guardian, Rational, Idealist). I originally said that they lined up like this:

Gryffindor – Guardians (SJs)
Hufflepuff – Idealists (NFs)
Ravenclaw – Artisans (SPs)
Slytherin – Rationals (NTs)

Something abut the Ravenclaws and Slytherins has bugged me. Artisans are the opportunists of the bunch, which lines up more closely with what Slytherin seems to be all about. Also, Rationals are all about learning. But, as Mandy pointed out, some of the Artisans are far too positive to be Slytherins. So I think it’s a little more complicated than archetypal sorting can say.

So I came up with this list of examples from the Harry Potter universe. Maybe we can trace these characters back to their houses and get a better idea from there.

Artisans
ESTP – Fred and George Weasley
ESFP – Dean Thomas
ISTP – Victor Krum
ISFP – Horace Slughorn

Guardians
ESTJ – Ron Weasley (a little unsure on this one… Minerva McGonagal would be a good second choice)
ESFJ – Ginny Weasley
ISTJ – Hermione Granger
ISFJ – Neville Longbottom (although he’s so unsure of himself, we don’t see it until the end)

Rationals
ENTJ – Draco Malfoy
ENTP – Albus Dumbledore
INTJ – Severus Snape
INTP – Luna Lovegood

Idealists
ENFJ – Cedric Diggory
ENFP – Nymphadora Tonks
INFJ – Fleur Delacour
INFP – Remus Lupin

Where does Harry fall, you might ask? In some ways, he’s very much an ISTJ—duty-bound and constantly taking on unwanted responsibilities that he’s afraid will slip through the cracks. But in other ways, he has the introspection and tortured persona of an INFJ. I think he leans more toward the former than the latter, but he’s an interesting mix.

As for Lord Voldemort, he’s very much an INTJ.

So, by my chart, the introverted Artisans and the judging Rationals are Slytherins. The extraverted Artisans are yet more Gryffindors, and the perceiving Rationals are Ravenclaws. Of course, there are exceptions to any rule, but those are my predictions.

This would make Gryffindor the overwhelmingly largest house, meaning there’s either a flaw in my logic, or a flaw in Rowling’s. (Or maybe she wanted it that way. Who knows?)

So I was searching YouTube for some English major rap songs (don’t ask) and found, much to my chagrin, that not only have people made quite a few English major rap videos, but numerous people have already beaten me to my long-held dream of writing and recording a rap song about Geoffrey Chaucer (in Middle English).

One, though, really puts me in my place. His name is Baba Brinkman, and, although he raps in modern English, this is some of the most brilliant English major rapping I have ever seen. This was performed live at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2005. (The second and third are the best, in my opinion.)

So, most of you have probably figured this out by now, but I’m kind of a freak about personality profiling. My friend Mandy and I recently co-taught a class on personality at work, so I’ve been putting a lot of research into it there. I stumbled across an article that gave comparisons across numerous profiling methods. They had Myers-Briggs types, the four humors, the four elements, some sort of Asian types, and a few others. Then, toward the bottom of the article, they had Hogwarts houses. Here’s what they say:

I don’t know if I totally agree with this, because according to this, I’m evenly split between Slytherin and Hufflepuff. HUFFLEPUFF! Hufflepuffs can’t even go outside for fear of getting their asses kicked by the Gryffindors and Slytherins. I was sure I was a Ravenclaw… But now, not so sure.

Before you get too mad, take a deep breath and realize that this is a joke. (Except for Melville. He’s right where he needs to be.)

Funny as hell if you’ve read or seen Waiting for Godot…

So I finally broke down and started reading How to Win Friends and Influence People. Parts of it are actually good; others are definitely not. (I just finished up a chapter on the importance of smiling.) The more I read this, the more I realize: I don’t want to win friends and influence people—I just want to get shit done. I realize this means that I will never be paid as well as people who smile all the time. But I made this poster in an hour and a half. Beat that, Smiley.

Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett, is widely considered to be the most important play of the 20th Century. If you’ve never read it, the full text is available here.

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So I’m re-reading Watchmen right now, and I’m thinking that I probably have better things to do. I may start up Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling again, and I promised Janelle that I’d read some Annie Dillard, but are there any other good reads my three readers can recommend?

A while back, I picked up Watchmen to check it out, since the movie is coming out soon. I was blown away. I realize how geeky that makes me sound, given that this is a graphic novel (large-scale comic book). But consider that Watchmen made Time magazine’s list of 100 top novels between 1923 and today. (That’s novels, not graphic novels—it was on the list with The Great Gatsby and other classics.)

The quote in the post title, which means, “Who watches the watchmen,” sums up the premise of the story. The story covers a wide range of time, but basically, there are a few individuals who took it upon themselves to be superheroes. They didn’t have any special powers—just wits and physical prowess. They eventually band together into a team, to more effectively fight crime. But then, one of them attempts to rape one of the other ones.

There’s a public outcry. It makes sense. They don’t know who these people are, where they live. The police can’t catch them. If they decided to run amok, it would be quite difficult to stop them. Eventually, the government intervenes and passes an act which states that only government-sanctioned superheroes are legal; all others are to be hunted.

That’s all back-story, revealed later in the story. The story actually opens up with a murder of a man which is later revealed to be one of the costumed superheroes. One of the other costumed heroes (the only one who neither worked for the government nor retired) takes it upon himself to investigate this, since he doesn’t trust the police to finish the job. He uncovers something horrific, and—surprise, surprise—it’s something the costumed heroes can’t seek help with.

All of this sounds really cliché. It’s not. The writer took great pains to make these costumed heroes real people, who struggle with the morality of their actions and question the impact they can really have on the world. They show some of the good guys being bad guys, but they also show some of the bad guys being innocent victims. Even in the end, it’s not really stated whether the “villain” was justified in his actions. They very intentionally leave it ambiguous, with the action having both drastically good and drastically bad consequences and the characters not knowing how to react. It’s a story that really makes you think and doesn’t tell you what to feel in the end.

If you’re interested, you can actually pick it up pretty cheap on Amazon:

It’s by the same guy that wrote V for Vendetta, although I consider Watchmen to be the better story.