Generalizers and subverters
Do you spot patterns? Or do you seek to escape them?
Some people spend their lives observing and then categorizing and classifying the thing they see. They are the generalizers. They advance human knowledge by creating tools with broad applicability. A new generalized insight can be a breakthrough.
I am a generalizer. I love to spot patterns.
Some people rebel against any pattern they see. They resist the idea that things have to be a certain way and fit a certain generalization. They see simple, clear order and want to upend it, evade it, find its flaws. They are the subverters. They advance human knowledge by breaking us out of rigid ways of thinking. And, of course, they make us laugh. Nothing gets accomplished until we break out of old patterns.
I am a subverter. I love to break patterns.
Is this weird?
Are you a generalizer or are you a subverter? I’m genuinely curious. Do you like to spot patterns or escape them?
Am I the only one that’s constantly flitting between these modalities, or is everyone like this?
Does it matter in what part of your experience we are looking? Are you a generalizer in food and a subverter in writing? Or a generalizer as an individual contributor and a subverter in management?
If you are a generalizer, is your life’s companion one too, or are they a subverter? Can a generalizer and a subverter live in peace, or are they always at each other’s throats? Can two subverters ever get along?
I guess I should have been a philosopher. But I would have just subverted that anyway.
For some of us, nothing weird about it. I am both. It doesn’t make me friends, because I tend to quickly see that which needs to be repaired or removed, so I’m usually pointing out troubles we’d be wise if we dealt with. By and large, we are not wise. For example, if a person has been stumped by a problem for days or weeks, I will walk in and point at something that stands out to me as a problem within a pattern, and say, “What’s that?” And “that” will be the problem they have been seeking. Gratitude does not follow, usually, because they tend to be foolishly embarrassed that a “girl” saw what they couldn’t. Me? I just grin. It’s cool to see things that need to be fixed. I love it when life works right. To let things like that go is to allow corrosion aka corruption to get its hooks in and grow, like mold. I work for myself, now, and find I stand alone for the problems I spot and solve that others merely (and literally) glide over and ignore. It’s lonely, and I sure do wish others would join me, but if not, I prefer to stand alone. I’m weird that way.