100: Enneagrammar

Hi, and welcome to Classical Stuff You Should Know. You guys, every, every day, I try to tell the truth, try to be honest, I try to, I try to just be really real about the way I go through my day. One could say, I'm keeping it 100. That's a bad one.

That's a bad one. That's pretty good. Yeah. Keep it 100.

You guys, it's 100 episodes. Wait, wait, wait, wait. This is a huge milestone for us. I'm, I can't believe we, like when we started out with just me and you, Graham, and a little tiny microphone with our cheeks pressed against each other so we could, don't remember that, so we could put the microphone to hear both of us.

Yeah, we were sharing, share. Really? Yeah. I never thought we would go this far, right?

When we started, I thought we'd have, like, my mom listening and a student and, uh, started from the bottom. Over here. You're trying to say your mom isn't listening anymore? Oh, she definitely listens, but she's not the only listener, I think, unless she's listening a lot.

A lot. On a lot of different devices. On a lot of different devices. She just really wants me to feel good about myself.

Does this episode really count as number 100 if not all three of us were on this first end? I mean, really, this is episode 90. Yeah, no, this is, this is like the technical episode 100, but it's not the spiritual episode 100. The spiritual episode 100 is going to be episode 100 and 10 or 12 or whenever Meg be joined, because that was when, that was when, like, you know, the melody to our harmony, I don't know, that's when, like, uh...

You mean it's when our episodes went from 20 minutes to an hour long? Not when that missing keys came. When a little window in our heart opened, we didn't know it was there. And Meg be joined the podcast.

All the tumblers fell into place. That's right. And the lock opened. The lock opened.

To a secret garden. Yeah, seriously. What's happening? Are we in the secret garden now?

We've been in the secret garden. We've been in the secret garden, gentlemen. So let's... I refuse your distinction and choose to still be excited about number 100.

Oh, sorry. Yeah, I'm pumped. But, yeah, anyway, welcome to Classical Stuff You Should Know. This is our 100th episode.

My name is AJ Hanenberg. I'm here with two of my best colleagues, Graham Donaldson. Hello. And Thomas Magby.

And we are here to bring the classical world to you in a way that is palatable and fun and hopefully interesting and I'm sure sometimes boring and... But we try. We're trying really hard over here to make it fun for you. And now we have to do episode 100.

Sometimes we're boring. Can't make an omelet without breaking a few boring few holes. Nope. You don't bore your omelet?

No, apparently not. You mean, like, drill a hole in my head and then pour it out? Yeah, that's what we mean by boring. Yeah, naturally.

Anyway. The podcast, like, bore into your brain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I got that the wrong way.

Yeah, there you go. Anyway, welcome. And today we're going to hear from Tom Tanks. Speaking about 40.

To be clear, I was like, I don't think it should be 100, but anyway. I like the Enneagram. I think it's interesting. But I just want to keep the peace because I'm a number nine.

Anyway. I'm not allowed to do that, right? Number myself? You're allowed to number yourself.

Oh. So, actually, I'm not supposed to number you, so I'm wronging you every time I tell you that you're wrong about your type. I think, more importantly, Grim, can you just make that noise? What's the big side of noise you make at the beginning?

Yeah. So, F-W-A-A-H. We were going to take your pronunciation from last podcast. That's the way it's spelled.

All E's, and it's pronounced A's. So, yesterday, I'm going to be talking... Podcast is a living nightmare. Nightmare.

Nightmare. So, we will be talking about the Enneagrams today. So, A-J's episode last time, my episode this time, Grim's episode next time, are taken from our Pidea conference in Austin, Texas every August. So, thank you.

Oh, that was cool. Yeah, a listener who lives in Austin, Texas, who came to the conference and told us that you came because of us. What's your name? Carly?

No, No, no. did she sign a release to allow us to even no she didn't so mysterious listener whose name we can't remember around and so yeah every August we have that conference so if listener you're interested I don't know when you're going to be listening to this but if you're listening to this in August you should reach out about coming to Pidea so all of our topics again for these three weeks are adaptations of talks we gave at that campaign conference so the topic that the title for the topic I gave was the Enneagram and Pidea so I forget the exact quote but however many episodes ago when AJ read from the Praise of Folly and said that the job of pretentious people is to take two or three old words and expound on them for an hour is again what I'll be doing if they are 100 episode listeners to classical stuff then they must enjoy that and if they're newbies they're shutting it down leave us a three star review saying that we are awkward funny not funny funny and if you've listened to all 100 episodes you're part of the Centenary Club and leave us a review saying you're part of the Centenary Club yeah for sure is that all that gets you for listening to 100 episodes is getting to leave us a review maybe there's something else we can figure out you can send us an email it'd be cool I'd like to hear from people who are 100 episodes so my topic is the is Pidea and Enneagram Enneagram and Pidea I don't remember the word but we'll be talking about those two things today so we have two big words to define let's start with Pidea so gentlemen we have a conference that is called the Pidea Conference it's a word we throw around quite a bit what is Pidea? raising the man the whole man in virtue and wisdom the discipline crafting of the whole man in wisdom and virtue that's the definition that we say a lot that has now been hazardly memorized by me but it's the it's essentially the civilizing of child to adult to be a not just a functioning member of society but has a vision and the goal of the ideal member of the polis and so that's everything from informational education to character formation to having them love what is lovable and hate what is what is hateworthy and with the goal of introducing somebody that can both serve and be served by the community any other thoughts on Pidea? yeah no I feel like sometimes we overwork the definition I think Pidea probably was very much like the word education to the Greeks so we relaps into it because it's an old word we relaps into it because we need to redeem the concept of education because education in a modern sense does not have any of that character formation it has just give you the facts that you need in order to function in the market sure but I'm just saying I don't think we need to be so careful about the definition because it's like it's education but out of virtue component and make it more about citizen so I think civilizing is a really good word so Pidea is yes they're growing up but it's also there are distinctives to growing up in a specific time place and being a specific type of person so Pidea is growing someone up into what it means to be we're in Austin Texas in 2019 in South Austin like what does it mean to be an active member of that society to be a member of Austin in 2019 if they were to move to Paris Pidea would be different in Paris what it is to be an ideal Parisian is different than what it is to be an ideal Austonian whatever but if they were to go and take that outfit anywhere else they would look kind of silly so Pidea is unique to a specific culture so ideal members of your place will look different based on where you are there are certain things that we would say are common across cultures so AJ's last episode talking about the virtues we would say that at least four of those virtues the classical virtues we kind of agree on we might use different words for them but those are generally agreeable for those who are Christian we'd say that there are three more religious virtues and those are kind of common across people part of what it is to be human is to value those things you know you don't get the test over the mic right now it was a fun day it was a barking dog kind of what it sounded like didn't it sound like test tests also part of what I'm liking about this is this harkens back to the first ten episodes when the receptionist would walk in just keeping it as professional no matter how far we run there we are did you just come up that phrase that's from so yes so Pidea is this growth of education with a moral component to it but also a cultural component so someone during the Pidea conference referenced inculturation I think it's a helpful way of thinking about that word that's one big word so the other side of that on Pidea is that there are certain objective things that to grow up I'm focused mostly on a child growing up into an adult but even as adults we're not done developing Graham said this years ago at this point and it's always stuck with me it was right after I started at Veritas he said that we never leave the school of rhetoric that a student is brought in in ninth grade but they don't graduate out of it they remain in that school that advanced school of using grammar logic and rhetoric so we remain in that same state also we also are being developed we're also growing in Pidea so there are objective things that are right that relate to Pidea those would be the virtues virtues are right to not do a virtue is a wrong thing you should not do that we'll get to why I'm believing so our second big word it's like this apothecary alchemist symbol that I don't know it corresponds to one of the spheres wait one of the spheres are you talking about the planets right now I hope so I guess how many planets are there nine good talk if there are then yes is Pluto someone yelling at their radio right now sorry not sorry so Enneagram is a term you've probably heard thrown around a lot we talked about it during our January January 1 New Year episode so the Enneagram the title of the name Enneagram literally just means nine shape so the name is a reference to a nine pointed shape Enneagram those nine points correspond to nine different personality types and there's some just like tendencies or things that are common that order matters to what that order means Thomas I thought you hated personality tests oh sure thanks so the talk at PIDEA this year was in many ways a continuation of what ended up being that January New Year episode but then also two talks I gave last summer about the weaknesses the problems of particularly the Myers-Briggs type indicator that was the mom-daughter team the daughter wrote mystery novels and then also developed the most popular personality tests as one does you can go back and listen to that if you want to so it was a critique of Myers-Briggs in particular it was a critique and pushback on the big five which is a more scientifically popular personality test and this happened a year ago when I gave this talk at the PIDEA conference someone in the audience while I'm railing against Myers-Briggs it asked me well what do you think about the Enneagram and I didn't really know much about the Enneagram and so I shot off this quick response about well you know the Enneagram comes from the vagaries and the devs are fathers so it's either the best or the worst personality test and everyone laughed and then we moved on and I didn't know but come to find out I actually kind of like it so it's closer to best than it is to worst for me personally so do I hate personality tests yeah do they kind of flatten people out yeah but I think there is a flexibility to the Enneagram that's really helpful or it's more like it's a similar to Hamburg's last talk the Enneagram gives a lot of license to say you are going to act in many different ways over the course of your life and it tries to provide some kind of structure but it shies away from an optimization of the structure to say like let's put a real fine point on this and really nail you down yeah I think you brought this up during the talk that many other personality tests lead us to a false sense of precision where we say you are INTP you are high on agreeableness low on conscientiousness you are whatever and even when you use the big five it's called big five there are five measures that are part of the big five you're given a percentage number on each one of those again that's a false level of precision have you really boiled down that person to five numbers that tell you everything about their personality and I would say no I would say people are more complicated than five numbers so what does the Enneagram do the Enneagram says that there is a tendency of how you act most of the time or more specifically there is a motivation that drives you most of the time and that determines your core number one through nine and Graham just said this but even if you don't like the use of numbers there are names for each of these different types some people will use colors some people will use animals it doesn't really matter the number I think it's a helpful thing to keep in mind it's more about these tendencies that are across all of them I feel like an audio medium is like the worst way to describe this if you go to EnneagramInstitute.com you can look at the picture and it makes it a lot easier if you have any interest in this so there are otherwise keep listening to this high quality podcast yeah seriously well I'll give you all the information you need to know for like this topic but there are some things that looking at a picture will make it much easier so I'll just run through these nine types again hopefully one of them will make sense to you and if not you should read more about it because it's great so again most of this is from the Enneagram Institute so anything that sounds really smart comes from them probably not from me the nine types are one the reformer the rational idealistic type principle purposeful self-controlled and perfectionistic each person has one of those nine types and then under conditions of stress we'll move to a different number and under conditions of thriving we'll move to another number so there's a flexibility in the Enneagram that I find very helpful so maybe listeners can write in and tell us what we are and give justification that would be interesting that means I need to not name my type which was kind of a running joke through my presentation because I can't refer to my type so anyway yeah write in that would be really interesting for what you all think we are okay so we're all seven so what's the point of all this set up the point of all this set up is to try and distinguish between things that are objectively true and good and things that are individual differences that's like my driving motivation for caring about personality tests I remember reading Mortimer Adler's essay on subjectivity in the syntopicon in the Great Books of the Western World see the world differently want different things out of life it's just disagreement it's not necessarily I'm right there can you give an example so like there's the courage of virtue I mean the virtue of courage but there's the I think the best way to go about figuring out where we should eat dinner is so yeah let's do that through the lens of the Enneagram so those are the nine different types I would encourage you to read about them and find one that you identify with again this talk was mostly in the context of talking to parents about relating with their children and so I think it was repeated a lot is that parents should not type their children in the same way that I should not type Graham or AJ they should come up with that themselves and there are lots of reasons for that but it's just it is unhelpful to tell someone this is who you are or to tell or when Graham tells me he's a nine and I go no you're not I'm telling him I know you better than you know yourself which is a very dumb thing for me to do so why do I keep doing it why do I keep doing that okay because I'm a insert the number So how can we then use this tool, this personality tool, without typing other people?

That was the main project of the talk. So things that are involved in the Enneagram that don't require you to necessarily know the other person's type are, first off, the three triads. So the nine numbers are... You don't want to mess with the triads.

Those guys are... They will mess you up. They won't go well. That's messed up.

So there's a nine-pointed shape, and then if you draw a line all the way around, it's a circle. Usually you see it looking like a circle. And the three triads are the heart triad, the head triad, and the gut triad. Huh.

Huh. Yeah, what do you think that lines are? Where did we hear? Where did we hear that before?

Episode 1. Which... It's hard and gut. Also, will episode 1 roll off this time, or with A.J.'s episode?

Oh, I asked your question. Oh, I don't know. Anyway, we're about to lose episode 1, y'all, because we only have 100 episodes up at a time, so go back and download episode 1 if you want it. Whoa.

It's been a bummer. Okay, so... But do you think that's... We're sort of hinting at it, but do you think it is a tripartite soul type thing that there's the head, the heart, and the up type?

Yes. My starting comment about the Enneagram being based in the thoughts of Evagrius was meant just as like a... I'm sure that I've done some research on this thing, but I do think that... What I think I appreciate about this tool is that it ties personality against motivation, and there's a twisting of motivation, which the three of us would call sin, but everyone would acknowledge like brokenness or just like some problem with the world.

But that does change how we act. Like, our motivation being twisted toward serving yourself does change how we act. So, yes, so... I guess I'll get to this in a little bit, but Evagrius had eight deadly thoughts, and there are nine sins that are identified with the Enneagram as the tendencies of each of the different types.

So the person who tends towards a number has a corresponding sin that they tend towards? Yeah, so this might lead to some back and forth because this will contradict the thoughts here is that each of the different types is tempted toward a different sin. And this... I don't think I went through this list in the presentation because this is almost always how the Enneagram is presented.

You're this one type, this is the thing you struggle with, and it's bad. Like, don't do this. So you think that's too simplistic? I think it's too simplistic, but I think it also misses the fact...

I just think there's plenty of condemnation already. Like, what people were like really engaged by in the presentation were like the good parts that each of the different types have. I don't think that's talked about as much, but we'll get through all these. So what are the sins that are associated with each of these types?

Let's do that. Could you list the type perfectionistic? Pride. No.

Greed. No. The one's tendency is toward anger. So the one wants the world to be a certain way, and when it's not that way, they're not happy about that.

It's funny. Rough. The ones will often not identify their emotion as anger. They'll describe it as some sense of right to justice.

Gotcha. Or dissatisfaction. But it will be as anger, too. So the two.

The two is the caring interpersonal type, demonstrative, generous, people-pleasing, and possessive. This one's greed. Possessive. People-pleaser.

People-pleaser. I think three is vainglory, so I'm saving that one. This one sounds like vainglory. They want to prove it from others, but maybe lust?

Wait for that, yes. Okay, so give me your final answers. Lust. And Graham just shrugged his shoulders.

The two's tendency is toward pride. So the two... This game's too hard. Y'all wanted to play it.

I'm having a great time. I'm glad to hear it. I'm not competitive. So the...

I guess we'll get into this later, but the two is oriented externally, and they are oriented... So they're in the heart triad, so oriented toward emotion, and they have an external point of reference. So when that external emotion... It's all about making other people feel happy, and when they do or don't feel happy, it reflects on them.

So either they're awesome for doing that, or they suck because they didn't do it. So all those things reflect that. Number three... So three's the achiever, right?

Three is the achiever. The success-oriented, pragmatic type, adaptive, excelling, driven, and image conscious. So this sounds like it's Vainglory, wanting praise from other people. I don't know if Vainglory is one of the sins on there.

I'm going to say envy. So the word I have on here is deceit. I guess I always put that closer to Vainglory. Yeah.

Put it on the board. A quarter of a point to Graham. So y'all are crushing it. So the three will put on whatever mask is necessary to...

The winds don't have to be pretty, maybe. Yeah, a quarter of a point to zero is looking great right now. It's not an external point of... They want to please people, I guess, so I'm just going to leave it at that.

Otherwise, I'll start rambling. Four is the individualist, the sensitive withdrawn type, expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed, and temperamental. You said pride was the last one, though, right? Pride was number two.

Pride was the second. Sadness. Why is that sadness? It's not included as one.

Melancholy. Yeah, acedia. I think it's season number nine, though. I don't know, guys.

I want to ruin this for you. Oh, I have no idea. Envy for the four. So the four is oriented toward the past and a part of the heart triad, so emotions looking for the past.

You'll often hear about fours who kind of look back and see how things could have been or wish they could have been. Four is a heart triad? Four is a heart triad. So two, three, four is heart, five, six, seven is head, and nine, one is gut.

So envy, yes. So they see how other people live and they see that other people's lives are easier. Number five is... The investigator, the intense, cerebral, tight, perceptive, innovative, secretive, and isolated.

So what do we got left? We got gluttony, we got lust, we got... Actually, do you want me to list... There's nine of them, yeah.

So lust, sloth, fear, gluttony, greed. Ah, I think five is fear because you want to know everything and if you don't know things, you're scared. Five is greed. Five is acquire things.

Seems like. Yes, we are crushing this. The five is greed, they are head-oriented and they are withdrawing and so instead of giving things to the world, they hoard things up for themselves. So they learn and learn and learn but don't want to contribute any of that to the world.

Like Saruman in the tower with his Palantir. Uh-huh, tell me more. That thing, the Palantir, is another thing that you can use to see things. It's a little globe.

It's a little globe, which is why the company Palantir, which is a data security intelligence company, that name is terrifying. Isn't that creepy? So yes, fear. So sixes are in the head triad and focused externally so they think about it like there's a, it's stuck in their head like all the things that could go wrong.

They see all those things happening around them for the least two of fear of how things could happen. Seven is the enthusiast, the busy, fun-loving type, spontaneous, versatile, distractible, and scattered. So your choices left are lust, gluttony, and sloth. I'm going to go lust.

I'm going to say lust as well. Right, it is gluttony. Oh, I'm such a good thing. So the seven will see things and just go after them.

So whatever they want, they just do it, they just go after it. And the seven also will focus only on positive emotions. And so at any threat of negativity, sadness, whatever, they will mask that by going to the next thing. Or, I don't know, starting a business or dating a person or name your thing.

They just kind of like leave the negative and go forward. Yeah, I'll leave the negative. You just got to leave it. What's the problem here?

I don't want to leave the negative. Because you only have access to half of your emotional range. Yeah, but it's a good half. I'm going to say that about like the evil flies higher if it goes through the value.

Oh, I will find it. It's worth reading. Anyway, so I think that's the problem with the seven is that there's a challenge to life if you only experience that I ever have. Yeah, but my Instagram fee is huge.

Oh, good for you. So, yeah, I don't want to spoil my type if we're actually going to have people email us, but there is a value to sadness that the seven just kind of naturally misses out on. The eight is the challenger, the powerful, dominating type, self-confident, decisive, willful, and confrontational. Your two options left are lust and sloth.

I think lust. I'm the only way to win this is to say sloth. It is lust. So, well done, Graham, at two and one quarter versus one point.

Okay, so the eight pushes through, accomplishes what they put their mind to. That's what makes them a challenger. They move against people so they're part of the aggressive... It's kind of disturbing that their sin is lust.

Sounds like kind of, I don't know, like a... What if they want something and they get it? I know, but that's kind of like dark and sad. As are, I guess, all the types, but all of them have kind of this misunderstood side which we for sure will not have time to get into today.

Okay, that leaves us with nine, which is the peacemaker, the easygoing, self-effacing type, perceptive, reassuring, agreeable, and complacent, which the sin that is associated with that is... Cedia. It is a Cedia, it's sloth. So the nine is in the gut triad that they are asleep to, that got their sleep to that anger or motivation to do action.

And so in desiring to help everyone around them, sometimes it's easier just to remove themselves, like to be away from themselves, to avoid any conflict. So that's the nine, sloth, they just kind of disappear. Okay, so what I was trying to get at earlier, each of these nine types are also split into one of three triads. The twos, threes, and fours are in the heart triad, five, sixes, and sevens are in the head triad, and eights, nines, and one are in the gut triad.

A piece of what the triad tells us is how those different types see and interpret the world. So two, threes, and fours primarily understand the world through emotions. They see the emotions of others, they see their own emotions. That's how, if you were to tell them the story, that's what they would focus on in the story, are the emotions, how they think people feel, how that impacts others.

That's how they see the world. What I am arguing for at this point is that this is an individual difference that is amoral. This is not a good thing or bad thing. It's not a good thing or bad, this is just this type happens to see the world this way.

You could prefer it or not, but it's not a bad thing. So people that see the world through emotions, if you or someone's like, oh man, I don't do that, and I find that to be faithful. So the next triad is five, six, and sevens. I approach the world through thought, through thinking a thing through, not primarily through emotions or actions.

So I think this often when you watch a YouTube video and you hear about someone being irrational. Someone else is focused on emotions, I'm focused on them. Not on YouTube. This is awkward.

Always on YouTube. But I think both are individual differences. One is not necessarily better than the other. Emotions need a rational component, but a mind also needs a heart to accompany it.

And both of them require, both of them require action, that third triad of eights, nines, and ones. So is there a part of the Enneagram that is to like balance or encapsulate or somehow like control or tame all nine of these things? Or is it more, no, you are a... No, yeah, the purpose of the Enneagram is not solely to type yourself.

The Enneagram isn't... Well, whatever. It's all about you, but it's not all about you. So typing is an important step, but typing is mostly to show you your blind spot.

It's not as an excuse toward, you know, because I'm a four, I can be as dramatic as I want to be. As a five, it's okay that I withdraw from other people. Or because I'm a seven, I can be all flighty and focus on my fun stuff. Of course, of course I'm going to go somewhere else.

I'm a seven, you guys. Right, and so you can be descriptive and say, yeah, I'm tempted toward this, but you should phrase it that way because those are not good things. So what helped me is that I would never have thought of myself as having a tendency toward greed, which is the sin of the five. But then in doing study and understanding myself as a five, I just, I see it now.

I see that I buy book after book after book. I don't actually read them, but it feels good to have collected those things that I've been given collectibles by family members. I don't really want to get rid of them. I want to hold on to them and not use them, but just to have them.

Hey, you gave me some of your coffee today, Mike. There you go. I'm trying to do some with that. So there are problems identified with each type, but there are certain, again, amoral differences.

Part of that would be how we see the world. Now, just, it is helpful to understand how you primarily see the world so that you can augment that with the other triads. That if you're only focused on the emotions of others, but you don't think through the consequences of responding, that there's a lesser reaction than if you brought in both your head and your mind. Or, I'm sorry, your head and your heart.

Same with, you can have a great emotional response, you can accurately analyze the situation and then not do anything. There'll be a weaker response than if you brought in all three. All I'm saying here, there's nothing really new here compared to tripartite. There's no difference between...

Don't ask me, I don't ask all things. Thank you. We all know. So there's no difference between what the interesting tripartite soul would say, that you probably have one of those three that's primary in you, but you need all three of them to be a complete person.

So there's an agreement between those two things. You want to read that quote? No, I was agreeing with you. Like, I'm firmly in the head triad and my deficiency in heart is obvious.

Like, for me, it's a problem. When other people are feeling things, I don't feel them. And I want to approach, perhaps, like, relational and emotional situations in a head way. And so when I have, like, parents who are feeling a really, really heavy emotion and they come, I want to solve the problem and address their arguments and deal with it that way.

When, in reality, what I should do is say, like, I hear you and I see that you're having trouble at home and let me express some support for you and support you emotionally. It's like a real deficiency that I deal with in life. And there are tools that will help us adapt to those things. So I, as a five, tend to be doing repressed.

But I have, I mean, I went through years of, like, being really into GTD, getting things done, have a really solid system for how I track things that need to be done and make sure the right stuff is in front of me all the time. Like, I have a system that has accommodated my weakness. Did you use Evernote for your GTD? I used Evernote for a long time.

I forget the name of it. I think it's the Secret Weapon Manifesto, which sounds horrible, but it's, sorry, yeah. It makes you sound like a bonjo. Yeah, what kind of internet site do you find out?

Yeah, she's leased. My wife used to, when she was living in New York next to the Anarchist bookstore up there, and so, anyway. I have some Anarchist books. I used to, yeah.

Were you in Anarchist? No, I worked at a coffee shop right next to the train tracks and we used to get the Anarchist trainwriters all the time through. And it's like a nomadic people of America that don't really have any missionary to them because they move around all the time and they never stay in one place long enough to establish community and sort of church relationships. And so, when I had redlocks on my waist, I wanted to be a missionary to win ride trains in the summer, but I didn't.

And I'm sure a completely different people could have. Never too late to grab your dress again? Yeah, it's hot down here. It's so hot.

That's a good point. Okay, so what's point number one? Point number one, three different ways of seeing the world, primarily through emotions, primarily through thought, and primarily through action. Okay, that's thought one.

Thought two, tied to those three triads, is that there are twistings, there are negative sides of all of those triads. So, someone, a two, three, or four, has the potential to struggle with some form of shame. So, because they're so focused on emotions, they can see how those emotions impact them, leading them to shame. Someone in the head triad, thinking a lot inside of their head, can develop fear.

So, sometimes you'll hear the head triad called the fear triad. And same with the gut triad. So, the gut triad is oriented toward action, but sometimes it's hard to accomplish your goal if you're only focused on your own action. So, sometimes you'll hear the gut triad called the anger triad.

So, each of those three amoral differences have a negative downside. I don't know if I call it shame, fear, and anger. Anger clearly would fall under a sin category, but I'm just trying to see if there's a difference between life. Fear does.

Yeah. Fear is like a lack of faith. Yeah, fair. Okay, so then we'll put these as actually immoral.

Is that right? But those aren't things that we necessarily do. It's just, this is the point. possible downfall of your personality.

Yeah, so there's a threat of falling into shame. Or see it as a signal. If someone is consistently fearful or consistently angry or consistently ashamed, then if you can see that in your own behavior, then that can sort of lead you into this and say, okay, well, there's a bright spot. You found something that is true.

Now we can build off of that and talk more about the reciprocals that can maybe bring some health and life. Yes, I guess I struggle with the shame triad of calling that out specifically. But there are some people that just don't struggle. Feeling shame is not a thing that happens a lot.

I think there's great wisdom to not all sadness is sin, but there is a category of it that is. So being open to that possibility I think is helpful. But you should not jump in and say, oh, you're sad, you need to repent immediately. So a moral difference of how to see the world.

There's a twisting of each of those which leads to kind of a sin tendency that is more likely for those different types. There's another way of looking at the nine types and grouping them. And those are based on stances. So stances are whether a person moves.

So the three stances are dependent, aggressive, and withdrawing. And what those three mean is that there's a type of person that moves toward others when they're under stress. There's a type of person that moves against others when they're in stress. And there's a type that moves away from others when they're under stress.

There's a, I can't remember the poet. But he, there's this line that I have in my complex book but I can't remember who said it. And it's like, some men wither, some men fester, and some men explode. Yeah, that kind of idea.

I like that a lot. Oh, that's a good one. That's a good concept. What do you mean?

Some men wither, some men fester, some men explode. So does that correspond exactly to yours? The wither is the withdraw. The fester is the...

It's toward, though. Yeah. But explode would be against, for sure. Yeah, for sure.

Let's try as we go through. So the types that move toward others are called the dependent types, or the dependent numbers. Those are ones, twos, and sixes. They have an external reference point.

I feel like that would be more fester because it's like, you're living with it, it's always with you. And then against is the... So that's the two... Oh, no.

You have to explode against and then wither is withdraw. Especially for ones and sixes. I can definitely see that. So that would be, do you say fester?

I think that would be close. You have to workshop it. I like it, though. So this type tends to be thinking repressed.

So what that means is that these types will think a lot. It's not that they don't think. It's that it's not productive thinking. I will get to this if I plan on doing action, like I think about action a lot.

I just don't do a whole lot. So I'm doing repressed. So these ones, twos, and sixes, they have an external reference point, which is, again, I would say is an amoral difference that you kind of do want people to be thinking of others. Like, that's not a bad thing to be considered of others.

They are... They can be oriented toward the present, so they either see what needs to be done in the moment or what is wrong with the moment, but they're oriented toward the present, which you know it offers as an amoral difference that we do need. Like, there are changes that need to be made today. There are things that are wrong today that need to be focused on.

Don't want to push back on that. So next is the withdrawing type. So those are the ones that move away, which I think would fall under this one. They, four, five, and nines, are doing repressed.

Maybe I guess I'd say the repression on each of these is a problem. That is a thing that needs to be dealt with. So it's not a amoral difference. But having an internal reference point is not necessarily a wrong thing.

Like, someone being introspective is a good thing. We want some level of introspection for our students, for ourselves, for our coworkers. So, again, doing repressed, four, five, and nines might look like they're very active, but usually they're not doing what actually needs to be done. There's a very funny story of a five whom I'm friends with who, during a holiday, was supposed to be, I think, packing so they could take, like, I don't know, some sort of vacation.

And instead of doing the packing, he sharpened every knife in his house. Now, to him, it felt very important, but it didn't actually need to happen, especially not at that moment, days before they were leaving for, I don't know where they were going. That's a very typical five thing. Well, when you get home, are you going to want no lines of trash?

I mean, you're going to want sharp times. Put things in the right places. In the weeks leading up to my wife delivering our child, instead of packing up the things we need for the hospital bag or getting a car seat in the car or anything that's actually important, I was selling my childhood collectibles. Like, that is what consumed my time because it felt so important to happen, to clear out clutter before we had a kid.

It wasn't important. Anyway, here we are. I wish I knew that was happening. I could have bought some Maggie memorabilia.

That's terrifying. I'm glad I didn't sell it too well now. The four sides and nines of withdrawing tend to be oriented towards the past. And again, I offer that as just a difference.

It is good to be thoughtful of the past, to remember where we came from, lessons we've learned, whatever that quote is of those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. There's a value to having the past in mind. Those are the withdrawing types. And then threes, sevens, and eights are in the aggressive stance.

They move against others. And that's the... What's the other one? It's the one that sounds like explosion.

It's faster. It's faster. Explode. Explode.

Explode. Explode for aggressive. What are you trying to say, Maggie? These types are...

So these... Seven, which... AJ, I think you think you're a seven? I haven't told them a seven.

Whoa, whoa, we're on game. What? We're ruining it. I think I made a pretty...

I've been talking about it before. I know. I'm sorry. I guess, yeah.

Loyal listeners will actually... I don't think I know if you're wrong. Okay, the three, sevens, and eights are aggressive. They want to reshape the world.

They are feeling repressed. And so... I agree. And again, with the seven, it's that they lack the range of feeling.

And the same with the eight. The eight has this... They're either passionate or not passionate. Like, it looks like emotion, but it's not the full range of human emotion.

And so there's kind of... It's like a one note. Yeah, one note. Yeah, exactly.

And the same with the seven. It's either super happy or... I guess sevens can't... Anyway.

Sevens, when they fall out of that super happiness, it can be really hard sometimes for them. I know that's something that's written about. But when it's separated and not paired with the past and present, it is lesser. So again, I'd say it's amoral, but still inferior to having a combination of all three.

I think it's really hard. I think it's really hard for a person to do all three of them well. So typically, you should have three people, right? You should have different types of people working together to make sure you have all these different people.

Like a five, a seven, and a nine. I mean, it just works. This is why... They have a heart.

So a two head and a gut, so... Pooey's heart and a pocket. Okay. Well, I mean, this is why we have so many people on our thesis celebration team, right?

Because I'm deficient in certain areas. And this has shown up in my exact problems. When there's an intro that aims at emotion and I don't feel it, I'm like, they failed. And everyone else in the room says it landed with them.

And I'm like, apparently, I just don't... We have a word for it. We call it hand and bot. When I'm not feeling things.

And it's like, I would have, if it was up to me, said, you have done a poor job with this portion. But it has reached, let's say, 80% of the listeners. And so people are crying. People are crying and feeling feelings and I'm feeling nothing and thinking it's cheesy.

And the problem is reflecting on me, not the writer. Right. So I, as a withdrawing type, my tendency is going to be, if anyone does anything aggressive, I want to leave that situation. I don't want to engage in that situation.

And so for someone to make an aggressive comment makes me feel threatened in some way because I want to get away from it. But again, if someone else is willing to meet that aggression, it doesn't bother them in the same way. Yeah, I feel like it's strong and controversial and that's fine. That's what you should do in that stage, right?

Yeah, exactly. And that's why there is no unbiased viewing of any thesis of any presentation we give of anything. There's no unbiased viewing of any of those things. We have a lens through if we view all of those things.

And there's some that we like more than others. Some that are more resonant or just closer to our personality. So just to get closer to landing, so we've gone through the three triads of the three ways of interpreting the world. We've gone through the three stances of what you do under stress, of whether you're toward, against, or away from others.

We talked a while ago about the sin tendency of those nine numbers, which can be helpful in understanding which of those nine maybe you've seen yourself. What was that again, seven? Seven is fear? No, no, seven is gluttony.

Seven is one. Again, it's not gluttony in the literal go eat food, though it could be that. It's the gluttony of experience. Oh, that sounds accurate.

Yeah, that's me. And so, again, the Enneagram very often is used to talk about all the bad stuff, which is useful. You need to know your blind spots. You need to know your weaknesses.

But I don't think you achieve any form of greatness by only not doing bad stuff. You get there by doing good stuff, by doing great stuff. And so each of these nine types has some sort of excellence tied to it. You sometimes see these called attributes of God or like the divine or whatever, depending on how woo-woo of a source you're looking at.

But there is a source of greatness that is pointed to by each of these nine. And I think I'll go through these and then wrap up. So the one who we talked about is oriented toward action and as an external point of reference for that action does show us that there is a possibility of perfection, that there is actually a possibility of the world being better than it is now. And they're capable of bringing some piece of that into the world and making, like, of, in fact, making the world a better place than when they got here.

Because they have, so the characteristic of God is the vision, that God is the perfect creator, that he's made perfect, he's made a good creation, or he is, in fact, perfect. And so if we have a reflection or if we have an internal sort of understanding of perfection, then that is the thing that the number one's can offer a point to is, you know, the two's, again, they are externally oriented in the heart triad, so emotion felt toward others. They show us the compassion of God. They show us that it is actually better to care for others, to be aware of the needs of others, to help, like, to want to be aware and, like, sensitive to those needs.

The threes show us the harmony of God, that God does not desire, like, a conflict among his people. There's this, like, self-giving nature of threes where they're changing who they are to meet what the other person wants. And that's, like, loving when you phrase it that way. It's not manipulative.

It's the three wants to give that to the other person. And so they want to create a harmony between them. And so that desire is a harmony with us. God desires that none should perish.

That all should be with him. Fours, I shared this talk with a few friends and I'll try and incorporate some of their opinions. What I said originally is that fours points, fours are very comfortable with melancholy. They're very comfortable with sadness.

And they don't need that sadness to be fixed right away. They're comfortable sitting in that sadness. And so part of what they point to is that we should be sad for, in the Christian worldview, that we have a divine origin. The divine origin has been broken.

We've been, like, there's a twisting of it because of the fall. And we should be sad that we live in a fallen world and not in that imperfected Eden that we could have been a part of. So there's a sadness there. But then there's also the side of it that the four is, okay, sitting in that sadness with a person.

Think of the story of Job, that the only guy who, what's the guy's name, who just sits there for seven days instead of actually saying anything. The last guy, I can't remember his name. Like, that God is, like, with us in those dark, sad moments. He's not just trying to, like, make us happy to get out of it, but he's with us in the sorrow.

That's what the four shows us. The five shows us the omniscience of God, that God doesn't, in fact, know everything, that we are capable of knowing much more than we do right now. We're capable of growing in that characteristic of knowing. The six, what I said at the talk, is that the six who is aware of things externally and thinking about them all the time sees all the problems around them and they're capable of preparing for that.

And in the same way, like, they're capable of becoming, in a sense, I use the word dangerous, but I mean that in the sense of, like, they're ready for anything. Like, if you plan for everything, you have all the skills, and no matter what happens, you're ready for that moment, there's a safety in that. Like Boy Scout. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a strength in that.

Like one of the wacky survivalists. Right, where I think of the person who's next to me used to be a firefighter. the freedom of God, that God is not constrained to have to do anything that God can do as God wants. In the same way that the seven has this freedom, this lightness, this fun about them, that they can...

I don't think it's a charm. Charm, just incredible, just perfection, just... Probably good looking. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Just this affable new joke. But the seven is, you want to be around sevens. That's true. The running joke in...

Whatever. If you listen to people talk about sevens, that sevens are the only type that are happy to find out that they are. Every other type is like, that's not mean. Exactly, I don't want to do that.

Yeah, I like being a seven. Exactly, yeah. Sevens just sound like really fun. I'm like fives.

Anyway, so they show us that freedom that things are good, they kind of move on to that. It's good that they don't get popped down. That seems like a healthy thing to do. The eights show us that God is truth, that when they fight and push through and accomplish something that no one else thought was possible, they were right, that that thing ought to have existed in the world and they made that thing happen.

And nine shows us self-emptying love. It's true. They show us selflessness and again willing to give what other people... It's like nine's superpowers the ability to see from all the different perspectives, the eight perspectives, and then kind of like match that, like do for the other person what they need.

I'm a self-emptying love. Thank you, good. Y'all are wonderful. So those are the nine types.

Just again, this has been reiterated. The Pidea portion is that there are objective things that should be taught as right and wrong. The virtue should be taught as right, the vices should be taught as wrong. There's no, you know, I'm a courageous person.

All of us are supposed to be courageous. There's no, I'm a prudent person, we're all supposed to be prudent. But there are differences of what are... There are individual differences of whether we see emotionally with our head or through actions of whether we're oriented toward moving toward people, moving against people, moving away from people.

There are individual differences there that shouldn't be taught as right and wrong, necessarily. They're right and wrong ways of using them, but those differences are not right and wrong in both of themselves. So Pidea is to... What does the title get at?

The Pidea is to show that there are things that are objective and then Enneagram is to say there are parts that are subjective. That's all I got, boys. That's good. So I mean, like, just maybe last little thing.

What would you think is like a practical, helpful thing to do for someone to do that listens to this and is like, oh my goodness, there's a lot here. It seems psychologically deep. Like, it seems like there's a lot of truth to this sort of thing. Like, is it just to like read all about the types?

I mean, for me, it's a knowledge experience. Like, you live this and you learn this. Like, how do you... I think this is a thing to start noticing in yourself and start noticing in others.

It has been very helpful for me to understand the different motivations of the nine types to see, you know, someone who's doing something I wouldn't do isn't being a mean or bad person. They're just seeking after something else. And so I think the Enneagram is most helpful in learning compassion for your child, for your friend, for your spouse, understanding that they're not coming from a place of trying to tear you down. Ingrance or immaturity.

It's that they're, knowledge or someone who's focused on action. And then typically, you'll want to match whatever way that they're talking. Interesting. That's especially good for teachers and counselors.

It's like a good mental model just to have in your head to try to not filter but to frame behavior. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. Triad is probably the easiest one and also orientation to time.

So being aware of whether who you're talking to is talking about present, past, future and then matching what they're talking about. Because you have a kid that is not future oriented and you keep talking about like, well, you're going to have to learn this for college and they're like, no. But if you can pull up the present and say you're going to lose your car and do whatever, then that is much more powerful for them. Gotcha, right.

Cool. Cool. Well, this has been episode 100. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

We're going to go and treat ourselves to a celebratory idea. as we should always do at the end of a large something or other just made that up so you can check us out on our website at classicalstuff.net you can email us at classicalstuff at veritasacademy.net you can tweet at us c-l-s-s-c-a-l-stuff that's our spot we would love to hear from you we'd love to hear if there are any centenary members out there folks who've listened to all 100 we'd love to get to know you tell us about yourself we'll reply if we can and sometimes that's tricky because we all free have the email address have I sent a reply from that email before? I don't know I don't know if I ever have anyway we love you guys listening we are happy I don't know if I ever have