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The
Temperament of Law Enforcement
In
the Church Committee Report it said: “One FBI intelligence officer appeared to
attribute the disregard of the law in the Bureau’s COINTELPRO operations to
simple restlessness on the part of ‘action-oriented’ FBI agents. George C. Moore, the Racial
Intelligence Section Chief, testified that ‘the FBI’s counterintelligence
program came up because if you have anything in the FBI, you have an action
oriented group of people who see something happening and want to do something
to take its place.” What role does
the temperament of law enforcement play in their COINTELPRO program?
We dance to different drummers, David Keirsey said, on
the first page of Please Understand Me II Temperament Character
Intelligence. Keirsey developed the Keirsey
Temperament Sorter II based on the
idea our choices often depend largely upon our temperament. His book is based on the idea there are
“four personalities, four distinct patterns of attitude and action that have
been observed again and again in human beings for over two thousand
years.” He compared our brain to a
computer with temperament as its hardware and character as its software. It is our temperament, Keirsey said,
which determines our character.
He took the work of Isabel Myers who developed a
psychological theory based on the work of Carl Jung and gave it a “larger and
more ancient context.” What he
came up with was a theory of temperament types each one having a unique
worldview, unique value attitudes, and a unique character style which is
discerned by how they use words and how they use tools, by their different
linguistic and cognitive orientations.
Of the four temperament types – Artisans, Guardians,
Idealists, Rationals – those who choose driving ambulances, detective work,
police work, and fire and rescue work frequently fall into the type Keirsey
refers to as the Artisans and Isabel Meyers called the SPs or Sensing
Perceivers. These are the “masters
in making solid practical things.”
They are dedicated to pursuing the “pleasures of the senses.” They have a knack for “mimicking anyone
they approach, often convincing others they are just like them.”
What they crave is novelty. They communicate in a concrete manner and are “utilitarian
in implementing goals.” If it
can’t be observed or handled little time is spent considering it by
Artisans. Their speech is filled
with details. Their talk is
specific rather than using generalizations. It’s experience not theory that is their thing. They can do nicely thank you without
“definitions, explanations, fantasies, principles, hypotheses and the
like.” That’s all a waste of time
to them. What they say points to things seen and felt not the “language of
inference and interpretation, of metaphor and symbol.”
When it comes to goals the Artisans just go for
it. If it works they do it. Their first consideration isn’t – does
it meet with social approval? If it’s useful they are interested in it,
“otherwise who needs it?” Keirsey
tells us Artisans have a utilitarian, “whatever works mindset.” They do “whatever it takes (authorized
or unauthorized) to bull their way through to a successful outcome.” They don’t ponder the meaning of things
or engage in introspection. They
don’t bother about “whose toes get stepped on, what principles are involved, or
why things happen.”
They are the tacticians working the smallest details,
the slightest changes to their advantage with a “keen perception” and “uncanny
ability to locate any and all available resources.” Their interest is in “tactical action” and because of it
they develop “tactical skills.” They spend their time perfecting
technique. They are the promoters,
the crafters, the performers, the composers. They focus on “where they want to go and the fastest way to
get there.” They “are rarely
interested in building morales, or in worrying about morality.” They are the “risk-takers” who “work so
well in a crisis.” They like being
excited. “To be impulsive,
spontaneous, is to be really alive” with them. They want to make a social
impact.
“Artisans need to be potent, to be felt as a strong
presence, and they want to affect the course of events, if only by defying,
shocking, or mocking the establishment.”
These are the hunters, the warriors, good at working with equipment,
optimistic, cynical, focused on living in the present who “do not reflect very
much on their errors or analyze their mistakes to any great extent, it is
difficult for them to learn from their mistakes,” said Keirsey in his book on
temperament.
They would be what Mavin Zuckerman calls the Sensation
Seeking Personality we learn in Keirsey’s book. When things get too dull you can count on them to “liven
things up a little” or “create a sensation.” We learn “if their desire for excitement is not met
constructively, they may channel their energies into antisocial activities such
as those of a con artist.” And that “they have a low tolerance for
anxiety.” It isn’t that they go
“against regulations as it is simply ignoring them and not allowing them to
influence execution.”
What’s interesting is the shadow of this type. Look up a description of how the
concept from Jungian psychology of the shadow is defined in Wikepedia and it
says, “According to Jung, the shadow, in being instinctive and irrational, is
prone to project: turning a personal inferiority into a perceived moral
deficiency in someone else. Jung
writes that if these projections are unrecognized ‘The projection-making factor
(the Shadow archetype) then has a free hand and can realize it object – if it
has one- or bring about some other situation characteristic of its power.’ These projections insulate and cripple
individuals by forming an ever thicker fog of illusion between the ego and the
real world.” We take our own
inferiorities and see them as a moral deficiency in someone else. The question I am raising is can this
explain who law enforcement repeatedly targets in mission creep in their
COINTELPRO programs. Let’s look at
some of their targets in the COINTELPRO program of the sixties – people who wanted
peace rather than the continuation of the war in Vietnam, people like Martin
Luther King Jr. working for racial equality, the women’s movement working for
equality between the sexes.
Let’s
look at some of their targets today – peace and anti-capital punishment groups,
people who want climate change, people who want more morality in our foreign
policy, pacifists, those advocating Gandhian nonviolence, those advocating
animal rights. The targets of the
new COINTELPRO program often fall into the temperament type that Keirsey calls
the Idealists – the exact opposite – the shadow – of the Artisans – of law
enforcement.
Keirsey in his book on temperament tells us idealists
devote themselves to ideals like Truth, Integrity, Justice, Virtue – the
abstractions the Artisans don’t spend a great deal of time thinking about. Where, Artisans see the pursuit of
pleasure as the essence of life, idealists would more readily see it as the
study of ethics. Kiersey
writes, “During the Renaissance the Viennese physician Paracelsus chose as the
Idealists’ guiding spirit the Nymphs, those rarefied, often invisible beings
who watch over the different realms of nature, the forests, mountains, lakes,
rivers, and the sea, and who are thought to have the power of prophecy and
enlightenment.” While Artisans ask
only – does it work - the Idealists are known as the Dogmatics, dedicating
themselves to ideals, to principles, pondering the meaning of things.
Kiersey calls them the Abstract Cooperatives who are
also seen as religious types with a firm moral orientation. Where the Artisans focus on the
observable, the Idealist focus on what can be imagined, the possibilities. Keirsey tells us, “In the Idealist’s
view, people’s instruments and actions need to be acceptable to others, even if
they prove less effective than some other disapproved instruments or
actions.” Laws to the Idealists
“represent a common assent of their community, a unity of purpose or
likemindedness” and it is consensus that Idealists hold most dear. Fighting is painful to them “and they
will do whatever is necessary to avoid it or prevent it,” Keirsey tells
us.
Whereas, the Artisans are gifted tacticians, the
Idealists are gifted diplomats “deeply disturbed by division and
discrimination.” Idealists are the teachers, the counselors, the champions, the
healers. “The interests of
Idealists are diametrically opposite of those of Artisans,” Keirsey tells
us. “The Artisan perspective is
hedonistic.” The Idealist perspective is altruistic. They are “quick to join causes and to go on missions” as
they seek to make the world a better place. They seek after the meaning of existence and are interested
in personal development. Where the
Artisan is focused on now, the Idealist is focused on the future, “what might
be, rather than what is.” They “feel
a kind of natural sympathy for mankind.”
Keirsey tells us, “any evidence of cruelty in the world stabs Idealists
in the heart and they cry out against it.” They identify with others. Kiersey calls them the Ethical Idealist Personality
and shows us how they are the polar opposite of the Hedonic Artisans.
In Jungian psychology the shadow is defined as that
which is the opposite of our conscious ego. Hence Idealists and Artisans can be
seen as embodying each other’s shadow.
In a paper entitled Shadow and Projection by Gary Caganoff, he explains how unfamiliarity with our
shadow is dangerous, how it “unbalances our perception of reality,” physical,
mental, and emotional violence being the result. The shadow he tells us “is made up of all the repressed
aspects of our personality.” He
continues, “The ego and the shadow are always in conflict.” When we see what is not developed in
our own personality in others it can trigger something in us.
Our
shadow can make us feel jealous and inadequate. It’s when we are unconscious of
these feelings that the can cause problems. “If the shadow is allowed to grow larger than the ego, by
not being recognized and acknowledged, then, in extreme, it can wreak havoc on
the psyche, creating rage, and turning the persona into a monster through their
anti-social, uncivilized thoughts and actions.” Why would law enforcement in its COINTELPRO programs see
environmental activists, animal rights activists, those advocating nonviolence,
advocating peace as a threat?
Does the answer have something to do with with the Artisans rejecting
the opposite functions and attitudes of their own personalities?
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