It’s the source of all the arguing we ever do, especially now, because all thinking adults fall into one camp or another. And each individual further ensconces himself into his chosen role every time he does more thinking.
Defined originally here.
What follows are supplements to that.
1. Architects are not concerned about whether someone else possesses more wealth than they do. Their concern over whether someone else possesses more skill, begins and ends on the question of whether or not that other person can help them in some way, and whether there may be low-hanging fruit for them in the self-improvement department.
Medicators don’t want anybody else to have something they don’t have, be it skill or money. Jealousy is a common failing for the Medicator. They easily fall prey to “Tall Poppy” syndrome.
2. Architects see the entire universe as an assembly of parts, each of which in turn can be further dissembled into smaller parts. Eventually you get down to atomic parts that cannot be divided any further. As these parts interact with each other, you have an explanation for every single other thing that happens. Events have a cause-and-effect relationship with one another. Objects have a my-state-affects-your-state relationship with one another. Objects and events are not synonymous, it’s more like: Object, plus object, plus time, equals event.
Medicators see the entire universe as a situation. Objects within the situation are not separable from other objects, unless you’re casting an object as a catalyst for something that is good or bad. And when that happens, “object” and “event” are functionally synonymous. Neither is terribly complex, they’re just beneficial, damaging, or some other synonyms of those. George W. Bush makes bad things happen, Barack Obama causes “hope.”
3. Because Architects see all things as an assembly of other things, when a complex device is not working properly they want to break it down, find out which component is faulty, and fix or replace it. Then they want to put it all back together again and watch it begin a second functional life.
Medicators evaluate complex mechanisms in bulk. If the entire assembly does not work as it should, they infer that each piece of it must be contaminated by whatever flaw is inside, and their tendency is to counsel toward replacing all of it. If this does not happen, they get frustrated.
4. Observing a system set up by someone else, an Architect is rather unconcerned about how it works inside unless it shows signs of holding a solution to some vexing problem the Architect has been trying to solve. If he perceives that much to be the case, he’ll want to take it apart and study it.
A Medicator is distressed by signs that the system works internally in a way different from the way he would have designed it; interestingly, if the system achieves objectives outside the Medicator’s design potential, he is unconcerned with this. He wants things to be built the way he would have built them, even if this means they could do fewer things.
5. Consensus holds very little meaning for the Architect, who sees it as simply a component within the human social condition, which in turn is just another component within the universe. He does not see group agreement as any kind of a lodestar. To him, group decisions may be right or they may be wrong. If they’re wrong, he wants to use what’s right and he doesn’t care who wanted to do it the other way.
Medicators assign far greater meaning to group consensus. They are distressed by proposals that would challenge it or deviate from it. Mistakes made by Medicators are often traced to excessive weight being attached to the consensus.
6. Architects are deficient in perceiving the group consensus as it is being formed. These people are often the last in the room to figure out where it is headed as it is evolves. They are generally sluggish in figuring out what is going on around them. Architects are far more likely to miss a social engagement because they have been working on a project.
Medicators, on the other hand, are especially adept at perceiving the group consensus. This is often, but by no means always, because they are taking on a role in driving it as it evolves. They “grok,” which means to observe something and then bond with it, until the distinction is lost between whether the observer is manipulating the observed or vice-versa. When you watch a Medicator interact with his environment, the governing principle is Heisenberg.
7. Architects tend to have tin ears. They are often caught in situations in which what they say might be welcome on some other occasion with a different emotional overtone, but is not appealing in the moment because their timing is off. Wherever an Architect has ultimately distinguished himself as being somewhat competent in this area, it is the culmination of many years of puzzle-solving, with the peers around him being the puzzle; it isn’t the genuine emotional empathy it appears to be.
Medicators are more in tune with the emotional tenor of the setting. If they err in the timing of some remark or another, they demonstrate gifts as they self-correct from this, diminishing their social losses and enhancing their social gains.
8. Architects, being more in tune with the cause-and-effect nature of the phenomena around them, are more at ease with assuming responsibility for the correctness of a certain course of action. They view any research into the political ramifications of such decisions as an unwelcome hassle.
Medicators place much greater weight on the decisions of others. They regard decisions in a much better light if someone has already done the same thing. They are not good at blazing new trails and are highly uncomfortable trying.
9. Architects tend to see property and wealth as compensation for time, services or goods. Consequently, they see an unusually high personal accumulation of wealth as a sign of productivity, efficiency, or possibly theft.
Medicators do not see material property as a metric. Their tendency is to envision wealth as a desirable commodity that is distributed randomly. They see a distribution that should have taken place, and another distribution that really did take place — these two are always different.
10. An Architect decides what to do, from one minute to the next, as the culmination of some logical thought process involving tasks yet incomplete, the block of uninterrupted time anticipated to be available, and a schedule of priorities. Unexpected interruptions upset them. If the non-discretionary expense of time (job or chore) has already been completed, the Architect may indulge in a recreation. The recreation always involves building something.
Medicators decide what to do according to a more emotional process. There is “work” and there is “play”; play is preferred, but overruled if the work is urgent or has been neglected for too long. If nothing is overdue, the Medicator is far more likely to play. Play does not involve building anything.
11. An Architect is unlikely to suffer from an addiction because he doesn’t possess the requisite sensitivity to his own emotional profile to feel the temporary benefits of abusing something.
Medicators are highly likely to form addictions, usually of all likes and kinds: Substance, alcohol, co-dependent relationships, sex, an engaging video game, etc. That’s what they do. They medicate.
12. An Architect’s free time will all be channeled into one project, which will live onward until it achieves the point of evolution he had in mind for it at the beginning, or until he tires of it. If he does not have the resources to attend to this, he will spend the free time on something that might expand his understanding of the task at hand.
A Medicator’s free time will be channeled into something entertaining or emotionally uplifting. It is a hallmark of the Medicator to feel withdrawal symptoms if some singular favorite activity — which remains a consistent attachment, across decades — is not partaken within some amount of time. This activity is an activity of ritual, sometimes involving score-keeping. It is non-edifying. This is the “medicating.”
13. Architects rarely “Tweet.” Many of them have yet to figure out Twitter.
Medicators pretty much live there.
14. An Architect expects an arbitration or judgment to be decided by the applicable laws and the circumstances of the case.
A Medicator is more likely to root for the underdog. He will defend, and even champion, a case with an illogical outcome so long as the outcome is favorable to the party for which he feels the greater empathy.
15. To an Architect, building something that does not work is the same as starting to build something and giving up; which is the same as never even bothering to start. Intentions don’t mean very much to an Architect.
Medicators care about intentions over outcome. Perception is as important as reality, and in some cases more important than reality. They are often caught “remembering” some grand effort to have been a raging success when history recalls it to have been a dismal failure.
16. Architects believe there is some connection between what happens to a person, and what the person did or didn’t do to make it happen or keep it from happening. If the connection is not immediately evident, they believe with some diligent research it will soon become obvious. Architects see people as products of individual actions.
Medicators do not recognize such a connection between deeds and events — they even remain skeptical when hard evidence is presented to this effect. They see events as more-or-less random and disconnected from a person’s actions, and people as fortunate-or-unfortunate beings of randomness that coincide with these events.
17. Because Architects are more inextricably connected to reality, they do not see too many options available when a lecture is given to a student and the student cannot pay attention. You can lower your assessment of the child’s maturity, discipline, and grasp of the subject matter; you can kick his ass. You can wait for him to get older and try it later.
Medicators medicate. Even your relationship to your own brain is a collision of randomness, which if an unfortunate one, can and should be remedied. Prescribe some goop for the child and try again.
18. Evaluating a job candidate, an Architect would like to present a difficult problem and observe him trying to solve it. He considers everything else a waste of time.
The Medicator would like to know that a third party has assessed the candidate to be capable of completing some class of tasks. He does not care who this third party is, exactly, nor is he too concerned about whether the tasks at which the candidate is deemed competent, coincide much with the work that has to be done. Certifications, degrees, and the like, will absolutely dazzle him. He is not evaluating ability to perform, he is evaluating ability to bond on an emotional level with virtual strangers.
19. An Architect who votes for a candidate wants someone with values like his, and a good sense of judgment. Ideally, he would like a clone of himself, who has time to serve in the stated position that he does not have.
A Medicator does not want someone like himself in the position; he wants someone much, much better.
20. An Architect doesn’t particularly care how many other Architects there are.
A Medicator wants everyone else to be a Medicator. Convert or die.
So at the Speaker’s command, New York Democrat Louise Slaughter, who chairs the House Rules Committee, may insert what’s known as a “self-executing rule,” also known as a “hereby rule.” Under this amazing procedural ruse, the House would then vote only once on the reconciliation corrections, but not on the underlying Senate bill. If those reconciliation corrections pass, the self-executing rule would say that the Senate bill is presumptively approved by the House—even without a formal up-or-down vote on the actual words of the Senate bill.
