Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Abstract vs concrete

David Keirsey, in 'Please Understand Me II' talks about use of language as being one of the main dividers between two groups of temperament: a preference for concrete or abstract speech. In Myers-Briggs/MBTI terms, this is similar to the 'Sensing' and 'iNtuiting' preferences (S or N) respectively.

While I've thought of myself as fairly concrete for years, I've realised in discussion with others that I'm actually more of an abstract thinker. Of course we all live in the concrete world, so we can't avoid a certain amount of concrete language. But given my own time and space, I think about theories, philosophies, theology. I love sitting around chatting about such things, whereas the price of apples interests me only for about ten seconds.

My 'Life in Cyprus' blog is informational, for those interested in us as a family or in moving to Cyprus. As such it's primarily concrete as I describe things we do and the way life works. My 'Random recipes' blog is just that: recipes we use in our family. For information, for future reference, and to add a tiny fraction to the wealth of recipes online already. My 'Recent reading' blog is a rather self-indulgent place for brief personal reviews of all the books I've read, for my own satisfaction and future browsing. And as recommendations to others, should anyone read them. My 'Quizzes and questionnaires' blog is even more self-indulgent; a place to quote all the results of those quizzes that pass around in emails and on other blogs.

And this one? Who knows. But I hope it will catch the extra stuff I want to write about but which - so far - had no outlet.

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