Being a Five*, I am fascinated by explanatory principles. Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of Politics provides an excellent set of examples:
One. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
Two. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing*.
Three. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
*This reminds me of First Things founding editor, Richard Neuhaus' Law:
Where orthodoxy is not explicity prescribed, it will eventually be proscribed.
HT to Steve Sailer, who references this article on "Liberal Privilege" in academia. Heh.
'via Blog this'
*As the site points out...
The connection between genius and madness has long been debated. These two states are really poles apart, the opposite ends of the personality spectrum. The genius is someone who fuses knowledge with insight into the nature of reality, someone who has the ability to see things with utter clarity and with awe-inspiring comprehension. What separates the genius from the madman is that the genius, in addition to extraordinary insights, has the ability to see them correctly, within their context. The genius perceives patterns which are actually present, whereas the madman imposes patterns, projecting erroneous perceptions onto every circumstance. The genius may sometimes seem to be out of touch with reality, but only because he or she operates at a more profound level. The madman, however, is truly out of touch with reality, having nothing but delusions to substitute for it.
The Five is the personality type which most exemplifies these extremes. In the Five, we see the genius and the madman, the innovator and intellectual, the mildly eccentric crackpot and the deeply disturbed delusional schizoid. To understand how these widely diverse states are part of the same personality type is to understand the Five.
Which is Ex Cathedra? Fair and Balanced. You decide.
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