The Utility of Cute March 22, 2009
Posted by Bryce in Gender issues, Human Relationships, Personality, Society.7 comments
Traditional gender roles discourage men’s open appreciation of cute things, and I think this is a shame and unnecessary. We all (women and men) have a tender, sensitive side, and a need to make candid, good-natured expressions of those tender feelings (this last part is essentially my definition of “cuteness”; if this seems too fuzzy, hopefully the remainder of my post will clarify what I mean*). Granted, personalities differ in their extent to which this is true – although there is probably no one who does not have some degree of appreciation for cuteness and its manifestations, I do think that such degrees vary widely between individuals**.
Never one to be easily pigeon-holed (or to conform to “unnecessary” expectations), I defy the classic male role a little bit in my appreciation for cute things. Ok, so some people probably think I take it too far (one friend, a reader of this blog actually – you know who you are 
-, mocked me for having a LOL cat application on my Facebook profile. And now it’s gone, although I still harbor LOL cat sympathies), and I take their opinions into consideration. Still, as far as I can tell there is no “true” and ideal cuteness preference – the conception and allowable degrees of “cute” differ across not only personalities but cultures as well (in Japan, for instance, my LOL cat appreciation would be standard fare, but I’d probably think their preference for cuteness is a bit too much***)
If you think that’s cute, check out this video at my sister’s blog. It’s probably the cutest movie ever made in the history of cute movies
As I see it, the cute is an extension of a good-natured love of life and people, which I consider an indispensable virtue and ingredient for a full and happy life, and something I would like to acquire more fully. As I have expressed several times before, I worry that living in DC is moving me further away from developing that enviable trait, good-natured love of life and people; the situation is complicated in part by the rigors of single life, concerns over future education and career, and the intrigues of dating (which in a way can be sort of like withholding love rather than increasing it – am I going about it the wrong way?).
My super-cute sister, Michelle, and her pet lizard Mo (short for “Mosiah”). This post is a great introduction to her (Michelle’s, not Mo’s) obvious cuteness and lovability. I find the “Five Lofty Aspirations” especially revealing (in a good way) and endearing.
Speaking again of gender roles, the onus of cuteness generally falls more on the side of women. Again, I think this is somewhat unnecessary and unfortunate. I can understand the reasoning behind expecting men to be strong, capable guardians and providers, and therefore expecting them to have their tender feelings (and thus cuteness**** or, more importantly, the good-natured love for life and people from which it springs) under wraps. I understand this, and believe me, I aspire to be such a strong, grounded man who can lead, protect, and provide for a family. Too often in practice, however, “keeping feelings under control” is actually “keeping feelings unspoken”. This is an important distinction, for the former typically views feelings as legitimate and inescapable facets of reality which can be controlled and even harnessed for good, whereas the former tends to view feelings as weaknesses and only relevant insofar as they can be minimized to better focus on the tasks at hand (a sort of out-of-sight-out-of-mind mentality which certainly has its merits, but can easily become a callous, even delusional head-in-the-sand approach if not kept in check).
On the flip side, and especially relevant for a place like DC, I suspect “cuteness” among women is more neglected here compared to other places. Lest I come across as an ungrateful, unduly negative naysayer, let me just openly admit that, in moving out to DC, I expected to see a tradeoff in cuteness for substance and strength among the ladies here, and in fact was seeking such a circumstance. For a number of reasons, I am attracted to girls (is that diminutive? I only mean “girl” in the sense that she is youthful like me. In substance, maturity, and character, I am looking for someone who is truly womanly) who are like valkyries (except the part about ushering dead men to the afterlife. I’m not quite ready for that yet). In other words, I am drawn to those who are strong in matters of principle and intellect, but who prefer and are well-suited to the role of compassionate nurturer and graceful protector and promoter of all things good and true. I am looking for someone who radiates not only strength of character and intellect but also tenderness, love, and a zest for life and the people in it – someone strong and able, yet approachable and warm, like my mom.
Three of my favorite people. I’m sorry I didn’t have a more flattering picture, Mom, but this is all I could find, and you do like to shop
Back to the original topic, I think cuteness is one of a number of manifestations of tenderness, love, and a zest for life and the people in it. Thus, it is an attractive quality for the deeper qualities it signifies. Although I appreciate and even to a degree admire ladies who are outwardly tough and capable, in the final analysis, I agree with Margaret Nadauld’s following remarks:
“Women of God can never be like women of the world. The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined.”
(Margaret D. Nadauld, “The Joy of Womanhood,” Ensign, Nov 2000, 14–16)
Hypothetically, if I am correct about the roots from which cuteness springs, then it would be manifested among ladies who seek to follow the above counsel. Among LDS ladies, this is very much the case! Nevertheless, in a dreary, power-conscious place like DC, I would appreciate even more cuteness, but that is just me – I recognize that this is very largely a matter of preference, stemming from differences in personality, upbringing, and aspiration. But as for myself, I really appreciate cute and want more of it!
My final remark: I admittedly have plenty of room for improvement in developing whatever the male equivalent of cuteness is. Also, for all my talk of the “perfect woman”, I am well-aware that such an ideal woman, if ever encountered in this life, would certainly have little interest in this guy
*my dad, ever the voice of reason, suggested that words like “childlike” and “charming” offer a much simpler definition of “cute”, but for the purposes of this post, I’m going to stick with my more convoluted definition. Lucky you!
**and this wouldn’t be a true Bryce personality observation without some comment on DC culture! Cuteness is a neglected virtue here. People here care a lot about self-consciously defending power and reputation, maintaining appearances, and keeping weaknesses locked up tightly (as if their existence can truly be hidden. Even in the conscious act of hiding them, we cannot help but unconsciously betray the fact that we have them). Good-naturedness, already too rare a trait, is almost entirely absent. It’s sad, isn’t it? And yet, the people for whom such a description is most fitting seem to be quite ignorant of their deficiency – which is great for them, not so great for the rest of us who must live and work with them :-/
***although their penchant for cute serves an important function for the Japanese psyche, I think. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, or however the phrase goes – and the Japanese are hardly known for their lack of hard-work (c’mon, 6-day work weeks?! Doesn’t that violate some human right somewhere?). Without things like these
I imagine the Japanese would be faring quite poorly emotionally and economically. Look at the happy lady on the left – Hello Kitty is obviously doing something right! Yep, I just suggested that the world’s largest Hello Kitty statue is contributing to improving the general well-being of Japan. And I stand by that.
****you know, now that I think about it, “cuteness” doesn’t at all sound like it should ever be a masculine trait. It just sounds wrong. I do think there is an appropriate masculine analog to the feminine notion of “cuteness”, but I’m not sure what it should be called. Any ideas?
Be Nice to Introverts January 29, 2009
Posted by Bryce in Human Relationships, Personality.4 comments
My sister at Mishtown recently posted a link to an article in the Atalntic, Caring for Your Introvert. It will probably remind you of people you know – or it might even end up describing yourself!
I liked the article and thought is was generally correct about a number of things. However, I think there is much more to personality than just introversion and extroversion (in fact, this is a dead horse I feel I have beaten again and again on this blog and in conversation, so I will try to make my comments here brief). Take myself for instance. Introverts probably comprise the majority of my closest friends, as well as probably three quarters of my immediate family*, and, while I have a surprising capacity for being friendly and upbeat, overall I am also an introvert (about 60%, I’d say). But it’s tricky – I really like people, and in the right circumstances I find interaction with them to be quite energizing, fulfilling, and fun. I also have a habit – which I’m sure many find perplexing if not annoying – of thinking out loud. Nevertheless, I think at my core I am an introvert. However, I do take some issue with the author’s assertion that introversion is an immutable orientation. Or rather, what I really take issue with is the temptation to conclude that, because introversion is innate, people are thus incapable of adapting and even changing**. And of course, this is very similar to the objection I most hear about these personality theories – that they reduce people into overly-simplistic caricatures incapable of adaptation and growth. I think this criticism is somewhat deserved, but I also think these theories (certain of them, that is) can at least offer some sort of threshold for understanding and appreciating the differences among us in the present.
*Aside from Mom and Tiff, probably everyone, including spouses, huh?
**not that I am the undisputed life of the party, but you’d better believe I wasn’t always as outgoing and confident in social situations as I am now. My mission in particular did wonders for helping me become more outgoing, as did simply gaining confidence about myself and my abilities during my college years.
Tradeoffs December 10, 2008
Posted by Bryce in Christianity, Personality, Politics, Society.2 comments
This world is full of tradeoffs – diametric values, ideals, or positions whose increase seems to inevitably come at the expense of its opposite. What follows are a few of my favorites (which is to say, they are interesting and fairly relevant); what are some of yours?
Economics
Equity vs. Efficiency: Putting resources (human or material) to use in a way that optimizes productive output (high efficiency) generally leads to the unequal distribution of said output (low equity). Conversely, allocating resources in a more egalitarian manner, e.g. redistributing income across classes, or assigning people to a task indiscriminate of skill level (high equity) tends to lead to decreased productivity, e.g. the incentive of the most productive economic actors is hampered by their lessened enjoyment of the fruits of their labors, or lower total skill level applied towards a task (low efficiency), respectively.
Political Science
Freedom vs. Order: This one is pretty self-evident. The fewer restrictions placed on behavior, the more chaotic and disorderly things tends to be. Just look at any household with a disparate ratio of children to parenting presence.
Freedom vs. Equality: This is one I had never considered until I read it in one of my brother’s old political science textbooks recently. The idea behind this is that a government/society which seeks to promote equality generally does so at the expense of individual freedom (e.g. affirmative action in the work place curbs the freedom of the employer to make its own hiring decisions). I’m still thinking this tradeoff through – it seems to be based on the premise that freedom invariably leads to inequal treatment of others, but this may or may not actually be true, depending on your definition of “equal”. The tendency in today’s debates is to frame “equality” as absolute sameness, which I think is absurd and impossible, not to mention not the only possible definition of “equality”.
Personality Psychology (it’s no secret that this topic is one of my favorites, but I offer this tradeoff by way of subjective observation, not judgment)
Depthiness vs. Upbeatfulness: Emotional and/or intellectual depth and sophistication tends to preclude being lighthearted and fun (when you’re focused on the weightier matters of the cosmos, jocularity can seem distant and disingenuous). On the flip side, what’s the use of sitting around ruminating in your ivory tower when there’s so much life to enjoy!
Christianity
Justice vs. Mercy: The quintessential Christian dilemma, this dichotmoy is, I believe, reflected throughout various facets of life, including the areas above. But it can be troublingly problematic. If we believe in a God who adheres strictly to divine standards and can neither overlook any bad behavior nor leave unrewarded the acts of the true and faithful (justice), can we believe that that same God can also forgive us when we inevitably fail to live those high standards, if not fall far, far short (mercy)? Stephen E. Robinson, author of “Believing Christ” said it best: the answer is a resounding “YES”! Jesus Christ, as the mediator of all mankind, provides a way for the demands of justice to be met while offering mercy to those who truly want Him to be their savior. Strangely and sadly enough, there are some who would gladly take mercy, but only if it came with no strings attached; such people, I think, fail to grasp the significance of either justice or mercy. But the most important thing here is that Jesus Christ makes both justice and mercy fully efficacious and coexistent without requiring any sort of compromise which would render either divine standard arbitrary and fatally unreliable. What an inestimable blessing!
(as an added temporal benefit, this divine reconciliation of opposing ideals gives me hope that the other above mentioned tradeoffs may also somehow be settled satisfactorily.)
Any thoughts or tradeoffs of your own to share? Please do!
Life as a Perfectionist March 12, 2008
Posted by Bryce in Personality.add a comment
I think I’m going to start a new ongoing topic on my blog, and it will be: Life as a Perfectionist. You see, I happen to be one of those. I believe that there are certain types of personality, each with their own characteristic shortcomings, and mine happens to include that constant pressure to transcend the mediocre, to be incredible at all times, to do things just right every time. No task is so mundane that it can’t haunt the perfectionist with the demand to be performed flawlessly. Yes, life can be quite complicated as a perfectionist. Worries seem to find abundant fertile ground in the perfectionist’s mind, whereas other personalities can’t be bothered to reserve much room for the gnawing doubt and desire from which such worries sprout.
Perfectionistic thought processes (which I consider to actually be much less deliberate than such a phrase would suggest), regardless of what they are about, tend to follow the same general pattern, and also threaten to end in similarly disappointing ways, not that any outcomes are predestined. This pattern is as follows:
-I need to do ________
-Not only do I need to do ________, but I need to do it exceptionally well
[After some thought and/or effort, the reality of things dawns on the perfectionist]
-It’s either impossible or impractical for me to do ________ exceptionally well, so I’m just going to not do it, and sulk instead
[or, if circumstances allow]
-I think I can actually make ________ into a masterpiece, and darn it, I will!
I’m sure this description sounds familiar to many of you reading this, if not for everyone in at least one instance of their lives. Anyway, this ends the first installment of the fascinating world of Life as a Perfectionist!
P.S. I’m not sure why those funny gray lines are showing up. I just wanted to indent!
I’m anti-made-up-words! November 30, 2007
Posted by Bryce in Christianity, Personality.6 comments
It annoys me when people make up words unnecessarily and then think they’re speaking intelligently. For instance, although I’ve heard both “impactful” and “orientate” used many times in academic settings, and despite the fact that dictionary.com actually recognizes these “words”, they are actually just made up, but more importantly, they sound dumb and are unnecessary! According to Paul Brian’s “Common Errors in English”, what people actually mean by “impactful” is already handled very nicely (which is to say, conveys the meaning without sounding stupid) by the words “effective” and “influential”. In my Organizational Psychology class, our grad student teacher repeatedly used the word “orientate” or even “orientated” (which I think is flagrantly erroneous), and I cringed every time but didn’t have the heart or the guts to challenge him on it. In actuality, “orient” works just fine, for, according to englishplus.com, “orientate” is at best “a back-formation used humorously to make the speaker sound pompous. The correct word is the verb orient.” As a perfectionistic blue personality, I take note of such seemingly minor things as made up words, plus paying attention to words is good practice for going into law
Also, in regards to the prefix “anti”, I learned something interesting in a New Testament class the other day: in the original Greek, “anti” denotes not outright opposition as it does in modern English but rather a substitution. Thus, when the scriptures (those originally written from this Greek perspective, anyway) speak of “anti-Christs”, they’re not strictly talking about some sort of person who is diametrically opposed to Christ’s divine mission as is usually portrayed in movies and sensational History Channel programs, but really are referring to any idea, person, or object which offers itself as a substitute for the grace, mercy, and redemption offered through the Atonement of Jesus Christ on conditions of our repentance. The fact that this Greek notion of anti-Christ is not necessarily an embodied being does not make it any less spiritually dangerous, and in fact makes it more prevalent!
This is a great example of why interpretation of scripture matters, and I find it somewhat problematic when people dismiss the issue of translation, instead insisting that scripture as it exists in the King James Bible is perfectly translated, thus leaving us with a complete and fully elucidated canon of scripture. That’s the feeling I got with the guy on Wednesday’s CNN-YouTube Republican Debate who kept shoving his Bible into the screen and echoing the mantra “Do you believe every word in this book?”; I admired his enthusiasm for the KJV Bible, but thought he was pushing for a too-literal interpretation of the Bible as we now have it. However, I thought each candidate who addressed the question answered well, and I saw much merit to each answer. Like Romney, I absolutely believe that the Bible is the word of God “as far as it is translated correctly” (Articles of Faith 1:8) – the caveat about translation is not to withhold complete acceptance of God’s revealed word, but to acknowledge that the Bible we now have came to us through the generally well-meaning but nevertheless fallible efforts of scholars and committees. Without equivocation, I can say that when it is “translated correctly”, the Bible is an incredibly rich source of doctrine and inspiration, and that absolutely includes the Old Testament, which I think many Christians, including myself and my fellow Mormons, are inclined to overlook because it is so hard to understand without a firm background in the relevant cultural, religious, and historical contexts which allow for accurate translation.
Anyway, I think this post has gotten long enough
Some thoughts on rationality and personality…and -ality June 26, 2007
Posted by Bryce in Personality.2 comments
Although I have an active mind and frequently have interesting ideas, I don’t often commit them to writing because I’m a fairly moody and capricious guy. This confession nicely introduces this post’s topic, which is: the relationship between personality and rational/emotional orientations. You see, for all my deep thoughts (I think they’re deep, at least, but I have a very high opinion of myself), I have a more emotional orientation, such that cold, logical arguments in writing, particularly those directed at the unfeeling expanse of cyberspace, do not appeal to me as much as direct emotional communication with real people. My personality is such that I am inclined towards emotional and experiential knowledge and communication, and find writing and logic unnatural and potentially awkward. This is not to say that I think the logical orientation is less valid than mine, although most of the logically-inclined don’t seem to share the same goodwill for the emotional orientation 
I’d love to be proven wrong though
Also, what’s up with that “-ality”, eh? I interpret it as “characteristics/state of”, but I’m not sure. I ought to look up common suffix definitions some time. After all, English does follow some rules, doesn’t it?
An Important Shift in my Social Paradigm March 2, 2007
Posted by Bryce in Personality, Ramblings.1 comment so far
It really hit me today: unless I change the way I think about dating, I’m going to be a sad little single guy my whole life, or at least for years to come. First a little background. Recently, I’ve been reading “The Color Code” by Taylor Hartman, which outlines the very interesting personality color theory which, despite not having any psychometric research to back it up, is nevertheless incredibly accurate and compelling. So, I’ve been reading what Dr. Hartman has to say about my main personality color, blue, and I’ve been amazed at how well his description fits me. To sum it up, blue personalities are motivated by intimacy, and they care so much about sincerity and being good rather than just seeming good that they tend to have perfectionistic expectancies for themselves and others. Wow, that is me! So anyway, I’ve been really unsatisfied with my social life for quite some time because I can’t seem to meet people who reach the pinnacle of awesomely cool perfection that I now recognize as being an impossibly high expectation. As it turns out, if you don’t want to have friends, you can either not work to become sufficiently cool, or you can be like me and consider yourself too cool to have any friends. Neither one of those scenarios is good, but fortunately neither one is an inescapable death sentence either. Realistically, I can’t develop close friendships with everyone, because quite naturally there are people with whom I can develop friendships more readily than others, but for those people who I’ve traditionally viewed as “Yeah, he/she’s cool, but he/she’s not quite perfect enough”, I think I ought to jump at the opportunity to get to know him or her better. I used to be the guy with the childlike twinkle in his eye and a zest for life, but I feel like I’ve become a jaded anti-socialite; I’d really like to turn that around!
