Who are you: Human-Machine, Human-Symbol, Human-Nature or Human-Human?

We’ve completed this psychological test in the last year of the middle school. Human-Machines are humans who love technology, working with it and creating it, that is, engineers, technicians, but also drivers, pilots, and workers. Human-Symbols love to work with symbols: writers, reporters, painters, photographers, musicians, actors, but also typists or call-center operators. Human-Natures are obviously farmers, fishers, cooks and everybody else who work with the biosphere. Finally, Human-Humans prefer to work with people: politicians, doctors, managers, and also policemen and soldiers.

As you can see, many jobs require a combination of those basic types: surgeons and cooks need also technology, taxi drivers work with people, and engineers must document their designs. Because of it, the test was designed in the way that you could score on all four dimensions, and then compare them.

I’ve scored 51% on Machine, 49% on Symbol and 0% on Nature and Human. So it isn’t a coincidence I’m a software developer writing a blog and learning my third foreign language. Interestingly enough, not everybody in the class had two distinct peaks. Some of them would have only one distinct area, others had three peaks or an even distribution. I would call them people with a weak contrast: the one-peakers because there was no other area their peak could be compared with, and the universalists because of absence of really high peaks.

And while weak contrasters can also be amazing folks to know, to work with and to befriend, I’m primarily attracted to high contrast people, because I think it is easier for them to achieve outstanding results. Life is too short and too merciless, you know. With just one leg you’re instable and will fail without a very supporting environment on the workplace. And with more than two legs you can be too slow and unfocused.

Two legs allow to move fast. With two hands you can hold and hit. Two ears are required to hear in stereo, two eyes – to see in 3D. Something new can be created only by combining of two.

Tests like MBTI have always puzzled me. You’re supposed to be either something or something else. Either rational or intuitive, either be a thinker or someone with feelings.

But I think, truly great people can both think and feel well. Be socialable and outgoing but still have a rich inner world. Look very humble and quiet from outside and have infinite dimensions full of boiling energy inside. 

I’ve met a number of such people in my life, and it was priceless, because they have always enriched myself in one way or another and caused a major change in my personality. Being around them feels different – somethimes it is like breathing pure oxygen after a big city smog, or feeling a warm sunshine after a long winter; and sometimes it is like riding roller coaster or hiking a dangerous trail. But every time, if you look closely, you can see a thin cloud of magic around them and everything they do.

Contrast persons are not automatically famous or rich. But many famous persons are high contrast. They are all very different and have different scales, so that you cannot compare Bill Gates, Leonardo da Vinci, Gandhi and Jeanne D’Arc. It is their contrast that unites them. 

And if you’re a christ, Jesus has an ultimate contrast. Infinite power – and denial to use it to save own life. Preaching perfectly rational rules of social organization – and showing that love is still more important that this. Living endlessly – and dying with only 33. Being a god and a man…

So search contrast people around you. Learn from them. And increase your own contrast. You won’t become a star only by doing that, but you’ll be glad you did.