“Type Three” by Anberlin, Thursday, April 28, 2022

It's time for our mandatory dose of Anberlin. I decided on the song late last night, and I think "Type Three" fits in nicely after Shura. Anberlin experimented a lot on their latter albums, and 2012's Vital is probably their most experimental album, and "Type Three," is one of the vibiest songs on the record. In a Spotify audio commentary about the album, guitarist Joesph Milligan talked about listening to a lot of The National when recording the album, and vocalist Stephen Christian said that lyrically the song was born out of "listing a bunch of one-liners" on which he based the song.

DANCING THROUGH THE FIBERS OF TIME. Last year, when the band performed Vital in their Heavy Lies the Crown lockdown livestream, Stephen Christian talked about the song's title as a reference to his Enneagram Type. The Enneagram of Personality is an increasingly popular, but yet-to-be-proven, lens for understanding personality types. The history of the Enneagram is unclear, having ties to Christian mysticism and the teachings of a psycho-spiritual leader (Óscar Ichazo) and a psychiatrist (Claudio Naranjo) back in the 1950s and '60s. The popularity of the Enneagram seems to be tied with Christian and post-Christian movements, as teachers like Richard Rohr have promoted its use. And while there have been conferences and talks about it in academia--Stanford University c0-sponsored the First International Enneagram Conference in 1994--much of academia considers it unproven and "pseudoscientific." Today, I hear talk about the Enneagram being a "spiritual tool" for better understanding God and humanity, but that seems like a real stretch. Given the Enneagram's mystical past, I was curious to see what Seventh-day Adventists were saying about it. While the Adventist Internet is mostly quiet about the Enneagram, I found a few churches embraced it and another webpage (not Adventist?) condemning the teaching as pagan for its use of "pyramidology." Sometimes it's fun to have a good laugh at these ridiculous theories.

I DON'T WANNA WAIT FOR YOU ANYMORE. So, unable to sleep from a late afternoon coffee last night, I thought that I should finally figure out what my Enneagram type is, since so many of my potential readers and community takes so much stock in it. I remember when I first did the Myers-Briggs (MBTI) personality test in college, I felt that I understood myself much better. I've found that when I take my MBTI stays pretty consistent at an INFJ. If I'm a little more sensitive in the season of life that I take the test, I may score as an INFP, and on occasion I've scored as an INTP. Never an extrovert, and never in the sensing category. Since I've been in Korea the last few years, students have become obsessed with their MBTI. In some ways, I think it's a useful tool to see how departments function. I certainly have a hard time getting along with S's on a daily basis. So does the Enneagram add anything to this or is it just astrology? And astrology is a completely unscientific way to understand personality. I actually read my horoscope from time to time, just because it's on Yahoo!'s homepage. (Yes, I read Yahoo as a sort of guilty pleasure). I still feel something deep in my soul that I shouldn't be reading it, given how Adventists warn about divination and I heard all about that growing up. But I scoff whenever I read the Gemini section. It's usually pretty good advice like "take it easy today" or "you should really build a connection with an acquaintance because something good may come of it." Yeah, I guess I should. But there are two reasons why I scoff. First, I'm usually getting the advice a day late (Eastern Standard Time) when I'm 13-14 hours ahead of my home time zone. Second, my sister, who is a polar opposite to me is also a Gemini. So what should I do with the knowledge that I'm an Enneagram Type 9? I wonder if it's more based on my circumstance now, because I'm in a situation now because of work where I'm just floating. I don't think I've always been this way, but I find that I've been conditioned to be this way as a foreigner at a school that would rather me not express myself and makes it exhausting when I do. I wonder if I were truly valued for my contribution if I would be a Type 9? When I change jobs, I might take the Enneagram again.

Vital version: