DECLATIMITY - SOCIAL CONVERGENCE (coming together)

Lack of squeamishness, willingness to unite, to involve others in one’s activities and to join in oneself. The “forces of attraction” that form the social majority. Declatimity as an aspect consists of the methods of educating individuals that society employs to maintain its unity.

In aristocratic quadras, declatimity is static. This literally means that under collectivism, the willingness to unite is the fundamental and unchanging basis, the framework of society (the “foundations” enshrined in state laws and religious dogmas).

In democratic quadras, declatimity is dynamic - this means that in the case of individualism, any alliances between people are situational, fluid, and explained by the desire to satisfy one’s need for resources through exchange with other individuals (the free market).

In judicious quadras, declatimity is combined with ethics. This means that in the case of cooperation, convergence occurs on the basis of people’s subjective desires.

Judicious ethics develops a unified system of standards of mutual assistance; individuals who do not conform to it (those who are too aggressive and lack empathy, the “uneducable”) are pushed out of society and become outcasts. Those who remain then have a narrower range of parameters of aggressiveness, etc., and can coexist relatively effectively.

Thus, a standard of behavior that is acceptable from the standpoint of emotions and moral and ethical norms is formed in society.

In decisive quadras, where declatimity is combined with logic, convergence proceeds on the basis of objective factors - the existence of a common field of competition for resources. Within this field, individuals and groups clash with one another; the losers suffer harm, are deprived of access to resources, and gradually die out.

That is, a decisive society also “educates” individuals - but in a different way. This is the “cruel school of life,” where the weak, the foolish, the naive, the overly cowardly or, conversely, the reckless do not survive or, at the very least, languish at the “bottom.”

Thus, a certain level of strength, intelligence, courage, caution, cunning, etc., necessary for survival is maintained in individuals, and a unified standard of objective abilities is formed.

In merry quadras, declatimity is combined with sensing, and in serious quadras, with intuition. Why is this so, rather than the other way around?

At the global (“merry”) level of the world, there is an enormous diversity of living conditions. An individual living in the wider world is, to one degree or another, a cosmopolitan; they do not know which particular ecological niche (occupational niche, when speaking of humans) life will lead them into.

Under such conditions, it is useless to possess in advance any special abilities that increase effectiveness in a narrow sphere of activity. On the contrary, it is useful to be a generalist - having moderate stamina, moderate strength, moderate speed, and moderate agility and flexibility.

Just as cosmopolitan animals rarely stand out for the distinctiveness of their forms, so in human society declatimous sensing is responsible for developing universal standards of bodily beauty and health and creating universal tools capable of helping one survive in any situation that arises.

At the local level, everything is different. Here, in terms of sensing, the advantage belongs to individuals who have trained their physical abilities and created tools that increase their suitability for work of a particular kind (narrow specialists). The unity of small, endemic populations is ensured by something else. Since all their members exist within a narrow range of conditions, their images of the world are therefore also similar; that is, the information in their brains about what is possible and probable is similar. And since the management of information is an intuitive function (imagination), intuitives are responsible for declatimity (convergence) at the local level.

Thus, the unique feature of serious, declatimous intuition is the ability to perceive and take into account other people’s desires and interests, and thereby find points of contact. In addition, serious intuition is also responsible for cooperation with outside groups. LIE and IEE are the best negotiators; by virtue of extraversion, declatimity, and emotivism, they are the friendliest types and are not inclined to negative excesses.

QUESTIMITY - SOCIAL DIVERGENCE (moving apart)

Squeamishness, intolerance of interference by outside parties in one’s affairs, one’s ideas, one’s everyday life, and one’s physical body. A striving for independence from the majority, a desire to withdraw from others, to separate oneself by attaining a special, inviolable status, joining the elite (upward divergence, more characteristic of aristocrats), or gaining autonomy (lateral divergence, more characteristic of democrats).

The stronger the questimity, the stronger the unwillingness to intersect or come into contact with others in any way, to submit, to adapt, or to share spheres of activity, and the more original, strange, and distant from the core of society are the occupations that the individual masters.

Thus, questimity as an aspect consists of ways of escaping the pressure of stabilizing selection. These are the “forces of repulsion” that increase the diversity of people’s occupations in society, which ultimately increases its resilience in crisis situations.

Questimity is static in democratic quadras. This literally means that the unchanging basis of individualism is the divergence of people and the maintenance of a stable psychological (and, in part, physical) distance between them. Thus, unlike in aristocratic quadras, in democratic quadras society does not form a single “body” held together by “bonds,” but consists of many separate individuals who make decisions independently.

However, questimity also exists in aristocratic quadras - but in a different, dynamic form. This means that under collectivism, divergence between people occurs not through a desire to distance themselves spatially, but because of a desire to obtain many times more of the resources held collectively. Since any resource is valued in terms of the amount of time expended on its production, this is essentially equivalent to a desire to live at a different pace of time from others, to appropriate the time that others have contributed to the communal treasury.

In judicious quadras, questimity is combined with logic. This means that divergence according to objective criteria among those who cooperate is an important component of cooperation.

If there is no such divergence, there are no objectively valuable products that the parties can exchange for their mutual benefit. When producing the same product as someone else, one inevitably begins to regard the other party as a potential competitor. And indeed, in nature, the fiercest competition occurs between species sharing the same ecological niche.

Thus, the desire to minimize the competitive disposition in society requires not only declatimous-ethical kindness and tolerance, but also a questimous-logical search for new occupations, new ideas, and technologies.

In decisive quadras, questimity is combined with ethics. Therefore, it should be remembered that, for intensifying competition, the divergence of people’s subjective desires is just as important as the existence of a shared arena in which objective interests clash. And although declatimous logical types are more cruel in practice, without the perpetual intrigues, whims, and nerve-racking emotions of questimous ethical types, their activity loses a substantial part of its motivation.

In merry quadras, questimity is combined with intuition, and in serious quadras, with sensing. This means that people’s divergence on the global plane occurs in the sphere of ideas, and at the local level, in material matters.

A global view of the world and the position of a citizen of the world (in Alpha)/a large empire (in Beta) make it possible to see a greater diversity in the external environment, which provides more food for thought and makes it possible to put forward more original ideas (intuitive questimity).

Conversely, an unwillingness to participate in global systems makes it necessary to engage in a large number of diverse activities within a small amount of social space. This leads to more intensive specialization, to an increase in the diversity of economic agents, and ultimately - to the development of the institution of private property.

It is precisely serious sensing types who are the mainstay of this institution; it is they who insist more than others on the inviolability of their immediate personal space and the right to dispose of it as they see fit. Unlike merry sensing types - who, on the contrary, prefer totalitarian practices of socializing the means of production, and at times - of depriving individuals of the right to dispose freely of their own bodies.

Similarly, it is precisely merry intuitives - as questims - who are most protective of the originality of their ideas and their freedom from outside influence. Serious intuitives - as declatims - on the contrary, more often than others resort to compiling and parodying other people’s storylines that have already proved their appeal, and to adapting them commercially for a target audience (with frequent simplification and substantial stripping away of the original semantic and emotional content invested by the author).

Incidentally, it follows directly from these latter facts that serious quadras are usually chronologically later than merry ones. Our bodies once literally formed part of our parents’ bodies, and our property was for the most part acquired from some global distributor, rather than created by us from scratch. Conversely, all ideas were originally original, whereas parodies and adaptations are later reworkings.