Totem and the Social Five

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the BarrCast. I'm your host, Nick Barr, coming to you on a Sunday evening here in New York, a little muggy. I've had some recording issues and I lost the audio for some reason. It dropped in the last couple of attempts. So I'm just going to try something a little different, mix it up. And rather than go through the translation... We're just going to try to make meaning out of and make sense out of the keyword for the social five, which is Totem.

And so remembering that the passion for the five overall is avarice. And like all the passions, really, it's not quite what you'd expect. So take avarice at face value and you're thinking about greed and wanting more. And that's a really odd word to describe the five who is oftentimes the least materialistic, least interested in monetary gain. They might be a minimalist.

So what kind of avarice are we talking about here? The five and we're moving into the head triad from the four so we're talking about um people who kind of uh their head their thinking and their mental simulating is sort of their uh control tower from which they're experiencing a lot of the world um

And there's a lot... The five in general is really out to protect themselves from kind of sensory overload, you know, is one way to start talking about it. And... I think the five is probably the most important type to understand from a cultural perspective right now, because I think the five was probably in most of history was very rare and would sort of be the absent-minded professor, brilliant researcher, scientist type who used to be a rarity, but culturally we're living more and more in a five space in the sense that there's more withdrawn

Were more withdrawn from the frictions of human interactions. And that's what the fives organized their life to sort of avoid is friction and just sort of unpredictability in human interactions. That is to say, sometimes people are going to be too much and they're going to be kind of invading your space. And that's going to be overwhelming for a five and the five is going to want to retreat. But also the five may have wounding around not getting enough interaction. And so then sort of building a sort of buffer around not needing other human interactions.

And so the five becomes really essentially obsessed with knowledge and obsessed with perceiving, obsessed with understanding, and really underlying this fascination with the world and fascination with knowing things is a fear that if I don't know, then I will be subject to the bewildering messiness of human interaction and will either be invaded or not helped or whatever. And so just better to know.

Naranjo writes, you know, in the introduction to the five, about the five early on replaced mother's milk with books. And that's a simplification. And, you know, fives have all sorts of different life stories, but that's not a bad handle on the five. So fives are also going to be pretty skeptical oftentimes of the Enneagram, and that's maybe touching to their six wings. They might get really interested in the Enneagram, but they're also going to say, oh, this isn't quite right, or it's not like that. And that's fine. The five can do that. Just the wise five will recognize in their own critiquing of... these descriptions, that is their own passion, their own fixation at work. This need to perceive, this need to understand, this need to know. Because if somebody knows, excuse me, somebody knows better than me, then that's not safe.

So the totem is the social five. And, you know, the way I think about it is like, there's sort of this dramatization of and sort of kind of the social five turns the world into a heaven and a hell and so at you know to the left there is heaven that's where we want to be that's the totem you could call that the ivory tower and ivory towers are uh A great metaphor for fives and I think a lot of fives have some connection to the ivory tower and that's where they want to be in in a world of facts and ideas and ideals.

It's a totem totem both speaks to kind of an academic ivory tower image, but it also speaks to that as a as an idea of worship and so a social five might might, for instance, have as their hero, let's say, like a Richard Feynman or a John von Neumann or even a religious figure or it could be a regular person, but just somebody who lives and breathes the ideals of brilliance, of genius, of that kind of pursuit. And they want to be up there.

I must strive for these ideals. I must strive to accomplish what my God-given rights are. Fives oftentimes are really gifted intellectually. So they really want to be there and at the great cost of basically the ordinary world is like, this is like an octopus, you know, kind of a chthonic monster down there. It's hell. It's basically the ordinary world is hell and to be avoided. And then, you know, the really clever five will be like, how can I turn... How can I take every opportunity to convert the ordinary into the sublime?

So the social five is always kind of trying to make lemonade out of lemons of the ordinary world, which is interesting, but usually fails. So if we're kind of trying to create a provisional story for the social five, it must be something like, you know, I must strive to be among the greats or else I will be

In my image here, there's a fear of being pulled in and under. The five's fear can be around overwhelm and annihilation in the mundane needs of people and the world. The world is a little bit threatening for the five. Yeah.

There's a lot of overlap, I think, between the social five and the four, particularly the self-preservation four. I know those are very different instincts, but I think we'll see that. And the four, of course, also sort of despises the mundane. But for the five, the mundane is sort of a threat to their would-be greatness. Sort of else I will be annihilated by the ordinary.

And I'm just sort of still playing with this I must X or else Y. I'm really interested in seeing people create their own stories that resonate for them. I don't think that there's like one for the five in general or one for the social five specifically. But let's bring up the book and see what it has to say here.

The passion of the social five is somewhat akin to a need for the essential, the sublime, we could say, instead of the need for what exists. Totem simultaneously suggests height and the character of being a constructed object rather than a human being. The height of a totem evokes a tendency in these individuals to look upward toward the ideal and to relate to the most outstanding and remarkable among people, somehow like how Midas wanted everything he touched to turn into gold.

And yeah, you know, I think for the spiritually curious among us, for Buddhists, I mean, having poked around Substack a little bit more since I'm publishing some of these videos to Substack, I'm just, there's so much spiritual talk. It's really interesting. And for me, it feels kind of unfamiliar and fresh and new. And, you know, for sure, I have like one foot in it.

But... I'm not, I don't want to like type anybody, but I think the, the four and the five are very prevalent types among like Western, especially Buddhists and, um, there's a lot this there's a lot that's like catnip for that type and so let's just read this paragraph the tragedy is in their quest for a super value the social five implicitly scorns ordinary life and common people they're only interested in the quintessence of life the elixir of existence the ultimate meaning

However, in this orientation toward the stars, they become someone who is not very interested in life down here. They become overly spiritual because emotional impoverishment, which distances them from compassion, is contrary to spiritual achievement. We're going to go back to that. Thus, in this character, a polarity is established between the extraordinary and what makes no sense. So nothing makes sense until the extraordinary or magical is attained.

So if we go back to our little doodle here, this is like the ordinary. This is... So what happened to the five is, and this is true of all subtypes, not just the social five, is something happened to the social five, their ability to experience emotions that, well, I don't want to, let's not put words in anyone's mouth. And again, these are written by people of the type.

Emotional impoverishment, which distances them from compassion. There's a numbing or a muffling or a quieting or a distancing or a boundary-ing. This is the avarice, right? The five becomes very protective of what little energetic resources they have. The five is the most... aware of their energy in terms of resources and seeks to protect it. And so there's a stinginess. Stinginess is probably the best synonym for avarice here. There's a stinginess with who do I give my energy to and how much energy can I give to others before I am destroyed?

So that's what they mean by emotional impoverishment. And so to some extent... this whole project, the five, right? The five might be like a tantrica who says, I'm actually extraordinarily involved in the ordinary and in the ordinary, I'm able to perceive and see through the ordinary and find its quintessence and the divine non-dual, orgasm that is in stuff as mundane as you know argument with my girlfriend or making dinner and if I will say that and if that might be true I don't you know I don't know for the five but check the five has to check their heart

And see if as um is put in here elsewhere someone says i feel like my heart was locked up in a trunk and i i kind of threw away the key that original self-protecting um urge

And the five has to check and be honest with themselves about whether all of this sublimation of the ordinary toward ideals is really working for them in terms of opening their heart and helping them feel more compassion and helping them feel more connection with other people. Or is there an ongoing sense of emptiness that fives generally are aware of? Fives are generally like, yeah, there's some emptiness here. It feels like something's missing.

And so for the spiritual five, they just have to be on a quest to be honest with themselves about after a few years of this... avoiding the ordinary or sublimating the ordinary into the ideal, whether that's working for them. Is their heart broken open or not?

So let's see what else is in this account by Angelo Contarino. Like the self-protecting four, and I would say like the five in general is a self-protecting type. There's a swallowing, there's a deliberate dampening of intensity. It says previously perceptions arrived muted, resentment is often expressed indirectly and veiled. So the five very early on made a decision to hamstring their own intensity through boundary, right?

The crazy idea is to prefer not to feel. Nothing's happening here. And if it is, I'll endure it and hide it. We just talked about the endure in the self-preserving four. I'll endure it and hide it even for myself. This is when type five puts on a poker face as if everything slides off of them and they're above good and evil to the point where they neither feel nor suffer. What happens is that type five decided at a very early age to lock their heart in a trunk to avoid suffering and threw the key to the bottom of the sea. Amen.

The five is not that spontaneous. The five needs to take time to process things. The five needs time to sort of translate the intensity of events into sense-making, into knowledge, into meaning-making, into a formal symbolic logic that then they will be wonderfully neutral about. I mean, the five doesn't have a lot of ego because the five's egoic structure is around basically choosing the... playground or choosing the battleground the the five as long as the five is in the world of ideas and intellect and logic and analysis the five is safe so from there the five is actually wonderfully neutral seeing things objectively the five is a great uh partner in that way but the the five needs to play in that arena that's that's where the five's insecurity is is if we're if we're having it out that's um the five doesn't want that

So the five is very controlling in terms of how the game is played, but they're actually very expansive in terms of the content. It's what makes them great spiritual seekers because Oh, if I'm in the... I think this is why Buddhism appeals to so many fives. And, you know, we just covered the four. If you're new to this, I'm a four. I have a very strong five wing. And I also feel like I have a strong three wing. So nothing is coming from they here. Like I'm describing, you know, I'm in contact with this for myself. Like...

What joy to deal with a world of phenomena, right? Buddhism basically says everything is phenomena. Oh, well, once everything is phenomena, then there's sort of this game that I get to play in. And the five is like really kind of in heaven when they're swimming in the world of phenomena, the world of objects, the world of things. Just one layer of abstraction, right? past the kind of raw, messy, violating, scary. And again, the five will even be interested in that world as long as they get to systematize that world too. Yeah.

And then there's clearly superiority here. So when we look at this, the social five, the totem, is a move of distancing and aloofness and superiority over the ordinary. Who would want an ordinary life? But it's impersonal for the five, so unlike maybe some other types. the social five's sense of superiority doesn't come from a personal agenda. They want to be in the world of the ideal.

But conversely, then they're always falling short of that. And so their own, their own, you know, ineluctable connections to the ordinary and just drive them crazy. So as it says here is the feeling of imagined superiority in relation to others dissipates. and we devote ourselves more to friendship rather than an expert and teacher relationship, we also abandon the feelings of inferiority and guilt. We let go of the identification with the bad breast or the one that never existed. More Melanie Klein there.

We won't get into good breast, bad breast, but I think it's really important for the four and the five. I'm just scanning this to see if there are any other key points. Most of this section is really about the dissolution, the giving up of the ivory tower, the giving up of the totem, the giving up of the ideal, which I think is extremely destabilizing.

Descending from the totemic limbo, we discover how we have entangled ourselves in conflictive situations. We find ourselves wounded and in pain with an explosive load of aggressive feelings. It has been a relief for everyone to see themselves capable of shouting, attacking, rebelling, and releasing a ruthless and wild inner animal that enjoys the fight. After having discharged everything that was boiling inside, we realized that it was an important vital energy, part of our animal heritage, and not synonymous with violence as we previously believed.

When anger is detached from long-held resentment and one is open not only to feeling emotions but also to confrontation and conflict, it becomes easier to say no without too much trouble. The old behavior of swallowing and renouncing to respond and clarify things no longer makes sense because we feel prepared to set our limits with words and posture. So again, so much overlap with the self-preserving four.

And, you know, in my own self-typing, I think sometimes it's been a challenge to discern some of the different pieces here. But I would say if you were comparing the self-preserving four and the social five, for the social five, and again, the social instinct here manifests as having these ideals, these role models, whether they're human role models or role models of ideas, comparing oneself to the greats and being on a never-ending quest to be among the greats that is never satisfied.

Um, but you know, it's not, it's not futile. I mean, I think social fives, uh, some of the social fives I know are some of the most brilliant people I know, and they really are kind of among the greats. Like I'm like, wow, you know, this person is just completely inspiring. And so it's not that the social five can the, the, so, okay.

So ways to discern between a five and a four, uh, especially these two subtypes, um, The self-preserving four and fours in general, there's a lot of unproductive struggle. Fours are essentially in love with and entangled in lack and disappointment and discouragement.

And so a four who wants to be great is going to have a preoccupation with their own deficiencies and their own lacks. And it's going to be marked by a lot more struggle there.

The social five, I think, is going to be more successful, more productive, potentially. I mean, productive from their own perspective. I think a lot of outsiders might think of five as like, what are you doing? But a lot of fives, a lot of academics are perfectly happy doing research and writing papers and You know, being fairly impenetrable to others and that doesn't really bother them so much.

So I think I think a social five is probably going to be more successful in in their endeavors, in their attempts to be great, although they will beat themselves up absolutely for falling short.

The other difference, right, is we're talking about a heart type versus a head type. And so that fours preoccupation with lack will be connected with a lot of feelings around shame and torment. And so one thing about, you know, a self-preserving five, even the self-preserving five, is there will be a lot of, they won't feel dead.

They maybe will be suffering horribly. They maybe wish they were dead. But there will be a kind of vitality to them. And an intensity that's just bubbling underneath the surface.

For the self-preserving four, that's the most muffled. Well, I wouldn't say muffled. I would say that's the most tamped down. That's the most clenched energy. But the clenching of that energy, the SP4 is a clencher, a holder. We talked about tenacity. So there's a lot of intensity there.

The social five, like the other fives, they've locked their heart in the box at the bottom of the ocean. And they know that. And so there's a kind of an emptiness. There's a little bit of a not there-ness. Kind of ephemerality, maybe, or a... distance and aloofness. We talk about superiority.

Part of the healing journey for that social five is to reopen that box and go through some of the same intensity that an SP four maybe has to go through. But I think fives in general are going to be much lower intensity than fours. And there will be much more aversion, aversion to conflict, aversion to messiness, aversion to people taking up their resources and energy.

And they'll experience the lack that a four experiences, but they won't be preoccupied with it. They might say, yeah, there's a certain emptiness. I wish I felt more alive. But they won't, um, that lack itself will become its own obsession and its own source of energy.

The battery for the four, right? The passion, the battery, the motivator is lack. The passion, the battery, the motivator for the five is avarice, is stinginess. Um, what little I have, I really need to hold on to.

So I think we'll end there. Let me just quickly scan the rest of the social five to see if there's anything else that adds to this for us. This particular chapter is quite long, but refers extensively to the importance of embodiment activities. And I think that's valuable for the four and the five, but especially the five is just being a body. So yoga, tai chi, qigong.

Returning to the earthly and real world entails giving up our expectations and our fantasies about personal transformation. Entering the I don't know and sustaining oneself there. Yeah, that's huge. Renouncing the extraordinary life. Being in contrast, more present in everyday life, taking care of ourselves, attending to ourselves, establishing more satisfying contact.

Just sitting in the I don't know is, I think, a beautiful practice for the five. And it's really scary, I think. If you can contact the fear of not knowing the answer, I just don't know. And how without an or, you've got nothing to steer with, I don't know. That's I think that's the easiest way to connect to the fear that underlies all mental types but for the five I don't know is um what does it feel like not to know it feels terrifying because annihilation is right there

Miguel writes about resolve to stop flagellating, mistreating, censoring myself, calling myself useless. Those might be negative self-talk that a five could experience for his failure to be a good worshiper of the totem.

Okay, so that's the social five totem. I'm interested in these stories and I think this one is just one example. I must strive to be among the greats or else I'll be annihilated by the ordinary. I must be great or I'm nobody. That's a little bit four-ish. I don't know, or else I'm nobody.

For the social five and for the five in general, it's not about being nobody so much as just, I think, I talked to one five and they were like, they wouldn't mind being a brain in a vat just as long as they could still have their intellect. So it's, if I didn't have my intellect, that's really scary, I think, for fives.

So, you know, I must strive to know as much as I can or else I won't know anything. Just things to play with.

We'll pause here and then we'll talk about the sexual five.