Definition of Agreeableness, Entry 2, On Tender-mindedness and Tough-mindedness
Definitions of Tender-mindedness and Tough-mindedness
NOTE: This Substack entry is a continuation of an earlier Substack entry called “Definition of Agreeableness, Entry 1.” Here is a link to the earlier entry:
The simplest way to explain what I did in the previous and what I am going to do in this entry is for me to reproduce an illustration from an article by Kat Palaiou and Adrian Furnham.1 This diagram is organized from the right side (broad personality traits) to the left side (narrower and more focused facets). I have put colored ovals around the pieces of information that are relevant to my discussion:
I started the previous entry by introducing the broad personality trait of Agreeableness (blue oval). Then, in the previous article, I pointed out that the broad personality trait of Agreeableness can be decomposed into two aspects called Compassion and Politeness (green ovals). I used the fact that egoist anarchists are likely to adopt a bohemian lifestyle that allows them to live dangerously outside of the protection of norms and social customs to argue that egoist anarchists probably score low on Politeness. In this entry, I continue the decomposition process by focusing on one specific facet of Agreeableness called Tender-mindedness (red oval). My approach in this entry is simple. First, I plan to give some definitions of Tender-mindedness. Then, I plan to discuss the egoist anarchists and where they are located on the facet of Tender-mindedness. My contention is that egoist anarchists are likely to be low in Tender-mindedness or high in Tough-mindedness.
Definitions of Tender-mindedness
Costa Jr., McCrae, and Dye claim that Tender-mindedness is basically the same thing as Feeling and that Tough-mindedness, the opposite of Tender-mindedness, is basically the same thing as Thinking:
Tender-mindedness refers to the tendency to be guided by feelings, particularly those of sympathy, in making judgments and forming attitudes. . . . The Thinking-Feeling index of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator measures a related construct.2
Bagby, Watson, and Ryder provide a similar definition of Tender-mindedness that also distinguishes between Feeling and Thinking. What stands out in their definition is that people scoring low on Tender-mindedness make rational decisions based on cold logic:
This facet scale [of Tender-mindedness] measures attitudes of sympathy and concern for others. Low scorers are more hard headed and less moved by appeals to pity. They consider themselves realists who make rational decisions based on cold logic.3
Finally, McCrae and Costa Jr. define Tender-minded people as agreeable people who “may be an easy touch for charities and good causes.”4 I include this definition of Tender-mindedness in this entry because egoist anarchist literature has a lot to say about “causes.”
How Tender-minded Are Egoist Anarchists?
Egoist anarchists are likely to score low on Tender-mindedness. They display a strong preference for Thinking over Feeling. With regard to Thinking, they are attracted to stringent logic. With regard to Feeling, they have no sympathy for “herd humans.” I will now discuss these conclusions in more detail.
Egoist Anarchists Score Low in Sympathy
Victor Lvovitch Kibalchich, also known as Victor Serge, wrote and agitated under the pseudonym Le Rétif (“Maverick”). Like many egoist anarchists, the Maverick had no sympathy for the “masses” or the “herd” of humans:
Contempt for the masses, for the “herd,” drips from his writings of the “l’anarchie” period from 1909-12, and if there are any Rétifian adjectives they are spineless (veule) and cowardly (lâche), which recur frequently in his articles. . . .
Everything the masses enjoy is subject to his scorn. From the time of Libertad individualists had demonstrated ridicule for festivals and anniversaries, and following in Libertad’s footsteps Victor would write that “joy on command is unhealthy, grotesque and stupid, like those who savor it,” and the festivities the people engage in are “the apotheosis of the stupidity, the illogic, and the cowardice of vast human herds.” Mere contact with this gutless mass is repellent to Kibalchich: “The men I rub shoulders with wrong me at every moment. Their limpness, their rapacity, their foolishness prevent me from living.”
When France was in an uproar over the first crime of the Bonnot Gang, the robbery and shooting on the Rue Ordener of a messenger for the Société Générale, Victor felt no sympathy, rather contempt and satisfaction at his fate: “This poor wretch, through his submissive weakness and his stupid honesty was the accomplice of criminals of a far higher caliber than the ones they are hunting down.”5
The Maverick was not the only egoist anarchist to express a lack of sympathy for “herd humans.” Another egoist anarchist who shared these views was Georges Darien. Darien’s position was that “herd humans” did not deserve his sympathy because they wanted to be slaves and because they did nothing to free themselves:
One of the many ridiculous beliefs of the unfortunate is that their miseries should necessarily arouse sympathy.
This is truly their most persistent conviction.
It is never a mistake to show, in their own interest, the extent to which such a belief is grotesque. If the disinherited were victims of an implacable fate and could not in any way improve their position, undoubtedly it would be fitting to feel sorry for them and even to transform the pity they inspire into love. But, in fact, this is not so. The unfortunate are not so in spite of themselves. They are so because they want to be so. They have willingly placed their neck under the yoke and they prefer not to remove it. It is therefore understandable that a certain number of people feel no compassion toward them, or even feel full-fledged rage and disgust toward so much stupidity and degradation.6
Therefore, I conclude that egoist anarchists are likely to be low in sympathy and this lack of sympathy implies that they score low on Tender-mindedness.
Egoist Anarchists Score High in Thinking
The origins of egoist anarchism are often traced back to the work of Max Stirner. According to John Henry Mackay, Max Stirner’s work is the product of extremely logical mind:
I have observed that most enthusiasts of Nietzsche speak of Stirner with a kind of cool and highly comical superiority: they don’t really trust themselves to approach this giant and are secretly afraid of his rigid logic. With Nietzsche they need to think less: they lull themselves with his language, whereas the true Nietzsche remains mostly foreign to them.7
Victor Serge, the Maverick, in a discussion about anarchist apologists of hatred shows his preference for Thinking over Feeling, which is especially noticeable near the end of the following passage:
Since the time of Bakunin, proclaiming the strength and the beauty of the destructive desire, too often, in the daily fight against all forms of oppression, the anarchists have appealed to hatred. It has given rise in our groups to interminable discussions; in our newspapers there are endless polemics. Young people, as enthusiastic as they are impulsive, have called for and ferociously defended it. Even here, in the columns of l’anarchie I recall having read a series of articles signed Olivine rehabilitating hatred which, according to Libertad, “alone creates acts of will.”
This is a lovely theme for literature, but from the point of view of logic, of reason, and anarchist education, not at all!
We need more than the sonorous assertions of a poetic enthusiasm: we need detailed, exact, and scientific arguments and logical, correct reasoning.
In order to discuss hatred, and it must be discussed for once and for all, we must begin by defining it, and this is precisely what we have neglected to do.8
As a final example, take a look at this quotation from the book Disruptive Elements: The Extremes of French Anarchism. The author attacks the “emotionally-suggestible mass,” which means that “herd humans” are people who are not hard-headed. Since hard-headed people usually score low on Tender-mindedness, the argument implies that most people are Tender-minded “herd humans.” The author, presumably Vincent Stone, does not actually use the term “herd human.” That is my term. The author instead calls them “sheep” and attacks them for “reasoning like sheep”:
The emotionally-suggestible masses have all been marked (as children, and over the course of centuries) by the official stamp of authoritarian society: Consequently, they reason like sheep, the feeling of liberty has been effectively obliterated in them and they’re ripe for all kinds of subservience—doomed to serve as a pedestal for the ever renascent privileged elite of either power-seeking upstarts or long-term beneficiaries of inherited wealth and position. Dumbly they obey the dictates of their tyrannous lords, generally without rebellion or protest, filled with a vague, illimitable weariness such as the dead must know, their “thinking” always just staggering along—and any short-lived revolt that they might engage in is usually followed by a gray, ceaseless longing to return to their interrupted slumber.9
Egoist Anarchists and “Causes”
Earlier in this entry I mentioned that Tender-minded people “may be an easy touch for charities and good causes.” “An easy touch” is a person who is easily persuaded into giving you what you want. “An easy touch” will quickly bend to your wishes. To me, “an easy touch” sounds like a textbook example of a person eagerly willing to adopt “external causes” instead of adopting their own egoist “cause.” In other words, the Tender-minded person, who quickly adopts “external causes” instead of his own “cause,” sounds like the complete opposite of the egoist anarchist, who puts his own “cause” first. So, based on this reasoning, I think that the egoist anarchist should be classified as low on Tendermindedness, since the egoist anarchist refuses to be “an easy touch” for “external causes.” A more detailed discussion about why egoist anarchists are so hostile toward “external causes” is found in John F. Welsh’s book:
Stirner’s preface specifically addresses the demands and claims of (a) religion, which is the cause that promotes the interests of God and his human surrogates, and (b) humanism, which is the cause that promotes the interests of “Mankind” and those who purport to represent it. But where is the “cause” that promotes the autonomy, freedom, and dignity of the individual? Such a cause does not exist, except for that which individuals are able to create for themselves. Such a cause is universally discredited and reviled as “egoism” because the external and collectivist causes that demand the allegiance and submission of the person recognize the threat it presents to their power and interests. The purpose of external causes, such as god and mankind, is to eliminate the self as a competing cause or an alternative source of allegiance. The practice of external causes is to extend their control by ensuring that individuals subordinate their values, meanings, and “concerns” to an allegiance to god, humanity, or some political ideology.10
TO BE CONTINUED IN ENTRY 3
Kat Palaiou and Adrian Furnham, “Are Bosses Unique? Personality Facet Differences between CEOs and Staff in Five Work Sectors,” Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research 66, no. 3 (September 2014): 176.
Paul T. Costa Jr., Robert R. McCrae, and David A. Dye, “Facet Scales for Agreeableness and Conscientiousness: A Revision of the NEO Personality Inventory,” Personality and Individual Differences 12, no. 9 (1991): 889.
R. Michael Bagby, Chris Watson, and Andrew G. Ryder, “Depressive Personality Disorder and the Five-Factor Model,” in Personality Disorders and the Five-Factor Model of Personality, 3rd ed., ed. Thomas A. Widiger and Paul T. Costa Jr. (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2013), 184.
Robert R. McCrae and Paul T. Costa Jr., Personality in Adulthood: A Five-Factor Theory Perspective, 2nd ed. (New York: The Guilford Press, 2006), 50.
Mitchell Abidor, ed. and trans., editor’s introduction to Anarchists Never Surrender: Essays, Polemics, and Correspondence on Anarchism, 1908-1938, by Victor Serge (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2015), 26-27.
Georges Darien, “Enemy of the People,” in Disruptive Elements: The Extremes of French Anarchism, trans. Wolfi Landstreicher (Berkeley, CA: Ardent Press, 2014), 44.
John Henry Mackay, Max Stirner: His Life and His Work, trans. Hubert Kennedy (Concord, CA: Peremptory Publications, 2005), 19.
Victor Serge, “Hatred,” in Anarchists Never Surrender: Essays, Polemics, and Correspondence on Anarchism, 1908-1938 ed. and trans. Mitchell Abidor (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2015), 57.
[Vincent Stone, ed. and trans.?], “The Critique of Collectivism,” in Disruptive Elements: The Extremes of French Anarchism (Berkeley, CA: Ardent Press, 2014), 182.
John F. Welsh, Max Stirner’s Dialectical Egoism: A New Interpretation (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), 47.