Psychological Parcheesi (or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the biles)
Right now, I'm in the middle of Rupert Thomson's Divided Kingdom. It's an absolutely fascinating book, as it combines a whole bunch of things I'm interested in--politics, psychology, and futuristic outlooks on our way of life. I had a really bad time trying to find it, and I was about to give up on it and order it online before I found it in Half Moon Bay.
In short, Divided Kingdom is set in future Great Britain, where the powers that be have decided to create a government and a law according to the four temperaments that describe the basic human condition. These four temperaments are associated with the biles, or four humours of the human body, and they are:
- Blood (of a sanguine nature)
- Yellow Bile (of a choleric nature)
- Black Bile (of a melancholy nature), and
- Phlegm (of a...well, phglematic nature--more on this in a minute)
Now, onto an explanation of these humours (if you are a psychologist, or a doctor, you can skip this section, as it is a simple, brief explanation to the general public):
A person with sanguine nature is granted upperclass status in Divided Kingdom, they are considered "normal" people. Sanguines generally are fun-loving, confident, cheerful, and optimistic. They are very easy to get along with.
A person with excessive choler is energetic. They are easily angered, but a choler tends to thrive on actions, an cholers also make great leaders or commanders. They are also dominant of other personalities.
A person with excessive black bile is melancholy...this isn't to say that they are lethargic, but it is to say that they are emotional--"melancholies" make great poets and artists, and while they aren't physically active, they experience moods and emotions on a greater scale than a person with excessive amounts of any other humour.
A phlegmatic is calm, and unemotional, pretty much everything that choler and "melancholer" are not. Associate phlegmatics with water. Like sanguines, they also have many friends, but they are instead more relaxed.
If you want a really dumbed-down way to look at the four humours, associate them with the seasons...sanguine for spring (think optimism, blossoming, happiness, etc.), choler for summer (heat, active, high temper) melancholy for fall (transition, emotion, experience) and phlegmatics with winter (stationary, dead, cold).
Divided Kingdom not only helps us understand the problems with people being catagorized, but also helps us understand what each of the four humours are. The people in the Yellow Quarter often hold riots against the new regime, whereas the people in the Green Quarter often commit suicide over it. Everyone tries to sneak into the Red Quarter, whereas the Blue Quarter holds a mysterious quality to it. The book itself tells the story of a young man who remembers (faintly) what life was like before the "Rearrangement" (the name they give to the process of divying everyone up) and his trials of fitting in to the new life. What's very strange, and interesting, is that so far, the main character has not protested this "Rearrangement" directly, but the book has a subtle way of pointing out that this system is in fact, flawed--people are spied upon, and it rests on upon the people to report any characteristics that are incompatible with the quarter that person may be living in (i.e., a person in the Red Quarter exhibits violence, they get reported and are deported to the Yellow Quarter).
Now, think of all the people you know, or at least the ones close to you. I'm almost positive that you can (and most likely will) begin to label them with each of these temperaments. You may even come to the point where you can label yourself as being red, yellow, green, or blue. But amidst all this labelling, you must realize that not all people exhibit characteristics that are completely consistent with one temperament, all the time.
Myself, I like to think of myself as white (It seems as there's a special class reserved for the government officials and the like). But don't read this the wrong way--it's not that I don't fit into any cateory, or that I protest categorization, it's that I fit equally into all categories. I am good natured, hotheaded, inspired, and completely cold in equal amounts. I'm a leader, an administrator, a friend, and I even write poetry, every day. It's an interesting psychological puzzle--how would you label yourself? How would you label others? How do you think that others would label you?
In reality, though, I'm probably just sanguine, blood red as the rest of them. Bo-ring.
Rupert Thomson's Divided Kingdom. Pick it up.
