Inventors

What is the Inventor type and what makes you hard to be and be around?

• (E) extroverted rather than (I) introverted;
• (N) focussed on the interior world (of abstractions) rather than the (S) sensory and exterior world of concrete reality;
• (T) tough-minded and head based most of the time rather than (F) feelings based and in their hearts; and
• (P) spontaneous and exploring rather than (J) deciding, judging, and scheduling.

It's hard for an inventor to be an inventor because inventing is a lot easier than achieving the vision of the invention. I have some big inventions I'll never see implemented. And there's a sense of the moral obligation of a person who has something important, which is an emotional burden when one can't fulfill the implicit obligation of having something significant for the world that is inside you, but I just realistically can't do everything I can imagine. Unfortunately. Hopefully I can achieve two or three of these things in my lifetime. That would be more realistic.

Can you imagine what it would feel like to be pregnant again and again with dead babies? That's the theme and the type of sadness of a fertile inventor's emotional life. It's very hard. I have to keep myself from inventing, basically, to reduce the moral suffering that comes from my own natural limits.

It's hard for another person to be around an inventor, too. An inventor is constantly challenging the status quo, never accepts the normal conventional way things are, never comes to a conclusion until he's explored it so thoroughly noone else can stand to hear about it again. An inventor is extremely tough-minded and doesn't care that everyone in the world thinks he's going the wrong direction. An inventor is always thinking about things that don't exist.

An inventor hears the direction, suggestions, and control exerted by well-meaning social guardians, but is absolutely unaffected and uncooperative, because he's living by the rules of finding that better way, not of accepting the standard way. An inventor loves to be contrary, just to see what the outcome might be. Yes, it's hard to be with an inventor. Of course everyone loves the idea of an inventor.

Consider Orville Wright: Wow, wouldn't you love to be around him and share the glow? Yet he was a guy who spent his entire life prosecuting patent lawsuits which never profited him: a miserable life of being stolen from, unable to stop it, frustrated. Or Thomas Edison: what wealth, what a name, what a historical impact, just to be around it would be a privilege. But no! That glow is radioactive, it's amazing and fascinating and we love it from the distance of safely enjoying their benefits, but it's nothing anyone wants to be around. For many, it's hard to actually be around it. If you want things to be generally reality based and predictable, then you and an inventor in your life will torture each other. Better to stay at a distance.