NOTE 2022: This post is one of the first drafts of the Normal Person* (Sameness Thinker) / the Savants* (Difference Thinker) differentiation, and is public just to show where I started from. While there are no huge errors in the post, the emphasis has changed a little from “sameness/difference” to “protection of others/protection of self” -thinking.

I have made a fresh edit of this post here, without changing the content but adding styling and footnotes.

I am working on a new personality typology of a sort, that explains, with big brush stokes the major relationship problems between two types of people. I am not sure what to call it yet, but the main differentiation point between the two groups is the Sameness thinkers tendency to want to fit into a group they already belong in and the Difference thinkers wish to stand out from the crowd and to befriend people who they share independently chosen values with. This different way of forming alliances is responsible for a lot of conflicts between humans because the way people think in this area makes very little sense to the other group. I have been dabbling with this for a while, and I’ve published some incomplete  material on it before (because that is what I do; I publish the stuff that I wish will make me a millionaire before I’ve had the time to run it through in my head twice – smart!), for instance, the bonding methods people use, as if the methods were another aspect of this particular scale, but it is not. So please when you read this, be advised it is work in progress and I am mostly thinking out loud.

Why the two thinker types cannot co-exist without having relationship problems

Sameness thinkers, or the Inclusives, as I may decide to call them, are conservatives who wish to find a way to fit into a group of people they are made a part of by association. At the same time as they are trying to fit themselves into the group, they are trying to find ways to fit others into a group, too. At its most severe form, sameness thinkers are trying to make EVERY human being the same way, to fit them into the group of humans, and they are extremely distressed by any form of difference they cannot change and mold into being the same way; for instance, having “the wrong” skin color, something that to a sameness thinker can be an insurmountable obstacle in life. The reason why I also call them “inclusive” people, is because of their underlying motivation to include everyone into the same tribe or group with the assumption that there is nothing better than being the same way as anyone else, and where standing out of the crowd is seen as a flaw, an illness, a deviation of the mind, something to eradicate and destroy – preferably by changing the deviant individual into one of the same, healthy and well-adjusted.

Difference thinkers, or the Exclusives are people who are accepting of other people’s differences, but they are actively attempting to seek their own kind of people to form a strong bond with. Although they are not necessarily any more keen on constant interaction with people who are very different to them, they do not see them as a threat to their own existence or peace of mind. Their idea of life is: “you do what you do, but don’t involve me in it.” Difference thinkers are not nearly as interested about physical differences a person cannot change as a motivation to bond, such as skin color (White power, black pride etc.), but they would be focused on the similarities of the mind; the way a person thinks, what their values are and what they stand for. They may, still, reject people of another race, if they sense that their way of thinking doesn’t match that of their own closely enough, but they would not see the other race a problem the same way as Sameness thinkers do.

Clearly, you can already see a pigeon hole forming.

The source of conflict and confusion

The Inclusive People are always trying to find an external guideline on how to be a member of their own tribe the right way, and try to educate people on how to fit in. There is no standard guideline to follow because the guidelines are directly dependent on the group they belong in, and that group can be very random indeed, but most importantly the group means family. People who do not have a family will seek out another group to connect with, be it army, the police, a AA-group or whatever else they somehow relate to. They love fashion and uniforms; something that clearly indicate a unity with a group – although they may not follow fashion, and certainly don’t use fashion to stand out but to fit in, they may dress deliberately in a non-descriptive way because it will join them into the majority tribe; the common man. The next step from that is to find a subculture to identify with and seek support in; to be different in the same way as others, if they simply feel they cannot fit into the family they were born into. Therein lies the difficulty of differentiation; when is it a Sameness thinker is joining a group and when is it a Difference thinker seeking out his own kind and here is the answer:

A Sameness thinker always seeks approval from others. That is their motivation. They feel loved when someone gives them clear instructions on how to fit in. If someone would give them a spreadsheet of things expected of them upon joining a new group of friends; how to fit in and not stand out, how to  make oneself a part of the team and how to be accepted; the way a private school would do or similar institution would do. This would also work brilliantly with a social group; acceptance into the group is done by giving you full instructions on HOW TO be accepted. They are always trying to find the secrets of how to fit in, and they would be one type of people who are obsessed with celebrity secrets because they think they have some secret code that they follow in order to be accepted. To them, rejection is the form of not revealing those secrets to you, and acceptance means you tell them how to be accepted by you. This drives Difference thinkers mad: If they refuse to follow the rules, a concerned Sameness thinker will follow them around trying to helpfully instruct the Difference thinker on how to fit in – even if they had no interest joining the group in question. The Sameness thinker would think the Difference thinker is too stupid to follow clear instructions, and is helpfully and patiently trying to educate the poor Difference thinker on the matter.

The two thinker types would always see the same thing in a complete opposite way.

To a Difference thinker the idea that someone would hand out an instruction sheet on behavior and rules in order to be accepted is the biggest insult to a person and their individuality anyone could possibly give, and that alone is enough to cause relationship problems, considering the Difference thinker’s inability to understand why they wouldn’t follow simple instructions. Any attempt to make a Difference thinker fit in would send them into a fit of rage or desperation (“stupid idiots!!”), especially coming from a social group that has no right to expect such a thing. To them, so much as wearing a special T-shirt for a charity event is a bit of a stretch, let alone having to conform into a uniform in order to be accepted. And this is why the Sameness thinkers are continually insulted by the Difference thinkers and vice versa; the other one’s acceptance is another one’s insult and another one’s requirement for acceptance is what the other one cannot even comprehend; individualism. A Difference thinker wants their friends to be unique, “themselves”, they want their friends to be freely who they are (the sum of their traits, values and hopes and dreams) and anyone who is “attempting to please the crowd” is a vile creature in their minds, essentially, any Sameness thinker. They also don’t so much mind Sameness thinkers, because in the mind of a Difference thinker, you have the right to be whatever you want to be, including a commoner, but they have a major issue if a Sameness thinker is trying to give them instructions on how to fit in. Therefore it is impossible for a Sameness thinker to be completely accepted by a Difference thinker.

The irony is that a Sameness thinker is always looking onto Difference thinkers with extreme confusion: They do not understand how the Difference thinker thinks, because in the mind of a Sameness thinker you have to do one of the three things: Dominate your rules over others, follow other people’s rules blindly or exchange rules and compromise. A Difference thinker blatantly refuses to any of those things, sending a Sameness thinker into a complete distress because they don’t know how to live comfortably next to the odd Difference thinker who, to them, seems to be either mentally deranged and thus incapable of following simple rules, or a sinister character with nothing but evil plans on destroying the peace and unity of their group. In addition, there is an intriguing reaction that a Sameness thinker will have on a Difference thinker: they will easily become a type of a fan who is trying to emulate the behaviour of the Difference thinker in order to fit in, but the better the Sameness thinker manages this pursuit, the less the Difference thinker appreciates it. There is one thing that a Difference thinker hates more than anything and that is a copy cat, but they accept the pursuits of someone who they deem very far below themselves in mental capacity, because they figure that kind of a Sameness thinker could use all the help they can get. (That doesn’t mean friendship to the Difference thinker, of course, it means a tutor-student relationship, but that will completely escape the attention of the Sameness thinker who thinks they have finally made a true friend.)

Parent-child relationship problems

One would think that a Sameness thinker would be relieved to see a Difference thinker leave the group and go wherever he feels he’s fitting in, but that is not the case. A Sameness thinker loves by trying to force a circle where a square should be, in other words, they will never stop trying to make a circle into a square if they have any reason to consider the Difference thinker (the circle) their responsibility, mostly applying to their own child. They can never forgive themselves for having done such poor job at raising a (Difference Thinker) child, so poor job, that the child is completely incapable of following simple rules, norms and expectations, and they will forever try to re-educate the Difference Thinker child into following the norm (current popular idea of correct way of thinking and living). What makes things even more humiliating for a Sameness thinker parent, is that if the Difference Thinker child is clearly  intelligent and the Sameness thinker somehow managed not to make the rules clear enough for them, so that an intelligent child grew into an artist, philosopher or creative of some kind with independent thoughts rather than a well-adjusted normal individual. (Nothing worries a Sameness thinker more than a person that considers it their right to think for themselves.)

Many Difference thinkers fold and pretend to be “like everyone else”, suffering tremendously as a result; this, to them, is simply accepting responsibilities and adulthood, but they are emotionally under great distress while the Sameness thinkers around them are pleased as bunch for  job well done. A Sameness thinker suffers for the failure of being the same as everyone else, whereas a Difference thinker suffers for the expectation to limit themselves into being nothing more than what everyone else is. (Where the Sameness thinker would feel they can’t fill the shoes given for them, a Difference thinker feels they have to squeeze into shoes far too small for them, but that those shoes are the only ones they’re allowed to have.)

Roles reversed, a Difference thinker parent will always make the Sameness thinker child feel insecure and neglected. While the Sameness thinker child requires constant advice on how to do things right, the Difference thinker parent will quickly lose their temper over the constant requirements of help and instructions because they feel their child is incapable of thinking for themselves and therefore they feel their off-spring is lacking something in the brain-area. (Honestly both thinker types think the other one is an idiot.) It will be helpful and reassuring for a Difference-thinker parent to know that this is simply a way the child thinks and that the only thing the Difference-thinker parent needs to do is to have a moment of thought alone, consider things for a while and then educate the Sameness thinker child on what is expected of them to please the parent. This goes against everything a Difference thinker believes to be right for the child, and the last thing they would wish from a parent themselves, but it will make a Sameness thinker child feel a lot more confident to have clear, strong rules they are able to follow and abide by. If the Difference thinker parent also has a Difference thinker child who does not need to abide by the rules, they will have to make it blatantly clear to the Sameness thinker child that they are not to bother the other child with their concerns about their behaviour and that what the other child is allowed to do is another matter entirely. (Think cleverly.) If at all possible, ask the Sameness thinker child to be as much alike the Difference thinker is naturally, so the Sameness thinker feels he or she fits in, and explain to the Difference thinker child that you are aware of their own unique traits and that the Sameness thinker will never steal their thunder from them. Remember that a Sameness thinker does not like to stand out or to be singled out, so any attention that you pay to the Difference thinker’s differences is a win-win situation; the Sameness thinker thinks they got away with something without being singled out and the Difference thinker feels appreciated and noticed.

What feels safe to each thinker type

The Sameness thinkers feel safe in a clearly structured and defined environment of little surprises and attention directed towards them as an individual (their differences) but a lot of attention given to them as a member of a group  (their similarities and their performance as a valuable member of the community or the family; their ability to serve the needs of their group or family members). A Difference thinker needs change, new ideas, new people, excitement, and drama, they need to rock the boat and create new things – something that fills the Sameness thinker with absolute terror. (Have you noticed the outcry every time Facebook dares to change it’s layout? Web developers who allow Sameness thinkers to stick to the old layout do wisely, even if it did make them feel like it would set them back 10 years in development.) A Sameness thinker needs to know things are working and safe; their entire world is structured in the search of safety.

Now, this is something that Sameness thinkers can accept about Difference thinkers and their way of thinking: A Difference thinker is seeking separation from a group partly for safety reasons. They feel like belonging into a group will create too many risks for their personal safety. For instance, imagine there is two rival families like in Romeo and Juliet: The Montagues (mostly Sameness thinkers) against the Capulets (also mostly Sameness thinkers) in ages old rivalry. A Difference thinker feels that being sucked into the rivalry between these families is completely uncalled for because they, themselves, had nothing to do with it apart from being born into one family or the other. Further, if there was some kind of an uneasy peace between these families, something like the romance between Romeo and Juliet could again throw them into a battle between families, and something that one individual in each family decided to do was enough to throw them all into danger. The funny thing is, though, that a Difference thinker would not have seen the romance between Romeo and Juliette a threat, but the Sameness thinkers would have, and because the Sameness thinkers would have an issue with it, a Difference thinker who is against his or her will locked into an alliance with one or the other family would have to be sucked into the battle even though they, themselves had nothing to do with the fight nor had an issue with the romance to begin with – and yet, they might lie dead at the end of it without any means to control their own fate, simply because someone in their family had an issue with two people falling in love with the wrong person. They would feel that the safest way to stay out of danger over non-issues would be to live an independent life away from their own family and surrounded by people who do not take issue with something like a blooming romance.

A Sameness thinker will not consider that a problem, because whenever their group or family is insulted, it is a personal insult to themselves. So if a Romeo goes fraternizing with that girl, it is an insult to the whole of his family, and if Juliet accepts this man’s approaches, her family, in its entirety is insulted and something needs to be done to settle this outrage. A Difference thinker sees this entire episode complete waste of time, effort, energy, and lives, but to a Sameness thinker of this particular bent, it is a matter of life and death. And that is why the Difference thinkers rely on nobody but themselves to ensure their own safety.

I will give you another example of the attempt to ensure a personal safety of a Difference thinker: I am really lousy at every other sporty game apart from dodge ball. At dodge ball, I am a freaking genius. In the variety of dodge ball we played at school, one individual started to “burn” people locked inside a ring by throwing a soft ball at them, and when hit, that or those people step outside the ring and become ‘hunters’. (There are a few varieties of this game, in case you haven’t been aware.) When a Sameness thinker seeks safety behind each others backs, they flock into one side of the circle trying to avoid being the one being burned, huddling together tight as they can, each individual on the outskirts is in immediate danger of getting burned. In doing so, they attract the “predator” towards the group, and it is only a question of luck who gets burned. In the meanwhile, I always made a point to stand in the opposite side of the circle, because I would attract no attempts to burn me because it would take a good throw to catch me alone, and, to a hunter it doesn’t matter which players you burn as long as you get as many as you can out with one throw. I would become a target only after there were only two players left, and because the other player was a member of the Sameness group, they would target her out of habit while I went virtually forgotten. Furthermore, if someone decided to target me, I would have much more space around me to dodge the ball, a luxury you don’t have when you are standing in a crowd of people each of whom want to feed you to the sharks instead of themselves. I have never understood how my classmates NEVER picked up on my strategy, although I was always, if not the last, then the second last…. And what was also irritating was that after there was only 2 of us in the ring, the winning Sameness thinker would try and hide behind my back, causing me to start running away from her around the circle, while keeping my eye on the ball. The safety in numbers is somewhat of an illusion, but an illusion a lot of people are still drawn to.

Romantic strategies of the two thinker types

Another reason a Difference thinker might value their different way of thinking as a measure to ensure their own emotional safety is about their romantic relationships. Just like everything else, these are not entirely conscious decisions, only an instinct making people do one thing rather than another. (Instinct, by the way, in my view, is past life experience turned into a subconscious memory print, some of them dating back to times lived as animals, and pack animals would still have a pack mentality, while animals that live alone would adopt the Difference thinker -mindset quite naturally.) When a person is distinctively different to other members of their own gender, they stand out like a sore thumb. This attracts only a fraction of potential partners out of the mass, but at the same time, it attracts MORE individuals towards the individual Difference thinker than an individual Sameness thinker would attract. The reason being that if all women, for instance, are carbon copies of one another, it doesn’t make any difference which one you wind up with. A woman is a woman is a woman, but if there is one woman who stands out being *different* in any way, that woman instantly becomes a rarity, and we all know how valued rare items are in comparison to things that are available anywhere. She may not attract all men, but she would, at least, gain the attention of all men, regardless how they’d wind up feeling about her – next step; she gets to make a choice between several partners maximizing her own chances of happiness. In addition, replacing a unique individual by another woman is not easy, whereas replacing a carbon copy with another carbon copy is as easy as wink.

Even if that said Difference thinker female becomes a role model, such as Marilyn Monroe; other women copying her style will never be Marilyn Monroe, but simply “cheap copies”. Any man who is attracted to Marilyn Monroe’s characteristics, would not hesitate, should they have the chance, to start a relationship with Marilyn herself, no matter how good copies would be available to him. The motivation for a Sameness thinker to copy a Difference thinker is that they see her (or his) power of attraction and they figure: “OK so that is what men are drawn to” and think that by copying her style, they become attractive themselves… And, for a Sameness thinker man that is probably true to an extent, because, after all, they simply want a woman who is “the right way” and won’t put them in shame by being “abnormal”.

Bonding with a group is a bit of a process of sameness for these two types

Interestingly enough, both Sameness and Difference thinkers bond with their kind of people, but find them through different methods; it is simply a matter of in which order you create your experience of sameness. Sameness thinkers want others to tell them how to fit in, while Difference thinkers have well-defined character traits well before they find a group that they fit into – but all their lives they are missing this group and yearning for it. They cannot join an existing group, including their own family, that doesn’t represent their values like Sameness thinkers can and will, they need to go out into the world to find their own chosen family. To a Sameness thinker unity with others that creates safety and reassurance is of primary importance, whereas to a Difference thinker their own identity is the most important asset, and the violation of the Difference thinkers personality is the major cause of relationship problems. A Sameness thinker seeks to support a group with their personality, and a Difference thinker seeks out a group that supports each individual’s unique personality within it. (Sadly, a lot of great lonely Difference thinkers attract a band of Sameness thinkers around themselves because Sameness thinkers think the Difference thinker is a special needs human being and in need of assistance, often driving the Difference thinker into a state of complete incompetence – long story.)

A Difference thinker has an existing set of values adopted in long line of incarnations that they defend in their way of thinking. In many ways, the more versatile Difference thinkers are very stuck in their own ways refusing to stop being obsessed with whatever they are obsessed with while the Sameness thinker adapts to the time quite easily changing as the times change. In a very controversial way, the Difference thinkers are seeking to restore their old, past life way of living quite stubbornly, while the Sameness thinker simply accepts whatever is around them at the time and forces the Difference thinker to apply their old way of thinking into the new era. This weird dynamic is what creates change and evolution and, is the one thing that ensures different species exist and evolve. (Another long story.)

Difference thinkers are also very talented (as in experienced through past lives) at what they do (whatever that may be), while the Sameness thinkers are open to learning new things from others, the Difference thinkers are more specialized in their craft, some of them in many crafts simultaneously, and they want to find support for developing those skills further among other specialized Difference thinkers. A person who is highly developed in the area of mathematics for instance, would find themselves drowning in a group of people who do not understand their need to develop their mathematical abilities to the next level while trying to push them into doing something more sensible, which, from the Difference thinker perspective can be quite senseless; Sameness thinkers rarely consider for themselves what is truly important, they simply have been told that something is important to their group, something ad-hoc like reading books for instance. “You are not supposed to waste time in mathematics when you’ve got all these fantasy fiction novels to read! No get to it!” The Difference thinker would obviously accept all pursuits of happiness equally important, whereas Sameness thinkers only accept those that some authority has noted to be worth investing time, money and energy in, and labelled these pursuits healthy habits of a normal individual and proven it to be of the benefit of the group regardless of individual ideas.

How the society changes in the pressure of the Sameness-Difference -dynamic

And while the Difference thinkers are trying to re-establish their old ways of being into the new era, they are also responsible for essentially all new ideas humanity has ever come up with and at the same time, for establishing rules for the Sameness thinkers to adopt. Difference thinkers have no issues being an ground breaking authority, while Sameness thinkers only ever adopt ideas from someone else. This is due to the extreme discomfort that the Difference thinker feels when being forced into someone else’s idea of a happy life, and in his pursuit of finding a way to exist in a similar feeling of happiness and freedom he was previously afforded, he will find new ways to do it; no matter what – often, at the same time trying to force the Sameness thinkers into adapting to his ideas of how to be a proper human being, again forcing the society to change around him to fit his and his friends needs; while a Sameness thinker tries to change his close friends to fit his needs, a Difference thinker makes it a science or a religion and changes whole cultures if he has to, and often they (we *haha*) have a point. All ideas that promote more acceptance of diversity are also Difference thinker -ideas, but only until the difference becomes largely accepted, after that they lose interest and Sameness thinkers will pick up where they left of; for instance, no Sameness thinker would have stood up for gay rights in the 1960’s, it would have had to be a Difference thinker, but now the gay rights are protected by Sameness thinkers within the gay community (sameness in difference) while the Difference thinkers, gay or otherwise, are yawning at the idea that being gay should still be an issue for someone.

Sameness support for a Difference thinker individual is a major relationship problem bordering abuse…

When a creative Difference thinker makes a name for themselves, the Sameness thinkers will start to accept their difference in a new way. When before, they might have tried to stop the Difference thinker from pursuing their goals, now, they turn their coat and in a way give up on fighting them and decide to support them instead. They may not understand the Difference thinker and his pursuits at all, they simply think that “OK, that seems to make him money, so it  must mean something to someone and it is good luck that it does because this man is useless in every other sense, so now we simply have to band together around him and keep his creativity ticking over.” Needless to say, this is a suffocating environment for the Difference thinker, who will, often yield to this demand of being taken care of out of simple pressure to do so and to silence the people around him, to give in some things in favor of having peace to keep creating (which is his own need to restore a previous life way of existing, because he has always been an artist for example, and he knows no other way of being human).

Because the Difference thinkers hold a very different value system to the Sameness thinkers, for instance, difference not being an issue for them, they will often never mind such things as tidiness, neatness, punctuality or other superficial signs of a competent person. These things, to a Sameness thinker are a red flag that there is something wrong with this person, and they need help… and in the mind of a Sameness thinker that means “step in, take charge, improve the quality of his life” and this can drive a Difference thinker insane, and in a way render them even more helpless as they were before because the Sameness thinkers will consider them completely incompetent in everything else apart from the one thing he maybe good at. (Autism would be a severe form of Difference thinking and may be made worse by Sameness thinkers interference – I haven’t thought that one through, just throwing it out there…)

This rivalry between the Sameness thinkers and Difference thinkers is as old as there’s been artists and innovators in this world, which is… since forever. Countless of stories have been written on this very dynamic, and yet,  it seems that psychological research hasn’t even touched this topic yet. The reason being, that psychological research is mainly manned by Sameness thinkers, who equate “mental health” with “the most common way of thinking”. “Ordinary” in psychology means mental health because the thinking pattern is mainly that of a Sameness thinkers. Of course, studies on personality are trying to figure this out, but I think they might be over-complicating things and not giving this aspect enough attention. Nonetheless, I remind you all that this post is my original work and thus any copying of it is to be considered plagiarism or breach of copyright if not done with appropriate accreditation. Ta.

 

Oh by the way, the height of happiness in Sameness thinkers (the Normal Person*alities) comes with between Attuning Personality Mirrors, whereas Difference thinkers (the Savants*) find the deepest of bonds with a True Emotion Mirror. (Sorry for having so many labels for the same thing, but as I said, work in progress and that has resulted in attempts to describe the styles with a variety of labels and names.)

 

 

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*) Term changed after this post was originally written. Fractions of old terms may exist elsewhere in the post. Read about term updates.
**) Narcissists are Young Souls left alone to survive and they're doing their best. Their emotional age ranges from 3 to 17 -year old. The younger, the more severe the narcissism.

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