Intro

  • I read the enneagram 3 chapter of Richard Rohr’s book today:
  • It made me scribble this on my notepad:

Learning how to think must also include a clarification of how not to think (“the negative formulation”?)

My enneagram type provides a great roadmap/map of the common flaws in my thinking! Peacocking, believing your own lies/stories, inability to reckon w/ the possibility of failure, etc

Reckon with the sins of the enneagram 3!

  • Below is me copy-pasting bits of the book to act as an instruction manual/path to growth

What is the type 3?

  • The chapter is called “Type Three: The Need to Succeed
    • Type 3 is typically called the achiever, I’ve also seen “the performer” (which I like less)
  • Subtypes:
    • 3w4 is "the professional" or “the expert” (this is me)
      • Type 4 is “the individualist”. I definitely feel like a 3-4 hybrid, this resonates a lot
    • 3w2 is “the charmer” (this is not me)

1. How threes appear to others

  • Lots of ease & confidence
  • Easy to have a lot of faith in

2. How it feels to be a three

Success

  • Driven by a need for success
    • I’m good when I win
    • Draw their life energy from their successes
    • Winning, hard work
    • Often they were a “super-kid” as a child, a golden child

Speed/intensity

  • Don’t want to slow down for others
    • Lone wolf

Chameleon

  • Chameleon & merging
    • Commitment to “the firm”, the community, organisation, etc
    • Blend with the Zeitgeist
    • Become the prototype of whatever they aspire to

Emotion

  • “The type that has the greatest difficulties in perceiving their own feelings”
    • Alexithymia baked in, wtf! Lol
    • I absolutely had to overcome this, this was part 1 of my post-rationalist journey
  • Scarcely know their true selves

Deep desire for praise

  • “When they think that they have succeeded in something, they can send out "commercials" for themselves in order to rake in praise, recognition, and admiration. They suck up endorsements like a dried-up sponge.”
    • 🚨 This is absurdly me, this absolutely made me cringe to read
  • “Praise is the gas that makes the three’s motor go.”

3. Core drivers, cruxes, pillars

3a. Greatest temptation - judgemental meritocracy

  • (I don’t think the word they chose here, efficiency, makes a lot of sense. Seems like they’re talking more about… meritocracy? Judgementalness? I’ll replace it with that)
  • “Efficiency is the three’s greatest temptation”
    • The capitalism system, which dominates the world economy, is based on the three dogma: “those who exert themselves enough can work their way up.”
    • The society of the United States, the symbolic country of threes, is an expression of this attitude. What I say about threes relates to all Americans, for our entire society is infected with this thinking. We admire winners and despise losers.
    • Anyone in the neo-capitalist global economy who doesn’t make it into the middle-class mainstream is treated like a leper, looked upon as substandard and morally inferior. The poor do not deserve to be noticed or appreciated. Ultimately they are responsible for their situation. Threes slip easily into “blaming the victim”.
      • 🚨 (Deeply judgemental)

3b. Merging as a defence mechanism

  • The defence mechanism of the three is identification.
  • Threes protect themselves from threats by becoming fully involved in their projects, and they are reluctant to accept criticism of their group or company.
    • 🚨 Deep merging, obsession
    • 🚨 This is absolutely the story of my life
  • If threes believe in something, then they do it without ifs, ands, or buts, and they can completely smooth out the shadow side, because “shadow” is the same as “failure”
    • 🚨 Don’t want to consider alternatives, don’t want to accept the possibility of failure or error
    • 🚨 🚨 🚨 this is so dangerous!

3c. The key avoidance → failure

  • “Failure” is the term that describes three’s avoidance. There is nothing more tragic than an unsuccessful three, because it’s traumatic for a three to have to deal with failing, falling short, or losing.

Three methods for dealing for failure

  • Unredeemed threes avoid, fear, and hate defeat like the plague. But when it does occur, they have at least three standard methods to extricate themselves.
    • Sometimes they polish up their defeats and reinterpret them as “partial victories”.
      • 🚨 this one resonates a lot
    • Often they shift the responsibility to others.
    • And they frequently leave the scene of the wreck as quickly as possible to plunge into a new, promising project
      • 🚨 So deeply me, lmao
      • 🚨 There’s always something else I can dive headfirst into

Arrogance

  • Unredeemed threes are capable of immensely overestimating themselves. They have often been so spoiled by success that in the end they themselves believe that everything they do is good and great.
    • 🚨 !!!

3d. The root sin → deceit

  • The pressure to succeed that threes are under leads to their root sin, untruth or deceit.
  • In order to win, threes tend to deal generously with the truth. They create an image that looks good, can be sold, and finally will win.
  • These are seldom bald-faced lies: rather they are the subtle nuancing, the airbrushing out of the problematic side of a project, the exaggerated stress on advantages.
    • 🚨 Anticipatio Mentis vs Obbservatio Naturae
  • Unredeemed threes first and foremost deceive themselves. That is why their lies are not easy to see through, even for them.
    • 🚨 🚨 🚨 Socrates and double ignorance
  • First, threes convince themselves that the lie is the truth. Then, for example, an American politician can walk up, glowing and erect, before the press microphones and explain that everything is all right — and believe it himself.
  • The bad thing is that you often blindly trust even a truly dishonest three, Threes look so self-confident; they seem to know what they are doing. That’s why you simply have to trust them. Threes are the proverbial used car salesmen: everything is polished and shines.
    • 🚨 Used car salesman 🚨

3e. Pitfall → vanity

  • Depth
    • Immature threes have no longing for depth. What’s the point of depth when superficiality works and when image without content sells?
  • The pitfall → vanity
    • By vanity we mean that secondary, external things (packaging, clothing, outside impact) are more important than essentials (substance, person, content). So long as threes are trapped in themselves, they live as if they weren’t in their own body and in their own soul, but were standing alongside and watching themselves perform. Threes are born actors.

4. The gift

  • The three’s gift is the reverse of their sin: truthfulness or honesty. A redeemed three has found the way to truth.
    • 🚨 Makes me think of Socrates re: the imperative of caring for your soul. Deconfusing.
    • Then the roof fell in… my whole beautiful world collapsed. All my tricks and carefully rehearsed behavioural patterns didn’t work anymore… But then it seemed to me as if I heard a voice deep inside me telling me, “Let it be. Just let yourself fall.” I lived through the process as if it was a great emptying. At the end I stood there completely empty. And then something happened that I hadn’t ever experienced: I began to feel, I discovered genuine feelings in myself. For the first time I felt I was myself.
  • This reminds me of the Sasha tweet:
  • (Good news → I’ve gone through this!)

5. Symbols and examples

5a. The chameleon

5b. The peacock

5c. The eagle

5d. Colour → traffic-light yellow

Dorothy Day

Thomas More

6. Conversion and Maturation

  • Threes find the way to their gift only when they take the painful path of self-knowledge and look their life-lies, big and little, in the face and refuse to gloss over them anymore. Since this is insight into one’s own failure, threes have a very hard time with it.
  • Threes who have found their way to truthfulness can put their tremendous gifts to work to help other people competently and effectively and to motivate them to discover their own potential (helping them to help themselves). Redeemed threes manage to get groups or communities sensibly organised, get society’s lies exposed for what they are, and get the truth spread in a say that is professional, efficient, and up-to-date.

Hope

Shadow (“above all”)

Sharpen their conscience (“above all”)

Renounce the security won by status, money, power