Transcript Document

Attitudes
and the Spiritual Life-034
09-23-07
The Enneagram and The HAM’s:
Religious HAM Strategies The 8, 9 and 1
The Eight
• 8’s are determined to be self-reliant and free
to pursue their own destiny.
• Thus, Eights are natural leaders: honorable,
authoritative, and decisive, with a solid,
commanding presence.
• They take initiative and make things happen,
protecting and providing for the people in
their lives while empowering others to stand
on their own.
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The Eight
• They embody solidity and courage, using
their talents and vision to construct a better
world for everyone depending on the range of
the influence.
• Most of all, Eights are people of vision and
action.
• They can take what looks like a useless,
broken-down shell of a building and turn it
into a beautiful home or office or hospital.
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The Eight
• Likewise, they see possibilities in people, and they
like to offer incentives and challenges to bring out
people's strengths.
• Eights agree with the saying "Give a person a fish
and they eat for a day. But teach them how to fish,
and they can feed themselves for life." Eights know
this is true because they have often taught
themselves "how to fish."
• They are self-starters and enjoy constructive
activity—building up themselves, others, and their
world.
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The Eight
• Eights occasionally take on big challenges to see if
they can pull off the impossible or turn a hopeless
cause into a great success.
• But they generally do not do so unless they are
fairly sure that the odds are on their side and that
they will have the resources to pull off a "long shot"
and make it look easy.
• Others look to them in times of crisis because they
know that Eights are willing to make tough decisions
and to take the heat if things go wrong.
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The Eight
• Honor is also important to Eights because their
word is their bond.
• When they say "You have my word on this," they
mean it.
• Eights want to be respected, and healthy Eights
also extend respect to others, affirming the dignity
of whomever they encounter.
• They react strongly when they see someone being
taken advantage of or treated in a demeaning or
degrading manner.
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The Eight
• They will step in and stop a fight to protect
the weak or disadvantaged or to "even the
score" for those who they feel have been
wronged.
• Similarly, Eights would not hesitate to give up
their seat on the train to an old or sick person,
but they would have to be dragged away
bodily if anyone tried to make them give it up
without their consent.
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The Eight
• Nothing much about Eights is half-hearted.
• They have powerful feelings and drives and often
have a major impact on the people around them—
for good or for ill.
• Eights are more intense and direct than most, and
they expect others to meet these qualities as well.
• Indirectness of any kind drives them crazy, and they
will keep pushing and raising their energy level until
they feel that others have sufficiently responded to
them.
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The Eight
• Many Eights have some kind of a dream for
themselves and their "inner circle," and being the
practical-minded people that they are, this often
involves money-making projects, business
ventures, philanthropy, and the like.
• They may start and run their own business or set
someone else up in a situation or simply play the
state lottery on a regular basis.
• Not all Eights have a lot of money, but most are
looking for some kind of "big break" that would give
them the independence, respect, and sense of
power that they typically want.
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The Eight
• They can also be highly competitive, enjoying
the challenges and risks of their own
enterprises.
• They are hard-working and pragmatic—
"rugged individualists," and wheeler-dealers
who are always thinking of a new angle and
constantly have a new project underway.
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The Eight
• Less healthy Eights can become extremely
controlling, self-important, confrontational, and
highly territorial.
• They may respond to others by swaggering and
being willful, bluffing and "throwing their weight
around" in various ways.
• Average Eights are full of bluster and bravado to get
people to fall in line with their plans, desires, and
although if they encounter resistance, they will try to
control and dominate people more openly and
aggressively.
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The Eight
• Whether they are running a multinational
corporation or a family of two, they want it
understood that they are firmly and clearly in
charge.
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The Eight
• In brief, Eights want to be self-reliant, to prove their
strength and independence, to be important in their
world, to have an impact on their environment, to
have the unquestioned loyalty of their inner circle,
and to stay in control of their situation.
• Eights do not want to feel weak or vulnerable, to
feel out of control, to be dependent on others, to
have their decisions or authority questioned, to lose
others' backing, or to be surprised by others'
unexpected actions.
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The Eight
• Their Hidden Side
• Eights present a tough, independent image to the
world, but under their bravado and layers of armor,
there is vulnerability and fear.
• Eights are affected by the reactions of those closest
to them far more than they want to let on.
• They often expect that others will dislike or reject
them, and so they are profoundly touched, even
sentimental, when they feel that someone they care
about truly understands them and loves them.
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The Eight
• Eights may learn to harden themselves
against wanting or expecting tenderness, but
they are never entirely successful.
• No matter how tough, even belligerent, they
may become, their desire for nurturance and
connection can never be put entirely out of
consciousness.
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The Eight
• Coping strategy:
• As children, Eights often lived in combative
environments where weakness was punished
and they had to be strong to survive.
• As a result, Eights tend to lead with a strong
and potent self-presentation and to hide or
deny their own vulnerability.
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The Eight
• Major traits:
• Eights can be impulsive, excessive,
dominant, and protective of others.
• They often move into action before thinking
things through, express their anger more
easily than the other types, and confront
situations more readily than others.
• They seek the truth, but may confuse
objective reality or truth with their own
personal reality or beliefs.
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The Eight
• Strengths: Eights tend to be strong, powerful,
commanding, energetic, and intense.
• Challenges: They can also have difficulty containing
their own energy and anger, be controlling, and be
unaware of their own vulnerabilities.
• Generally, Eights are strong, assertive, resourceful,
independent, determined, action-oriented,
pragmatic, competitive, straight-talking, shrewd, and
insistent.
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The Eight
• Eights get into conflicts by being blunt, willful,
domineering, forceful, defiant, confrontational,
bad-tempered, rageful, cynical, and vengeful.
• At their best, Eights are honorable, heroic,
empowering, generous, gentle, constructive,
initiating, decisive, and inspiring.
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Football is an Eight Paradigm
• On Super Bowl Sunday America celebrates
eightness.
• Football is an eight paradigm.
• To begin with, each team wears matching
jerseys, so the field is recognizably divided
into good guys and bad guys.
• This kind of emotional clarity resembles the
mind of an entranced eight.
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Football is an Eight Paradigm
• Eights live in a hostile world and eights are
fiercely loyal to those they love and want to
protect.
• Secondly, eightishness is about power.
• "Smash-mouth football," as it is referred to, is
an eight trademark.
• Eights look for power in all situations.
• In a hostile world you have to know who is
powerful and who isn't.
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Football is an Eight Paradigm
• Many eights will start fights, verbal or
physical, just to find out the strength of their
partner.
• If you stand strong in one way or another, you
earn an eight's respect.
• If you are weak, no amount of goodness or
placating or appeal to authority will endear
you to them.
• Eights are fiercely loyal, especially in combat,
so they make fine teammates.
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Football is an Eight Paradigm
• You can count on them to give it their all.
• And in combat, another characteristic shows
up: they frequently have extremely high pain
thresholds.
• Nobody can play injured like an eight.
• They pride themselves on not showing or
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Football is an Eight Paradigm
• Eights, unless they have an unusually strong
connection to five, focus their attention outwardly.
• They like their power physical, not mental or artistic,
so football suits them well.
• Football teams often develop fierce rivalries.
• Eights do, too.
• People who oppose them can become objects of
obsessive hatred. (Think of Rush Limbaugh's
obsession with the Clintons, especially Hilary).
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Football is an Eight Paradigm
• This obsession reduces the enemy to nothing but
evil, without nuance, differentiation or redeeming
feature.
• The high side of the obsession, of course, is the
fanatic loyalty to the team.
• In times of trial, you want an eight on your side!
• Eights have an inner need to be strong.
• Regardless of the situation, an eight feels an inner
responsibility to be strong enough to handle the
situation.
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Football is an Eight Paradigm
• This quality makes them ultra-responsible at times,
and can become unreasonable.
• They can make exorbitant demands on their body,
for example, driving themselves to get control of a
situation, a business or a relationship.
• All enneagram styles are control strategies, and an
Eight prefers the tactic of getting you to surrender.
• Football is pleasing to them because there is no
doubt about who won.
• Whoever has the most points is stronger and is in
control.
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Football is an Eight Paradigm
•
•
•
•
•
Sportsmanship trophies are not awarded or wanted.
Just answer this: "Who is number one?"
Eights inflate their presence.
They can fill up a room with their expansive energy.
This expansion is in service of protecting the soft
inner self within.
• As with a 280 pound lineman, approach an eight
with gentleness.
• Many women with type Eight husbands describe
them as pussy-cats; beneath that bluff exterior is a
child in need of protection.
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Football is an Eight Paradigm
• An Eight friend of one of the Enneagram
authors broke into tears several times while
reading about eights in an enneagram book.
At first he was shocked, but it makes sense-the author didn't attack, he appealed to their
inner sense of justice.
• Which leads us back to the Superbrawl.
• It is not a brawl.
• They play by strict rules and eights like it that
way.
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Football is an Eight Paradigm
• They want fairness.
• One reason they are hostile is that they see
the world as hostile and unfair.
• When eights are entranced they seek
vengeance instead of justice, but when
healthy they appreciate justice a great deal.
• The referees know all the players want a fair
game when the atmosphere is this eightish.
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Football is an Eight Paradigm
• The Sicilian defense department, or mob as it
is usually called, came into being precisely
because the immigrants were not getting
justice from the police and juridical system.
• Most gangs are eightish in their energy and
they see themselves as having to defend
themselves against a system rigged against
them.
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Football is an Eight Paradigm
• Teamwork is healthy for eights. When eights are
entranced, they turn their power to protect their selfinterest.
• The glory hog who doesn't help the team doesn't
last long in football and everyone connected with
the game admires modesty, especially among the
talented who could play more for themselves.
• Giving up one's body for the team is considered a
highly virtuous act.
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Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• The Angry Eight
• Ty Cobb was an eight. (Self-preservation
subtype)
• In the movie he has all the degenerate
characteristics of an unhealthy eight and only
several of the redeeming virtues.
• Cobb played baseball as thought it were war.
• That's a hallmark of an eight.
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Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• Eights live in a world in which hostility is to be
expected and is to be dealt with forthrightly.
• In Cobb's life that meant hurting whomever
he could on the base paths, pistol-whipping a
man to death, amassing wealth and probably
shooting his own father.
• The movie has consistent psychological and
physical violence and is vulgar throughout.
• Many eights are vulgar.
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Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• One author said, “I'll never forget the fine
Christian woman married to a minister who
asked me if she were an eight.
• I asked if she, although sweet and proper as
a minister's wife must be, ever used profanity.
• She burst out laughing and told me several
stories of her bursts of profanity.
• Profanity and vulgarity are the kinds of
language we all use when we're angry.”
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Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• Unhealthy Eights are always angry so they use the
vocabulary of rage.
• Eights' anger is in defense of an unacknowledged
inner softness.
• They feel they can't share their inner softness, so
they frequently take care of the small and helpless
among us.
• Even Cobb, who is portrayed as systematically
unashamedly vicious, took care of one of his old
baseball buddies who had a drinking problem.
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Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• You'll notice how Cobb didn't like any
acknowledgment of his weaknesses.
• He was furious that he had become impotent,
he hated walking with a cane and when he
went to the Cooperstown Hall of Fame
induction, he accepted help surreptitiously so
as not to be noticed as having any need.
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Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• Cobb tried, feebly, to make friends the way
unhealthy eights do.
• They put pressure on the person, and if the
person fights back, then the eight can trust.
• If the person does not fight back, then they
are not to be trusted.
• In the movie, whenever the wimpy
sportswriter would muster his courage and
fight back, Cobb would be appreciative.
That's in character for an eight.
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Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• In a really hostile world, you want strong
people with you -- that's the thinking of an
eight.
• When eights are angry, they reduce enemies
to a cartoon caricature.
• When desiring sex, Cobb wanted sex and
conquest, not intimacy.
• When he wants sex, he wants it for proof of
his sexual power, so he reduces the women
to certain vulgar terms.
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Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• In contemporary times, Rush Limbaugh, an
eight, referred to Hilary Clinton (on the David
Letterman show) as looking "like a hood
ornament on a Pontiac."
• Rush doesn't disguise his wholehearted
dislike, perhaps even hatred, for Hilary, so he
sees her as a cartoon, in two dimensions.
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Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• Rage is blind, and eights often cannot see
when they get angry.
• Some eights cannot hear when they get
angry.
• They seem to be physically deaf.
• This prevents them from getting feedback in a
relationship if anger occurs.
• But after all, one doesn't dialogue with an
enemy, one attacks.
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Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• If this relationship is intellectual or social, one
tries mightily to convince while not listening to
the other side at all.
• However, a display of force, either physical or
mental, will get the eight's attention.
• Then you can talk to them.
• They can listen if force accompanies your
words.
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Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• Cobb hated everyone who was different: Jews,
Catholics, Blacks, Italians (always referred to as
dagos) - the list was rather comprehensive.
• Unhealthy eights have lot of enemies and make no
bones about it.
• Eights have no time for sham.
• Cobb put it this way: "Life is too short for
diplomacy."
• They prefer confrontation.
• Their approach is "Don't talk them into it, just force
them."
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Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• When you listen to Limbaugh, you get that same
clarity
produced
by
selectivity
and
oversimplification.
• Things must be changed ("The Way Things Ought
to Be.") and the bad people are in control, let's
throw the bums out. Part of the reason eights
appear to be so honest is that they tend to be
simple.
• They reduce all grays to black and white.
• You're an enemy or you're a friend.
• There are no middle areas.
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Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• Eights would like to issue uniforms to
everyone so it is clear who is on their side
and who is on the other side!
• John Wayne is a famous eight and his
movies were never complex psychological
teasers.
• It was bad vs good and John was not about
to endure bad guys surviving.
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Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• Cobb is a drastically unhealthy eight. Healthy
eights are wonderful friends --they are loyal
and protective.
• Eights populate a lot of social action
community work.
• They do not allow injustice and will work
endlessly to see justice done.
• They are also expansive, generous and
energetic and make wonderful party friends!
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