Three Types

I know it's easy to classify the human race into whatever divisions you want, and that such classifications are more or less unfalsifiable. But recently, I've been musing over a tripartite division of people that makes a lot of sense to me, and is the fruit of lots of thinking. I believe it has some validity.

I think one could divide the human race into people whose outlook on the world is primarily moralistic, people whose outlook on the world is primarily aesthetic, and people whose outlook on the world is primarily cognitive.

People whose outlook is primarily moral tend to be humanitarians, activists, or otherwise directly involved in the effort to reduce human suffering and increase human happiness. They might be hugely misguided in their idea of what would achieve this, but they are still sincere. I think Socrates is probably a good "house philosopher" of this group.

People whose outlook on the world is primarily aesthetic tend to be, well, aesthetes. I fall into this category. They worry about issues like preserving historic town centres, old customs and traditions, landscape, and so forth. Even when it comes to morality they tend to be more focused on moral beauty than on ethics pure and simple. They aren't as focused on eliminating suffering as the moralist, they tend rather to see some suffering as justified if it leads to greater meaning and beauty. Like the man who said: "The right to suffer is one of the joys of a free economy." Nietzsche is undoubtedly the "house philosopher" of this group, who declared at one point that the only thing that justified life's suffering was to provide a drama for the gods.

People whose outlook on life is primarily cognitive tend to be careerists, go-getters, and scientists. Their highest conception of joy is to think, to cogitate, to solve problems. They put a huge value on work and education and they tend to be news junkies. To them, the drama of history is man exploring the universe and achieving progress. Their favourite term of disparagement is "backward". Their house philosopher is probably Jeremy Bentham or John Stuart Mill or something like that.

Of course, people tend to be a mixture of all three, but I think most people would favour one of these three divisions. It becomes noticeable when you hear people discuss some issue and their different value systems become obvious-- the moralist can't understand why the aesthete would want to keep a rickety set of old houses instead of build a hygienic and soulless housing estate; the thinker can't understand why the moralist would find space exploration a waste of money; and so forth.

I have been musing on this for a few days, at least, but this morning it occurred to me that these three faculties might fit neatly into the injunction of Scripture: "You shall love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind."