The Eristics Test
Artist ·  Giver ·  Hero ·  Defender ·  Observer ·  Lancer · Architect ·  Fixer ·  Wizard
  ●●

frustration

love » anger

The Hero is an asset to any group. Confident and loving, the Hero is pro-social and self-sacrificing.

Well-rounded and healthily externalizing, the Hero is the "do" counterpart to the Artist's "be."

The Hero's biggest problem is making sure the anger isn't directed at his or her extended self, the individuals (family, friends, lovers) represented by love—and most importantly, the Hero.

Emotions are arguments

Emotions are arguments, each arguing for survival in one of three arenas:

SELF

The self argument argues for the extended self: You, your family, close friends and valued possessions.

WORLD

The world argument argues for survival in the physical environment, making the feeler confront danger.

SOCIETY

The society argument navigates the complexities of human society, arguing for survival in the tribe.

Your eristic order

Eristic order describes the usual order of an archetype's emotional arguments. There's always a self, world and society argument, but the order and expression differs between archetypes.

Your eristic order goes like this:

SELF

WORLD

The 'default' emotional order, the 1-2-3 order of self-world-society is the most energy-efficient, with a balanced intuitive and rational approach.

Benefits: A strong sense of self

Drawbacks: A weak sense of time

Each argument has two forms

Emotions are dualities, having one of two forms that can be felt at a time:

SELF
LOVE/DISGUST

Love argues to add to or nurture the extended self, while disgust argues to remove from the self.

WORLD
FEAR/ANGER

Fear argues to model and understand the world, while anger argues to modify or destroy the world.

SOCIETY
GUILT/PRIDE

Guilt argues to do work for society, while pride argues to be a high-quality member of society.

Your first argument: love

Your first argument is the argument of the self, expressing in the love form.

Love is the most common first argument, serving in the role for four archetypes.

First-slot love archetypes are inherent cooperators who make for good allies, co-workers and community members.

Benefits: Passionate, warm, caring

Drawbacks: Possessive, self-absorbed

Your second argument: anger

Your second argument is the world argument, expressing as anger.

A second-slot anger argument makes for a feeler who wants to get things done.

The leap-before-look outlook of anger can sometimes lead you to act rashly. When balanced properly, anger makes for effective, decisive action from the four archetypes in this category.

Benefits: Assertive, savvy, disagreeable

Drawbacks: Vengeful, volatile, cruel

Emotions are felt in beats

Emotions are felt in beats, like heartbeats, all three arguments made each beat.

Love Fear Guilt Disgust Anger Pride

 

 

 

 

 

 

Satisfaction (Belonging)
Defender
  Revelation
Architect
Frustration
Hero
   Exhilaration   Wrath   Joy        Contempt    Remorse   Duress Zeal Devotion Hatred Mania    Envy Rage   Anxiety Grief Attachment Shame   Despair Passion

Beats span from one base emotion to another along the LFGDAP scale.

Generally: Farther up and farther to the right are more energy-intensive.

Each beat has a point-of-view shaped by its base emotions.

Frustration

Frustration is one of the three "big" emotions (frustration, revelation and satisfaction). As a result, it's hard to achieve. Going from love to anger is a big step, in an eristic sense. It argues for adding to the self, while also arguing to modify the world.

Love Fear Guilt Disgust Anger Pride

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frustration
Hero

Frustration spans from love to anger.

The Hero will typically feel love-first emotions before fear-first emotions. Their consideration of the others in their extended self is inherent, not an afterthought, so they rarely feel passion, the inter-beat experiencing of love on its own. Their love is built-in and functional, making them an asset to everyone in their extended self.

The common recurring emotion with a Hero who can't obtain frustration rewards is rage. The point of frustration is to serve the self argument with anger. Rage is basically what happens when anger is served instead.

A Hero who does experience passion (which can be thought of as unrequited love) will also typically experience duress and rage. Duress is particularly rough on the Hero, because fear-disgust is like a functional inversion of love-anger.

Emotions have an energy order

Emotions have energy costs:

Lower energy
→ → →
↓↓↓
Higher energy
Love
Fear
Guilt
Disgust
Anger
Pride

In a beat, the lower energy emotion is felt first.

Self and world

The Hero needs to win against the world, or some part of it, through anger. Physical activities with physical results are especially important to this archetype.

The self argument covers friends and family too, so the Hero will be quick to use anger on their behalf.

Sports and hobbies

Non-frustrating hobbies are a great escape for the Hero, who can use them to satisfy anger's world-needs without societal expectations. Sports can offer a healthy outlet for anger.

Emotions are needs served by culture

Groups, cultures and societies need to satisfy all six base emotions for their members.

They'll typically do this in one of three patterns:

Love Fear Guilt Disgust Anger Pride

 

 

 

 

 

 

Attachment Envy Zeal

Attachment/envy/zeal cultures are typically family- or individualism-oriented and hardworking.

Love Fear Guilt Disgust Anger Pride

 

 

 

 

 

 

Devotion Contempt

Devotion/contempt cultures have strict rules, devoted followers and a disdain for outsiders.

Love Fear Guilt Disgust Anger Pride

 

 

 

 

 

 

Satisfaction (Belonging)
Defender

Satisfaction works for smaller groups which focus on avoiding fear, guilt, disgust and anger.

All cultures are characterized by one of these three patterns.

Emotional strategies

Satisfying love and anger together is, well, frustrating:

Love Fear Guilt Disgust Anger Pride

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frustration
Hero

Frustration falls just short of satisfaction.

As a characteristic emotion, frustration is big, cumbersome, and even when achieved, not very satisfying.

The Hero's secret weapon is approaching love and anger separately, through attachment and zeal:

Love Fear Guilt Disgust Anger Pride

 

 

 

 

 

 

Attachment    Zeal

Attachment and zeal are the easiest way to achieve love and anger.

Attachment and zeal put love and anger in the driver's seat, emotion-wise, unlike frustration where it can feel like anger is happening to you.

Fitting in

The Hero's affinity for attachment/zeal makes the archetype a good match for the attachment/envy/zeal pattern:

Love Fear Guilt Disgust Anger Pride

 

 

 

 

 

 

Attachment Envy Zeal

This societal pattern can serve the Hero's two biggest needs of love and anger.

The Hero will find a good emotional complement in the Fixer, since the Hero isn't inherently good at envy.

The other societal pattern of devotion/contempt is a harder challenge for the Hero. Devotion can serve the Hero's need for feeling love, but doesn't do it as well as attachment which uses the self/world pattern like frustration. Contempt is especially hard for the hero because it abbreviates anger, the Hero's other need.

Love Fear Guilt Disgust Anger Pride

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frustration
Hero
Devotion Contempt

Frustration just doesn't fit in well with devotion/contempt.

In such a society, the Hero will end up feeling one of two patterns:

Love Fear Guilt Disgust Anger Pride

 

 

 

 

 

 

Devotion Grief Zeal Devotion Hatred Mania

Both of these patterns can be destructive for the Hero.

The devotion/hatred/mania pattern is particularly bad for the Hero, because the anger is out of control. Heroes who fall out of the devotion expectation completely will revert to attachment/envy/zeal, ultimately not fitting in with the greater group.

Beats are dualities

Beats (combinations of love, fear, guilt, disgust, anger, pride) have opposites:

●  ●●Attachment ●  ●●Hatred ●●  ●Duress ●  ●●Frustration ●  ●●●Devotion ●  ●●●Contempt ●●●  ●Envy ●  ●●●Satisfaction ●●  ●●●Anxiety ●●  ●●●Zeal ●●●  ●●Remorse ●●  ●●●Revelation

Coping using duress

Since the coping emotion has the same arguments (self/world/society), but in opposite form, it effectively "turns off" the characteristic emotion, giving you a way out of overwhelming feelings.

The coping emotion serves as a sort of shadow archetype, characterizing you in times of extreme emotion.

The Hero copes with duress, the combination of fear and disgust.

Duress is best characterized as a feeling of being trapped. It's a difficult emotion to invoke, but the Hero may fall into a pattern of invoking duress in order to escape frustration.

Coping with duress may look like:

Overcommitting: The Hero is generally an asset to groups, and this is where they can feel the most duress, being 'trapped' by their responsibility to the group.

Depression: Duress is the emotion behind depression. It's a 'doing nothing' mode that helps you escape the 'do something' urge of frustration.

Self-perfection: The analysis and discernment of duress may lead the Hero into a pattern of perfecting the self in order to avoid world demands.

The Hero's coping emotion is the Lancer's characteristic emotion.

Emotions are addictive

Emotions can become addictive, like a drug that's made in your head. The addictions usually involve the emotions that make up your archetype's characteristic emotion:

Addiction to love, or the emotions here, looks like codependency.

Love Fear Guilt Disgust Anger Pride

 

 

 

 

 

 

Satisfaction (Belonging)
Defender
Frustration
Hero
Devotion Attachment

Addiction to anger-containing emotions looks like rage or psychosis.

Love Fear Guilt Disgust Anger Pride

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frustration
Hero
   Remorse      Zeal     Hatred

Weakness: Duress

Frustration essentially abbreviates or skips over duress, the emotion that spans from fear to disgust:

Love Fear Guilt Disgust Anger Pride

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frustration
Hero
  Duress    Shame

Frustration abbreviates duress, which itself abbreviates guilt/shame.

The emotion of duress, which can feel like being trapped or being depressed, may be overwhelming or unfamiliar to the Hero.

The Hero is best off simply avoiding duress. Since duress is the Hero's coping emotion, this can be hard, especially when frustration becomes overwhelming.

Emotions model and modify

Emotions model and modify their spheres of influence—the extended self, the physical world or the feeler's tribe/society.

  Self World Society
Model Love Fear Guilt
Modify Disgust Anger Pride

It can be useful to think of the three dualities as pairs of opposite emotions.

They're also called the internalizing and externalizing forms of an emotion.

Love & Disgust
model/modify
Your extended self

Fear & Anger
model/modify
Your physical world

Guilt & Pride
model/modify
Your tribe/society

Virtues

Virtues help you avoid the negative effects of an emotion by consciously producing the results of its opposite emotion. It's like coping but conscious and intentional. Here are your archetype's virtues:

courage

Withstanding or overcoming fear. Acting as anger (the 'do something' emotion) would when feeling fear.

courage is your operating virtue or highest virtue. It's the virtue you need to get by.

discretion

Keeping secrets and revealing information only at the correct time. Using love to function as disgust.

honor

Subverting anger with fear, or thinking when struck with the impulse to act.

There are nine archetypes

Read all the other archetype descriptions here:

Your similar archetypes

The people most similar to you will be your own archetype:

These archetypes share your eristic order:

 

These archetypes have the same first argument:

These archetypes share your second argument:

 

Archetypes with the same missing/third argument:

 

This archetype is the inversion of yours: