#birdpri

I don’t have anyone I know who is interested in SHC and I have a burning desire to ramble to someone about Lion primaries. Because I really just don’t understand them.

Honestly, when I look at Lions, it makes me wonder how it took me as long as I did to figure out that I was a bird primary. Because I just fundamentally… don’t. get. lion primaries. I can understand gut instinct and such but relying on that? And only that? How? Why?

I can understand snakes and badgers because it seems clear to me *what* they value and because I find certain parts of those values admirable. (Honestly, I could be modelling one or both of them. But that’s a whole other thing.)

I know there’s other birds with systems antithetical to mine, but I can at least understand how they think even if I can’t imagine coming to the same conclusion. But lions, man. Lions could be out here basing their entire lives off of just what feels right or wrong.

I mean, I get having strong beliefs/values/principles. I have some that I’m certain you couldn’t convince me to change. But I don’t get how people can have that certainty without thinking about, testing, and evaluating it. Does it spring forth from nothing? If you can’t trace why you believe something how do you know you should?

I’ve seen this in fiction - the classic cop who “always goes with their gut” jumps to mind - but I guess I always chalked this up to the same sort of “glossing over how reality works for the sake of a good story” that happens all the time in fiction. Because, surely, in real life your gut reaction is only right part of the time and it’s only because they exist in a narrative that they can be confident and have that confidence validated.

Ugh, it’s so hard to find a way to talk about my thoughts on Lion Primaries in a way that doesn’t just boil down to “but that’s the wrong way to do it!”, which I know isn’t fair. But, wait, I know it’s not fair because of things external to myself which I have taken to heart. If I was operating purely internally then I wouldn’t have a reason to change how I think about it. So if I were a lion primary then that first opinion would just be how I thought about it? I wouldn’t fix it based on what I know rather than feel? I guess? How do people live like this?

No, but seriously: do lions just develop beliefs and then just.. have them? Without evaluating whether they should have them? Only changing if their feelings change? Or am I misunderstanding something here? Because, as is probably abundantly clear, I genuinely can’t fathom doing that.

Okay. I’m going to do my best here. (Which is tricky, because like you… I’ve modeled Badger and I’ve modeled Snake, but there does really fundamentally seem to be a different Mechanism that Birds think with.) 

Clearly there are moral-absolutist-Kantian-ethics guys, who say some things are just Correct and are Always Correct because they Just Are. I absolutely do not think this way. I think this kind of worldview gets you in a lot of trouble, and causes a lot of trouble. When I say things are Right, I mean that they are Right For Me. BUT, I understand how a Lion primary could arrive at this conclusion. Sometimes, that is what it feels like. Something’s wrong and you Just Know. 

But then the next step is right, sure, so where do those morals come from? And most of those earlier moralists say - God, boom, done. Leave it at that. It’s God (or higher consciousness, or idk The Force) just beaming stuff into your head. But for one thing, that sort of implies that anyone who doesn’t think that way is like, evil, which just isn’t true. Also I’m not a moral absolutist. Also also - my gut sometimes gets it wrong. 

So what’s actually going on? Where is this information actually coming from? 

My current theory is that Birds primarily process with their conscious mind (logos, Apollonian nature, “right brain,” people have different terms.) And Lions favor their unconscious mind (pathos, Dionysian nature, “left brain.”) I could say that I think with my emotions, and that wouldn’t be wrong. My emotions clarify things for me, my *dreams* clarify things for me. And I feel more comfortable and secure in that space. 

But like, I’m a person, I live in the world, and I learn about the world though living in it. I will say that experiences, people I’ve met, and even stories mean more, and affect me more, than pure information. It sounds really bad to say, but I kind of distrust logos. I was a rules-lawyering little shit in Sunday school. They told me that I must never, ever, ever have sex before marriage. (They used the analogy of a piece of duct tape that loses its sticky after repeated uses.) But that didn’t like, mean anything? But then I saw that episode of Sex and the City (scandalous!) where Charlotte marries Trey and then realizes that they are *not* sexually compatible. And was like. Yeah. that seems like a really good reason to have sex with someone before marrying them. 

(Sex in the City did give me bad morals. They were right!) 

So that’s how I keep myself on the straight and narrow. I meet a lot of people, consume a lot of media, and I try really, really hard to get myself to see where everybody’s coming from. And doing that overwrites the bad data, the learned prejudices. That’s the idea anyway. I’ve got to constantly keep re-calibrating myself, I’ve got to keep interrogating *what* I’m feeling and *why.* Is the emotion coming from a place of love or a place of fear? (My very patient Bird girlfriend sat though my whole thing about how there are only two emotions, Love and Fear, and how sadness is Fear except when it’s Love… and basically said I’m sure that’s very nice for you. Not what it looks like in my head.) 

It might be helpful to think of Lion primary processing in terms of thin-slicing? Lions trust the split-second reasoning. I don’t know why, but something seems wrong here. I’m going to act on that now, and figure out what part was off later. 

12 Angry Men is a very Lion Badger movie (which I’m sure is why I love it so much and find it so affirming.) The hero, Juror #8 just thinks that Something Feels Wrong about this murder trial. He doesn’t know why it feels wrong, can’t quite articulate it at first. And spends the rest of the movie re-tracing his steps so he can lay it out for the other jurors, and is ultimately proved correct. 

My problem solving process is go off by myself (distinctive Lion trait) and try to get a clean read on my emotions. And if I can’t do that, then we bring out the journaling, or maybe one of my trusted people who can say, your anxiety seems to be coming from X place or Y place. There are a lot of books and movies I keep around as basically medicine, as factory resets or ways to keep an eye on what my subconscious might be up to. 

Howdy! I’m still trying to figure out my own houses and was wondering if you could provide some insight. I haven’t exactly mastered the system so I don’t know how accurate/inaccurate my claims are, so bear with me.

The “why”/Primary: I am extremely motivated by knowledge. I want to know things, not just out of intrinsic curiosity (though that does play a role), but because knowing why things work helps me protect myself more effectively.

One of the trickiest things about this system is separating motivation from method. Because yeah, they are related, but they're also really different. Like this example: "I protect myself by learning things." That's a how, that's secondary stuff. (Bird secondary of course.)

A recent example is this— a group of my former friends all ditched me because I discussed a heavily stigmatized mental disorder that I show symptoms of. And my first response (other than bawling) was to ask them why. And when I got the answer, I was hurt, but I understood. I don’t say this for you to show me pity, but rather because it illustrates this model in action.

This is a really interesting example. Your friends acted in a way that emotionally hurt you. First you processed your feelings (which you talk about in a dismissive, lighthearted, jokey way) then you asked them for more information... which hurt you, but also made you more secure. This is very Bird primary. You feel feelings, but they're whatever. What actually bothers you is not having the data.

(I suspect you're going to end up being a Double Bird. And Double Birds are unique in that their morality and problem-solving are SO interconnected, that they think I'm crazy for saying that for most people, they are in fact two very different things.)

When I got the why and processed my emotions, I cut off ties and realized that their severe judgy-ness had hindered my life for 2 years. And now that I know the “why”, I won’t bring up said disorder again until I know it’s safe. It might never be, but I still have hope.

You updated your system, and you cut away the parts that aren't serving you anymore. Bird primary.

Morally-speaking, I am very sensitive to the views of others around me.

External primary.

I’m not proud of this. In fact, it’s a detriment.

A lot of Birds feel this way. It's a big part of why they tend to like Lion primaries. Lions are much more able to dismiss things with "sounds like that's a them problem."

I won’t go into details, but my parents are… bad. Not wholly, but they are bad. I’ve tried for years, and still do, to escape their opinions because I know it’ll influence mine.

Parents are sticky. They do that. I've been a happily UnBurnt Lion primary for a while now... but I still sometimes hear that voice in my head that sounds like my mother.

And, much like them, I tend to get over-passionate in what I stand for. Unlike them, I’m willing to change if evidence supports this change. I always, however, carry the burden of my former hatred. I always feel guilt over my old beliefs. Even if I’ve changed, the pain I’ve done can never be reversed. And this guilt eats me alive, this shame of being fundamentally wrong.

Okay. You got really emotional on me really quickly here. This could mean a couple things. Your parents sound like fairly toxic Idealists, either Exploded Lions or Exploded Birds (I'm sort of leaning Lion due to the more emotion-heavy words like "passion" and "hatred.") Birds can feel bad, feel guilt, feel shame when looking back at an older version of themselves that they now consider morally repugnant. (Birds are human.) Idealists struggle with the angst of worrying that they are fundamentally wrong about the world. So you could be a guilty Bird, especially if your emotions feel wrong or unhelpful somehow. But you could also be a very Burnt Lion modeling Bird - because Bird seems safer, and you don't want to be a Lion the way your parents are.

Hello, you have a really interesting blog! It’s fascinating to read the process of you sorting someone. I was wondering if you could help me find my sorting.

I don’t know my primary OR my secondary. They might be burnt, but I think this is mostly a result of me overthinking and being shite with self-analysis. Which is a horrible combination.

I’ve found my best work is usually the result of me taking what someone else has done, ripping it apart, adding or removing parts as needed (usually all of them) and then making a cohesive Thing out of it. It’s how I’ve made projects, stories, art, etc.

What an interesting thing to say. Wanting something to start with something which you can then respond to is making me think Improvisational secondary. Snake or Lion?

The process of picking apart someone’s work/advice gives me an idea of what I want to make. Which is why I usually end up doing my work at the last minute, by begging everyone else for their work.

Oooh we’re leveraging the community. So a social secondary like Snake is still very possible, especially with that description of pulling something together last minute using pieces. Very improvisational. But I’m wondering if there’s going to be any Badger in your sorting. Maybe as a primary.

It’s also how I treat advice and suggestion (which annoys my sister a lot, heh). I listen to someone’s suggestions on how to act or react to some problem, and then decide what I want to do. It’s like I need a base to completely disregard. A signpost which tells me, ‘Going left looks like a decent idea’ so that I can decide for myself to go whether to go right or centre. The metaphor is somewhat nonsensical but it’s the best I’ve right now.

So I could read this as just being contrary (rebelling to rebel), or maybe being in a situation where you need to utilize negative indicators. It could be a way to bootstrap a Lion primary - get some outside advice, then see if you emotionally respond positively or negatively. But the fact that you depend so much on your community when deciding what to do makes me think an external primary - Badger or Bird.

Making a plan makes me feel secure, because ‘Finally! A direction to move in.’ However, I’ve never been able to follow any of the plans I have. I usually end up just doing stuff at the last minute when I can’t worry about other things. You know, when my head is too full with an overwhelming sense of ‘I have to do this right now!’ to get distracted. The plan’s just to get me started.

Oh this is executive dysfunction stuff. And not to armchair diagnose, which is super not ethical… but a LOT of neurodivergent people write into me, and a LOT of them have helpful bird secondary models that function as toys/coping techniques.

My go-to method for solving people-problems is to think of the things I want to get across, psyche myself up for the confrontation and just barge on with it. Just, do it. Yeet myself into the tense and undesirable situation and we’ll see what happens. It’s the only good method. The other two are ‘pretend this problem doesn’t exist’ and ‘ignore that person/those people forever’.

Super DUPER Lion secondary. There are two choices 1) Charge at the problem, see what happens 2) Do nothing.

It’s easy for me to fake my investment in things. I got into the Environment Club recently, and in the application form I remember writing about oil spills in a way that made it seem as though it was an issue I’ve been passionate about for a long time. It had only come to my attention when ‘Ocean on Fire in Mexican Waters’ became a headline. I was very proud of that one. While I won’t fake an opinion, I can and will control how passionate I appear about a thing. I am rather proud of this.

Still Lion. That is how Lions face-change - they can raise or lower their intensity.

Secondaries are easy to understand for me. The idea that there is a way of doing things that comes naturally to me is fairly plausible. Primaries on the other hand….they are murky as fuck for me. I always end up getting in tangles over it.

On one hand, it’s natural for a person to prioritise their loved ones and the issues that affect their people over other issues. On the other hand, this is the sort of mindset that stops us from caring about issues beyond our tiny sphere. The sort of things that makes us indifferent towards the suffering of those who are not a part of your group or one of your people. What is the correct mode of action here?

Good afternoon Wisteria! I was hoping for your input with my sorting. This MAY become a novel, and i apologize ahead of time for that. Hopefully its interesting, if nothing else.

I am having trouble with both my primary and secondary. Ive thought i had it figured out so many times and then i would reanalyze myself and get confused. So i guess ill start with primaries. I can tell you for sure that i am not a snake primary. I just cant love another person quite like that. I grew up in a very snake primary environment and never felt i really fit in. I really appreciate snakes and i understand them, but i dont think i am one. I also very much pride myself on my individuality and dont bond to groups so i believe that may rule out badger. I think ive narrowed it down to exploded bird or really confused lion.

Interesting. So far so good. Let’s hear what you’ve got.

Right now in life, with all the information coming at me, all the data, all of the twists and turns, media bias, conspiracy theories, rabbit holes and objective realities, i cant figure out the truth.

… sounds like an Exploded Bird to me.

I think all theories are worth investigating and rabbit holes are fun. But i hate hypocrisy. And its everywhere.

I mean, everyone hates hypocrisy… but I think Birds find it *unforgivable.*

I cant organize all of this information.

Exploded Bird.

Dude. Whats gonna happen if deep fake becomes the norm?

eh, Photoshop has been the norm for a long time and we do okay. Some fakes have always been better than others, and there have always been fakes.

I feel like the safest thing to do is to fully understand myself. Then i can analyze and understand the world.

I would agree with that.

I would say that hands down i was an exploded bird, but i feel very strongly about things right away. But then i learn about them more and if my feelings were wrong, ok. Whatever.

This is still Bird. It’s not that Birds can’t feel strongly about things right away. They do, they just don’t feel safe TRUSTING those feelings. Instead they do… exactly what you’re describing here. Learn more, and then if it turns out their initial feelings were wrong… that’s fine, actually. The feelings are of secondary importance.

Hello, you have a really informative and interesting blog! I was wondering if you could help me find my sorting.

I'm mostly settled on being a Snake Primary. I had a tiered list as a kid of my friends based on who I preferred and I was really happy about it, showing it off like a fool, I only deeply care about what my 'favourites' think of me, and I love putting my 'favourites' in front of myself and tend to sacrifice a lot of my time, resources etc. on them and it doesn't feel like too much but more of my duty as a friend (/partner in the past).

That sounds pretty Snake.

However, because of the moral system I've kind of adopted (karma)

but sounds like you might be wearing Bird over the top?

I'm not sure if I would blatantly hurt someone outside my favourites just for the benefit of myself and my favourites. It goes against my morals and when I see others doing that, it gives me a weird/bad feeling.

You’re falling into the Extreme Hypothetical trap here, which is never super useful when it comes to sorting. Stuff like “would I kill someone, no questions asked, if one of my people asked me” is just... too big. It incorporates too much, and you can’t use it to get a clean sample.

I would, in the past, however, stay away from things/not participate in things that might hurt me or my favourites even if doing the thing would benefit many people. It sounds bad saying that though, and I'm slightly reconsidering this perspective as other facets in my perspective changes.

Hmmm. I’m very interested in the way you stress that you felt this way in the past. Because that’s very much the sign of of a Bird. It sounds like you acted in a Snake sort of way but... are now guilty about it.

I believe in unconditional love and I'm trying to integrate that into my actions.

That’s too general, and could apply to any primary.

I relate to Bird Primary, the way they view their old selves as different people, as I see my morality shift ever-so-slightly or all at once. But I think I might throw it all away if I was hurt too much, which I had been in the past and thus I had discarded some parts of my worldview and then adopted them back when I got another perspective.

That is... just a description of a Bird. That’s what a Bird does.

Stop. Breathe. It's okay.

Of the two primary scenarios you gave me, one is WAY more likely than the other. I suppose it might be POSSIBLE to be a Burned Lion modeling that kind of Exploded Bird... but just, incredibly unlikely. Burned Lions latch on to external systems/other people who Have It Figured Out. So a lot of the time, their external replacement morality gets really... simplistic. They definitely don't start doing the "there is too much data" Exploded Bird stuff. Exploded Bird in general feels extremely weird to Lions, even burnt ones.

But. Exploded Birds try to model Lion all the time. That is SUPER common. Exploded Birds romanticize and idealize Lions, because Lion primary seems extremely easy to them. "Kind of magical" and "like a jedi" are phrases that come up. Also, this ~

"I just keep overthinking and going in circles whenever I have to make a decision....I have no problem ignoring my gut, like when it was telling me not to get the vaccine and I was like "Umm no that's dumb" and went and got it."

is just a description of a Bird primary. Not sure what to make of the superstitious marble box thing. Haven't really thought about, or seen anything about, the way that superstitions interact with sorting.

Also? People?

GET.

YOUR.

Uh, can you please help me identify my secondary?

So, I get scared and nervous easily, and procrastinate endlessly.

Okay, we’ve got some anxiety and some executive functioning stuff here, which might be getting in the way of you using your secondary.

Charging is hard for me to do. Evading isn’t, but I don’t think I enjoy it. Sure, there are times when I feel like some mastermind, watching as the chips fall where I want them to/where I predicted they would, but it’s more of an intellectual satisfaction than an emotional one. I don’t come out of it feeling good about myself.

Sounds like a Snake secondary model (you can use that skillset, but it doesn’t feel good.) Interesting.

Lying comes easy to me. It’s like a well-worn instrument in my hand. I know how to use it, I know what I’ll get out of it.

Conceptualizing this particular skill as a *tool* is kinda making me think… Bird? (The Snake is definitely a model)

Using it correctly means avoiding confrontations, messing it up means lowering my trustworthiness in the eyes of others. (Which I don’t want to have happen, but I’ve no idea what else to do.)

Whatever secondary you’ve got underneath the Snake seems a little burned. ‘I don’t want to solve problems the way I have been, but I just don’t see any other options.’

I naturally used to act differently in front of different people, but over the years I just.. stopped that. I’m still not sure why.

That could mean that you used to have a more performance-based secondary (Courtier Badger, Actor Bird) that burned, and so now you don’t use it anymore. OR it could mean that at one point you had a model that you have since dropped.

I also used to be the “we’re not so different, you and I” type of guy except I stopped doing that too,

I’m not sure exactly what you mean by that. “We’re not so different, you and I” is a stock villain phrase, and we already know that you conceive of your Snake model as sort of villainous (using words like ‘mastermind’ and ‘lying.’)

BUT “we’re not so different, you and I” is just… a way of describing how Courtier Badgers work. You find the common ground, and you live there.

and now social interactions are just a lot of floundering around for me. A whole lot of Awkward.

Either way, you’re a little burnt. You don’t believe you’re good at the social stuff.

In my life, there have been super-specific instances when I got into an argument on one of my ’good days’, and I was able to retort and stand my ground

Lion secondary?

without feeling scared of offending the other person.

… or maybe not. Lions, especially when they’re in righteous argument mode, just do not care about offending the other person. The other person can deal. That *specific* worry is more like… Badger or Bird, because they construct themselves around other people.

I felt really good about myself, like I knew where I stood, and why I was standing there.

That’s a primary thing. I’d love to know what your primary is (based on this, it’s probably Idealist.) That would make this a lot easier, because the language used to discuss Lion primaries and secondaries is very similar, and you can get false positives.

It was a mix of security and surety that came from knowing why I believed what I believed

Oh. Bird primary.

combined with the confidence and drive to stand my ground regardless of how much the other person got pissed.

There we go. Lion secondary.

[However, there are also times when I get into the flow of whatever work I’m doing, and just doing the work brings me immense joy. Which could be a Badger Sec trait or a Human trait, not quite sure.]

I’m inclined to say that’s just human :)

Most of what I said sounds kind of Lion-y, except I feel really intimidated and irritated by Lions. More than once I’ve shouted “THERE’S AN EASY WAY OUT, JUST CHOOSE THAT, YOU HONOURABLE GIT!” at the TV screen.

If you’re Burnt, it’s really REALLY common to look at the UnBurnt guys and think they’re stupid, naive, annoying, or childish.

annoyed at yet reluctantly admiring of the Lion secondary I was viewing

… but are kind of drawn to them anyway.

I suspect my sister is a Lion, but even if I love her to bits I can’t stand her constant need for honesty. Besides, it’s hypocritical of her to demand honesty when she’s spoken lies herself.

I suspect that this is a Primary mismatch. It’s totally possible that from her point of view, she *was* being honest. But Birds, and especially Bird Lions, are really really bothered by any kind of word/action mismatch.

Whatever we say gets distorted in the end, both because of our limitations as speakers and the listener’s biases.

That’s a very Bird primary anxiety.

I would rather my lies get distorted and misinterpreted than my truths. At least those don’t matter to me.

That’s a very… burnt Lion secondary thing to say. You want to put your truth out there, but you fundamentally don’t believe you can.

[If I had to choose, I would say my favourites are Bird secondaries. They’re so simple and efficient, and so uncomplicated (which I mean in the best possible way).]

I was having a shite time with understanding myself, trying to get why kid!me and current!me seem like such different people. The part about a Lion system changing to a (Burnt) Badger one? That explains So Much.

You know, I was filled with so much joy when I read this though, looking back at my life and seeing it through the lens of my Sorting, and suddenly everything’s so clear. I love the feeling of understanding after months of frustration.

And IDK why I didn’t consider Exploded Bird earlier, I went back and read the description and damn if it doesn’t fit me to a T. I think, the first time I read it I was too repulsed by the other type of Exploded Bird (conspiracy theorist) and just, having a mini crisis as I parsed through all my decisions and convictions to confirm that I wasn’t one. They make me super uncomfortable.

Lion Sec is obvious in hindsight, but they’ve always seemed too powerful and confident for me. I really do feel stifled in my current situation, unable to be truthful without the atmosphere at home becoming unbearable. Being bullied in the past hasn’t exactly helped either, I hate keeping my head down but there are times when I feel like it’s the only choice. I am trying to become bolder so that I may, one day, live unapologetically.

After I sent that Sort Me post, I had started changing my values to more Lion ones. But I really do like Badger morals, so I think I’ll instead focus on unburning that. And after that’s done, try to find a way to mend that exploded Bird Pri.

Also, sidenote, I read about Bird Lions becoming temporarily catatonic after their entire worldview being shaken, and damn if that wasn’t me after my sister told me about the Brain in a Vat theory. Bit extreme, but I spent  m o n t h s  trying to recover. Currently, I have a love/hate relationship with Philosophy.

Thanks for the lovely note, Bird Lion. It helps putting words to this stuff, and I love that I could help with that a little. I like your plan. It’s a good plan. And you’re right, Exploded Birds *are* tricky. Exploded Lions have a very distinct *look* to them, and so do Exploded Badgers etc. But Exploded Birds can make themselves nuts taking in all the information - or none of the information - and that looks very different from the conspiracy theorist type who has picked only *one* source to trust.