One of the recent trends is 'MZ prefers MBTI.'
https://brunch.co.kr/@proshuniv17/22
Why does the MZ generation get so obsessed with MBTI?
MBTI — if you are MZ, you probably know your own MBTI. You'll often see people asking each other's MBTI when meeting for the first time or during small talk. They use MBTI to introduce themselves, and to..
brunch.co.kr
You can easily find posts and reports like the one above. Personally, I think this kind of reading is an 'attribution error' (Attribution Theory).
Most people, when solving problems, tend to look not at careful analysis of others' behavior and thoughts or the situation they're in, but at simple patterns like personality (e.g. MBTI) or karma. In that process, varying interpretations emerge, and to validate or verify their own interpretation, people end up following the universal (mainstream) flow.
I'll leave my personal questions about the various thoughts that branch off from here as a post.
The first question that came to mind was: 'Is MBTI really only an MZ keyword, and is the cause actually about "self-discovery, self-interpretation"?'
Looking at world history during the age of civilization: Egypt, which was relatively peaceful and where flooding was fairly predictable, saw the afterlife culture develop. Mesopotamia, where flooding was irregular and ethnic influx drove plenty of conflict, developed astrology.
People in a positive situation wanted today's conditions to keep going even after death, so thought and research about means for that deepened. People in a negative situation desperately needed thought and inquiry about what had just happened and what would happen tomorrow — not about after death. The way religion's role and meaning shifted over time, the transition of social structure from king to citizen — I think they all show a similar-pattern flow.
And past certain eras of civilization, as trade flourished and the domains of war and unification became so-called 'global,' the environmental, social, and cultural anxiety and conflict that humans had to face only deepened. Means for resolving it diverged from astrology (tarot, constellations, I Ching) into — in the East — I Ching study, myeongni, and in the West — psychology, philosophy, and so on. Lately, MBTI is getting attention again as a psychology-adjacent branch.
So 'astrology (tarot, constellations, I Ching) — myeongni (five elements, saju) — MBTI (personality, disposition)' — these theories or methods take forms like 'arts,' 'studies,' 'psychology,' and so on, depending on the era.
Of course, to us modern folks, MBTI and myeongni, and I Ching? might feel like superstition or a completely separate category. But if you look at how they solve problems — the structure, and the parts they're trying to address — you can see that only the role and the era differ. In the end, all of them are just means humans use to overcome their own lives amid natural or social change.
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Putting this view, these thoughts together, as I said: to avoid attribution error in reading the relationship between MBTI and MZ, this kind of social phenomenon should be seen not as a 'keyword of a particular generation' but as a 'keyword of the times.'
And the cause of modern people treating, conceptualizing, and broadcasting these issues-of-the-times as issues-of-one-generation, I think, is the consciously/unconsciously-learned and experienced perspective (the common sense of our era) each individual grew up with — the sociological concepts like neoliberalism, the economic angle of rationality or efficiency.
