Signs of the Apocalypse

I had some religious evangelists stop by today. Normally, I do mean things to religious zealots, but these were nice women. I invited them in, gave them orange juice, and after their spiel, I explained the there is no God but God and Mohammed is his prophet. I'm not Muslim, but they were nice enough that it felt good to compliment them by giving them the out that I had a firm belief system in place, and thus that was why I was nice to them and could not be swayed. If I simply confessed to them that my experiences of humanity and my understanding of human history leave me deeply fearful that if there is a divinity, it is one with more in common with Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy than with any values I hold dear. I mean, how to ask: should Abraham have been rewarded for being willing to sacrifice Isaac? Is that really what God wanted? And how exactly did God (if one believes in Christianity) show love for humanity by having his child tortured and killed for us. Exactly how did that cleanse my sins? Also, all that smiting going on. Not for me. But I'm being nice to the equivalent of Jehovah's Witnesses. Clearly, the end is nigh.

Another indicator of the end of times is the increasing reliance on the Myers Briggs personality test. Depending when I take it, I am either an ENFP or an INTP. An undisclosed acquaintance who works for a government contractor (where they actually do Pentagon work, but are not on the government payroll, thus "shrinking" government, while still doing it) was requested and then ordered to take an online Myers Briggs personality test. This acquaintance felt that since the employer didn't have the right to ask about marital status, sexual preferences, religion, and other personal things, answering questions of such a personal nature should also be off limits. The test isn't even that scientific. It's simply a compilation of questions that one can answer differently at different times of the day, the week, the month. I'm an ENFP when sober, an INTP after a glass of scotch. That makes a lot of sense.

Why don't they just give out work assignments under an astrological or numerological system (and base promotions on astrological signs). But then who would ever hire Cancer? No one wants a crab running around. Being a Taurus, I've always been a bit sensitive about that. I mean, who wants to be a Bull, a Ram, a Scorpion, or a Fish? Better than being born in the year of the rat under the Chinese system. I wonder if people who are Tauruses who are born in the year of the bull are somehow extra bovine?

Back to Myers Briggs: its a self assessment. Do people even know themselves well enough to be accurate? Everyone thinks he is fair and even tempered. No-one thinks, ooh, I bear grudges. Everyone thinks he is a decent guy and answers the questions accordingly. So what use are these self-evaluative tools? Most people can't tell you truthfully whether they are intelligent, honest, pragmatic, kind, or fair. They normally think they are, but they aren't the ones who really know in the end, are they?