First Function

FIRST FUNCTION

The main sign of the First Function is its DEFINITELY. If we feel that nature has endowed us with something not just in abundance, but even with some excess, we can say with certainty that it is the First Function. Whatever it is: 1st Emotion, 1st Will, 1st Logic, 1st Physics. 

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The first function is the strongest side of our nature, so when we have first contacts with other people we quite unconsciously lay it on the table as our trump card. For example, a holder of the 1st Logic, going to a meeting with a stranger, will first (again I emphasize - quite unconsciously) think about whether her cleavage is deep enough, and then about the content of the conversation, her role in it, etc. Whereas the owner of the 1st Logic will think over the topic of the conversation first, and then she will deal with her appearance... 

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The first function is our main weapon in conflicts: family, industrial or otherwise. 

In this connection, the most commonplace household truths take on a new and interesting perspective. For example, it is commonly believed that when a husband beats his wife and the wife cries, it means that the husband is a beast and the wife is a martyr. However, this is not true. It's just that the husband has 1st Physics and the wife has 1st Emotion, and each of them uses their strongest weapon in the conflict. There are known cases of the same kind with the opposite gender sign. Or here is another example, according to Plutarch, "Darius, the father of Xerxes, said in praise of himself that in battles and in the face of danger he became only more reasonable, "i.e. Darius had 1st Logic. 

There would be no great sin in the very use of the First Function as a weapon (one has to fight with something!) if, among other things, the First Function were not too cruel in these battles. And the First is ruthless. The very productive nature of it does not tolerate compromise and requires absolute victory in the fight. The 1st Physics beats the opponent if not to death, then to a complete blackout; the 1st Will seeks undivided power, absolute leadership; the 1st Logic in discussions has only one truth - its own and, proving it, does not stop until it crushes the opponent on all counts; the 1st Emotion screams until it stuns and silences the opponent. 

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The first is a hammer, equally suitable for destruction and creation. However, it is a hammer with all the conveniences and inconveniences that follow from this circumstance, the hammer of a blacksmith, and not the hammer of a jeweler. The products created by him are not distinguished by fineness of finish, they are rough, simple and oriented more on reliability than on beauty. 

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The strongest side of one's nature is usually accorded the status of an instrument of supreme authenticity. Therefore, another angle of the First Function is superiority in terms of the theory of cognition. On an epistemological basis, the First clearly divides humanity into four unequal parts: sensualists (1st Physics), voluntarists (1st Will), mystics (1st Emotion), and rationalists (1st Logic). Sensualists believe only experience, mystics believe only experience, voluntarists believe only personal energy, rationalists believe only logic. 

The illusion of the absolute validity of the knowledge obtained with the help of the First Explains well, among other things, such an amazing phenomenon for our enlightened age as the mass fascination with magic, astrology, and similar superstitions. The mystery is solved simply: all this mass of believers in mysticism is made up of emotionalists. Therefore rationalists can continue to walk on their heads, proving the invalidity of superstition. Useless. For the 1st Emotion a black cat on the road will always be more reliable than all the arguments of reason. 

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The first function is the most important and most reliable tool of perception of the world around, through the prism of which one always begins to analyze the picture that opens before him. A charming anecdote from the series of anecdotes about Lieutenant Rzhevsky comes to mind in this connection: "A lieutenant and a lady are walking along a pond in which swans are swimming. 

Lady (enthusiastically): "Lieutenant, wouldn't you like to be a swan?" 

Lieutenant: "Naked butt? In the cold water? No, I don't think so!" 

I think the reader has already guessed which is the First Function in this anecdote. Of course, it was the lady's 1st Emotion that painted the picture in front of her in emotional romantic tones, while the lieutenant's 1st Physics made the same picture purely physiological in perception. 

Probably, with time, when both use other functions to analyze the environment, the positions of the characters of the anecdote will get closer: the lady will feel the discomfort of sitting in cold water, and the Lieutenant will appreciate the beauty of the landscape. But at first, their view of the world will necessarily be different and necessarily derived from the First Functions. 

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The first function, precisely because of its redundancy, is the main force that one feels in oneself most clearly, one hears its mighty breath within oneself. For example, once Mikhail Chekhov and Vakhtangov met, and in the course of their conversation they both, the great actor and the great director, "had to confess to each other that we are familiar with the incomprehensible power that arises in us at times. I (Chekhov) - while playing on stage, he (Vakhtangov) - in everyday life. This power gave me power over the audience, he - over the people around him. 

Chekhov and Vakhtangov did not give names to the forces they felt in themselves, but now, given the special nature of the First Function, we can name them. Of course, Mikhail Chekhov had the First Emotion, and it was this that conditioned both his choice of the acting profession and the power he had over the audience, the power of emotional dictatorship. Vakhtangov, on the other hand, had an obligatory for a great director First Will - the power to keep the actors and others around him in check. 

Although man usually cherishes, cares for, and nurtures his First Function, he, and especially those around him, feel that it is unhappy and even ugly. And this feeling stems from its excessiveness. As Shakespeare wrote: 

"...the sweetest honey 

We are disgusted by the excess of sweetness, 

He spoils his appetite with excess." 

So it is with the First Function. Its excess reeks of pathology, and thus poisons man to the joy of admiring the most powerful side of his nature. 

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It may seem strange, but even the most fundamental religious conceptions of what God is in his being and what human immortality is all about are formed under the direct influence of the First Function. 

Everyone is religious, but everyone is religious in his own way. Even the 1st Logic can be religious, but its faith has nothing to do with the mystical idolatry of popular faith. The essence of the religion of the 1st Logic is the absolutization of the mind itself. 

The 1st Logic, in its usual manner of looking around and systematizing the world around it, finds it so reasonably arranged, mathematically verified, that it soon comes to the conclusion about the presence of some higher Creator, whose first and practically only property is Reason. From Anaxagoras to Einstein, any possessor of the 1st Logic, having taken the trouble to consider the problem of the origin of all things, willynilly comes to a self-portrait religion in which Deity, the creator and motor of the universe, is thought of exclusively as Mind (Nus in ancient Greek philosophy) and has virtually no other attributes. 

In agreement with such theology the idea of human immortality is also transformed. Proceeding from its scale of values, the 1st Logic considers only mind as worthy of eternity and according to this notion models the picture of the afterlife. Constructions like Chardin-Wernadsky's "noosphere" theory, according to which a transparent shell composed of ideal, cleansed of all impurities, immortal human minds swirls over the earth, are a direct reflection of this modeling. 

It remains to add to the above that the 1st Logic, in its desire to absolutize itself, is by no means alone. This is a property of the First Function in general: The 1st Will sees in the Absolute the unconscious, the blind will (Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Kierkegaard, etc.), and awards eternity exclusively to the human "spirit," the will. The first Physics professes outright idolatry, i.e. it deifies matter in all its forms, and immortality is imagined quite carnally, like the early Christian concept of the coming Resurrection in the flesh. 

The 1st Emotion identifies Deity with the highest and brightest experience ("God is love" 1 John 4.8) and only the "soul," the heart essence within, is left to live beyond the grave. 

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In old age the First Function becomes even more redundant: the 1st Emotion becomes more critical, the 1st Will more tyrannical, the 1st Physics more stingy, the 1st Logic more dogmatic. And this is because the destructions of personality, produced by the inexorable passage of time, in old age force a man to consolidate even more securely in himself that which has served him as his main support before. 

The First function is the pillar of the personality, the foundation upon which the bungalow of the human psyche, shaken by all the winds, rests. In this superpower and fortress of the First, however, there is a hidden and dangerous flaw. It is not flexible. That is why blows on the First are very painful and insignificant destructions of it, introduced by the fastflowing life (say, diseases and injuries for the 1st Physics), drive a man sometimes to madness and suicide. 

And human nature is apparently aware, or rather "subconscious" of the dangerous lack of flexibility in the First Function, because, despite the self-confidence of the First, it is usually in no hurry to put itself to the test in a doubtful situation, whatever we mean by test: a fight or a dispute. 

Let's be completely honest: the First Function is our gift to ourselves. It is selfish, although the word "selfishness" itself is usually used only in relation to the 1st Physics. Therefore, if someone gets something from the First, firstly, it is always "from generosity", from excess of the result obtained alone, and, secondly, not due to an internal need of the First itself, but under pressure of subordinate processional functions. 

In concluding this account of the First Function, it must be admitted that the First Function's selfishness, monologism, vulnerability, cruelty, and brutality make it the most significant and vivid, but not the best side of human nature.