I don't get the connection to identity either. I can see the vertical cluster being "you identify as what you value, who your community is, what makes you happy, etc" but the horizontal cluster doesn't really work.
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"you identify with what you trust" maybe, but "you identify with what your freedom is" doesn't make sense, or "you identify with what your rationality is", or "you identify with what your price is". is that just me, do you think you can classify your identity in those terms?
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You're working with a subjective rather than intersubjective constraint on what identity is. Think of identity as the union of key relationships. Then think of the grain of that. For a family/clan context, it's a set of asymmetric relationships like parent/child/grandparent...
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ok, identity as "I am X's parent, Y's child, and Z's grandparent", that makes sense. in the same way you could say "I am a citizen of X country" or "I am a member of Y professional society", I guess. Is that where you're going with the horizontal identity?
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To a first approximation yes. If the set of n closest relationships that define you are all p2p, you're a horizontally integrated person. If they are all asymmetric, you're vertically integrated.
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so like "fellow citizen" or "business partner" or "friend" are symmetric relationships but "parent" is asymmetrical?
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kinda, though of course, there are asymmetries between powerful and weak citizens, or between bosses and employees. This is why, this relational way of thinking about it is a derivative/extrinsic way, and my initial set of 2 attribute lists was more about intrinsic modes
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Like, I think you can be vertical or horizontal all by yourself on a desert island depending on how you behave, integrate your experiences, try to grow, etc. If you prefer, it's almost synonymous with fox/hedgehog. Fox = horizontally integrated personality, hedgehog=vertical.
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I mean you've had a long-term "two kinds of people" contention that sounds a lot like "feelers vs. thinkers", is this just that?
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heh, it's certainly among my favorites, but no I don't think all my dichotomies reduce to that. This one in particular doesn't. There are "horizontal" ways of being a feeler (eg. vibing with a crowd at a music concert) and "vertical" ways of being a thinker (eg, top-down planner)
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and actually, I don't have a "2 kinds" fixation for anything, people or otherwise. I have a "4 kinds" fixation -- 2x2s. One reason I like that is precisely because you can cross any 2 related dichotomies to tease out how they're not the same.

