Do you consider yourself to be a complex person?

K

Koba

Community Member
MBTI
nope
Do you consider yourself to be a complex person? Do you have complex needs?

I hear "I'm a complex person" sometimes, along with "I'm really not a complex person." So what exactly does that mean? I always thought my basic interests and motivations were pretty straightforward, and once I get to know people, that's usually true about them too. It seems to me that people decide that someone else is complex when the other person is just different than them, and making them seem the same requires a complex explanation. To give an example, some people find being considerate and even tempered almost always to be strange, complex, or even not like a "real person," but that's really a pretty straightforward thing, if people would just come from a perspective different than their own.

I don't know exactly where I was trying to go with this thread. Usually I try to make topics on forums more focused but I'll post this anyway.
 
No this is a really interesting topic, I'm not sure if I am either. I think you'v come up with a good explanation though.
 
I don't seem complex to myself. I have a very clear grasp of how I'm feeling, what I'm thinking, and how to express both lucidly the majority of the time. I understand how I'm going to react in the vast majority of situations I might find myself in and can successfully anticipate how a majority number of people I'm likely to come in contact with are apt to react to certain situations.

I guess the question for me is how you define complex... as in an intricate interconnected system or as in chaotic, complicated, hard to understand problem.

com⋅plex

/adj., v. kəmˈplɛks, ˈkɒm
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plɛks; n. ˈkɒm
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plɛks/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [adj., v. kuh
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m-pleks, kom-pleks; n. kom-pleks]

—adjective
1. composed of many interconnected parts; compound; composite: a complex highway system.
2. characterized by a very complicated or involved arrangement of parts, units, etc.: complex machinery.
3. so complicated or intricate as to be hard to understand or deal with: a complex problem.
4. Grammar. a. (of a word) consisting of two parts, at least one of which is a bound form, as childish, which consists of the word child and the bound form -ish. b. complex sentence.
5. Mathematics. pertaining to or using complex numbers: complex methods; complex vector space. —noun
6. an intricate or complicated association or assemblage of related things, parts, units, etc.: the entire complex of our educational system; an apartment complex.
7. Psychology. a system of interrelated, emotion-charged ideas, feelings, memories, and impulses that is usually repressed and that gives rise to abnormal or pathological behavior.
8. a fixed idea; an obsessive notion.
9. Mathematics. a. an arbitrary set of elements of a group. b. a collection of simplexes having specified properties.
10. Also called coordination compound. Chemistry. a compound in which independently existing molecules or ions of a nonmetal (complexing agent) form coordinate bonds with a metal atom or ion. Compare ligand (def. 2).
11. Biochemistry. an entity composed of molecules in which the constituents maintain much of their chemical identity: receptor-hormone complex, enzyme-substrate complex. —verb (used with object)
12. Chemistry. to form a complex with. —verb (used without object)
13. Chemistry. to form a complex.

Origin:
1645—55; 1905—10 for def. 7; (adj.) < L complexus, ptp. of complectī, complectere to embrace, encompass, include, equiv. to complect- (see complect ) + -tus ptp. suffix; (n.) < LL complexus totality, complex (L: inclusion, grasping, embrace), equiv. to complect(ere) + -tus suffix of v. action; reanalysis of the L v. as “to intertwine (completely)” has influenced sense of the adj.
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If all complex means is constituting an interconnected system in your own right, then who's not complex?
 
I wrote a poem to myself one time about this.

It went:

Don't Fear the fascination of complexities
for they shall teach thee of Simplicities

I think in Zen it is sometimes said something like:

As a child mountains were mountains and rivers were rivers
As I grew up, I realized they were collections of atoms and
chemical reactions.

When I grew to understand this, they were mountains
and rivers again, but something had changed in me.
 
If you can't even completly understand yourself, and you work on it every single day. I call that complex.
 
That's defining complex in a personal/subjective sense- what's too complicated to understand for me? That could potentially say as much about your self awareness, understanding of people, or some other things as much as it says about how complex you are.

Edit: I know you're answering the OP but I'm trying to direct conversation a little by asking questions and pushing things around. A bit like Socrates, and possibly just as annoying.
 
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I run the gambit from complex all the way to complete vacuousness and then back again.
 
Koba said:
That's defining complex in a personal/subjective sense- what's too complicated to understand for me? That could potentially say as much about your self awareness, understanding of people, or some other things as much as it says about how complex you are.

Edit: I know you're answering the OP but I'm trying to direct conversation a little by asking questions and pushing things around. A bit like Socrates, and possibly just as annoying.
Click to expand...

Actually, if you really want to be like Socrates, shouldn't you set up an internal dialogue?

m: No, Koba shouldn't!

M: Why not?

m: It would lead to further confusions and complexities!

M: Sure, but isn't that the point?

m; Whatcha mean?

M: Well if Koba wants to reach internal understandings, Koba must push him/her self

m: by internal and external dialogue?

M: Sure! It seems the human way!
 
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I believe that I completely understand myself. However All my actions and thoughts interract with each other in highly complex ways
 
Perhaps I am complex in the way I think, or look at things and analyse and interpret situations. In saying that, I don't feel complex because it's who I am, and always have been.
 
I consider myself a rather straight-forward, easy-to-please person however it takes a unique person to be able to see the real me. I'm very hard to know. It takes a person who can demonstrate that they really wanna know me to be able to start to see who I really am, in 28 years only one person has seen those parts of me I purposely keep well hidden.

Do I consider myself complex? For most to understand what matters to me? Yes, absolutely.

I don't want this though.
 
I try to avoid being complex. Keep things as simple as I can so I am easily understood. ugh ugh mmm num yum.
 
mayflow said:
I wrote a poem to myself one time about this.

It went:

Don't Fear the fascination of complexities
for they shall teach thee of Simplicities

I think in Zen it is sometimes said something like:

As a child mountains were mountains and rivers were rivers
As I grew up, I realized they were collections of atoms and
chemical reactions.

When I grew to understand this, they were mountains
and rivers again, but something had changed in me.
Click to expand...

Off topic a moment...
Mayflow, mountains and rivers are also highly symbolic of man's relationship to God (Biblical and other references abound) and the ever-changing nature of life. (Hegel's river and others...)
 
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Complex...well yeah. Some People would tell me I am very multi-layered (that's what complex means to me). Some People think it's cool, because it makes me "never boring", while others think it is stupid, because they can't "calculate" me.
Personally, I like it to be complex, even tho many People get annoyed, just because they don't really have the Will to "dig". Keeps all those super-surficial People away. That's good I guess.
 
I think I'm complex, mostly because I don't see many people reacting or thinking like I do. It's not that I'm SO OMG UNIQUE or whatever...it's just that I feel different, and therefore complex from the rest of the world.

Everything in my mind makes sense to me, but it doesn't seem to make sense to the majority. :p
 
I am complex in a couple ways. I understand myself and why I do stuff, but at the same time I don't. I tend to understand everyone else really well, but a lot of times they don't really seem to "understand" me, although that's probably partially my fault. I get along well with people, but the deeper stuff is a lot harder to hit, and it seems as if I'm always finding some basic part of "me" that other people don't know about yet.
 
I can't see myself as anything else anymore.
 
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