The Teska Type System™ isn’t just a new way to gauge personality. It represents a departure from the modernist view of human nature. That view is outdated, but this type system is not. It provides a deeper, more rational look at what makes us who we are.
It moves us past the “blank slate.”
In an essay he wrote in 1689, the philosopher John Locke introduced the concept of the “blank slate.” In his essay, he argued that the human mind is formed only by experience. What we take in through our senses, he maintained, is the sum of our knowledge.
After Locke, modernist thinkers extended his concept into a belief that when it comes to human nature, there are no inherited traits, only cultural constructs that can be changed at will. One example is the idea of the New Soviet Man, whose core character, according to the Party, would be formed by the State.
Here in the US, this belief was expressed in the form of Behaviorism, a psychological school that held that any child could be molded into any sort of person. This belief caught on among professionals and academics, and eventually intensified into the notion that’s common among them today: one’s sex is a changeable characteristic.
The “blank slate,” in all its iterations, has been a source of misery. The bleak dissipation of Homo Sovieticus (the New Soviet Man in reality) was described by late-stage Soviets. Most of the children of John Watson, the founder of Behaviorism, attempted suicide. A web search for “detransition horror stories” reveals the damage it’s doing today.
It’s worth noting that Locke never had children, because anyone who’s raised them can see that his “blank slate” is an unsound idea. Parents can readily see that every child has certain innate tendencies, and as they grow up, it becomes apparent that they possess natural abilities and inclinations that no amount of conditioning can fully erase.
In its personality types that correspond to inborn hormone levels, the Teska Type System™ reflects this awareness that we all have natural strengths. In its type descriptions, it conveys the fact that we all have different gifts. Thus, in its recognition of our innate differences, this new type system rejects the idea of the “blank slate” and helps us move past it.
It acknowledges natural gender roles.
The most widespread expression of the “blank slate” today is the belief, currently fashionable in professional circles, that gender roles shouldn’t exist. It assumes that men and women are essentially the same when it comes to personality, so it follows that they should be interchangeable in their social and professional roles.
This belief prevails in HR departments, which is a big reason why FFM-based personality assessment systems are used in hiring. Because these systems identify only superficial traits, they don’t obviate a belief in sexual sameness. One assessment firm that employs them puts it this way: “Personality is unbiased, because it doesn’t discriminate based on sex.”
With its male- and female-exclusive personality types, the Teska Type System™ directly contradicts this belief. It identifies sex as the bedrock layer of personality, the root of the most basic differences that humans exhibit in their preferences and aptitudes.
For example, the system designates the Fighting Bear personality type as a natural fit for the Initiator professional role. To succeed in this role, someone must have very strong drives to attain goals and assert themselves, and only a Fighting Bear—a man of this male-exclusive type—has enough testosterone to be that sort of person.
By the same token, it designates the Dancing Fox personality type as a natural fit for the Advisor role. To succeed in this role, someone must be extremely intuitive and relationship-oriented, and only a Dancing Fox—a woman of this female-exclusive type—has enough oxytocin to be that sort of person.
In the same way that getting past the “blank slate” makes us happier, acknowledging the existence of natural gender roles makes us more fulfilled. We see this when the Fighting Bear and Dancing Fox work together. Their types are very different, and also complementary, so when they collaborate on the job, they typically find it both stimulating and smooth.
It’s informed by the whole of human history.
What are “natural” gender roles? The sex-linked social roles that humans evolved for a million years to take. Evolution is what created these roles, and it’s the fundamental principle upon which the Teska Type System™ is based.
The system reflects a crucial truth that’s been hidden in plain sight since the dawn of civilization: in our hearts and minds, we’re all still hunter-gatherers. We modern-day humans may have smartphones and central air now, but we’re still essentially the same creatures that hunted and gathered for a living during the Middle and Late Stone Age.
This is evident in the system’s types. The rule is that Fighting and Hunting types are male-exclusive. There are good evolutionary reasons for this: any hunter-gatherer band that put women in the dangerous positions of fighting off predators and hunting big game would have put its most valuable asset—its means of reproduction—at serious and unnecessary risk.
The exception that proves the rule is the existence of the Hunting Fox type. There are good evolutionary reasons for this as well: a more-assertive type of woman, the Hunting Fox, was valuable to the larger hunter-gatherer bands of the Late Stone Age because she was temperamentally-equipped to hunt small game and take domestic leadership roles.
It comes from the innovative margins.
Why does this new type system depart so radically from the modernist beliefs that prevail in the professional world? Because it doesn’t come from the professional world. The founder of the YCombinator startup incubator, Paul Graham, said, “Great things often come from the margins,” and that describes the Teska Type System™.
FFM-based personality systems are products of research psychology, a field with a track record of failure and fraud. More than half of psychology studies have been proven to be either shoddy or dishonest. When programs designed by research psychologists are tested in the real world, they often turn out to be worthless, as this study shows.
By contrast, the Teska Type System™ is informed by research in anthropology, archaeology, endocrinology, and even climatology. This sort of interdisciplinary approach can be very effective, but it’s rare because the university system discourages it. Researchers who publish strictly within their field are praised and promoted, while those who publish across disciplinary boundaries are dismissed as generalists.
That’s why the most innovative work today is being conducted outside the university system. It comes, as Graham said, “from the margins.” One example is the work done by Paul Conyngham, an Australian data scientist and entrepreneur. With no degree in biology, he used AI agents to design a new kind of cancer treatment for his rescue dog. Within a month her tumor shrank by 75%, and vets called it “astonishing.”
The Teska Type System™ is similar in that it was also created by an entrepreneur without credentials in the field he improved. With no degree in psychology, Chris Charuhas used insight and scholarship to develop a new and useful way to understand human variation.