The Sun-Herald

Split infinities

by David Dale
As you know, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don't. If you are in the first category, you'll want to know about a new dichotomy just thrown up by research: Innies (people who, as babies, rode in a pram or stroller that had them facing the parent) and Outies (people who rode in a stroller that faced the destination ahead).

According to Britain's National Literacy Trust (here), pram position can have a profound effect on how children learn to communicate and come to deal with the people and things around them.

Babies facing inwards see and hear the person talking to them. Babies facing outwards see the passing parade and may hear a disembodied voice. So two different approaches to life are formed.

It is reasonable to speculate that Innies grow up to be teachers, writers, marketers, psychologists, restaurateurs, lawyers and portrait painters, while Outies grow up to be pilots, explorers, architects, athletes, taxi drivers, programmers and house painters.

This discovery lets us expand a list developed by the managing editor of Atlantic Monthly magazine, Cullen Murphy. In an oft-quoted article called "The Power of Two", he said dividing humanity into "dyads" provides a useful tool for classifying behaviour. One of his favourite divisions is "There are two kinds of people in the world: Italians and those who wish they were". He also enjoys the Ogden Nash verse: "There are two kinds of people who blow through life like a breeze. And one of them is gossipers and the other kind is gossipees."

In this country we're familiar with such divisions as conservative vs progressive, gay vs straight and republican vs monarchist, but Murphy offers almost infinite refinements. He slices people thus:

Dog (ie active, needy) vs Cat (ie calm, self-contained)
Saver vs Tosser
Cook vs Cleaner-upper
Prickly vs Gooey
Manual vs Automatic
Whitebread vs Wholemeal
Deciduous vs Evergreen
Sun vs Planet

To which we may now add Innie vs Outie. Murphy calculates that a mere 20 dichotomies yield more than a million possible combinations, but worries what would happen if someone with all the qualities in column A met someone with all the qualities in column B. He fears that "as with the theorised collision of matter and anti-matter, the universe as we know it would instantly cease to exist." Or perhaps it led to the formation of the Australian Democrats.

Anyway, let's see how the system might work. We could describe Australia's best liked woman, Magda Szubanski, as gooey, dog, wholemeal, automatic, innie, planet and deciduous -- at least as revealed by the characters she plays. Australia's best liked man, Andrew Denton, is prickly, cat, manual, cook, sun, evergreen, and innie.

George Bush is dog, gooey, tosser, automatic, whitebread, decidous, planet and outie. John Howard is prickly, cat, outie, cook and whitebread. Peter Costello is also whitebread, but gooey, dog, innie, cleaner and planet.

Are there better ways to slice humanity, and how would you classify some of this country's public figures?

David Dale is the author of Who We Are -- A snapshot of Australia today (Allen and Unwin). His latest book is Soffritto -- A delicious Ligurian memoir. To join a daily discussion of Australian attitudes, go to http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.