Muhammad Ali (the boxer): SEE

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) became, over a career spanning five decades, the most charismatic SEE in American sports history. He may have had some Fe accent, with both ESE and EIE columns being somewhat boosted in his type profile, visible in the late-life moral-symbolic role he occupied, but it is light, and the base is what he ran on.

What first establishes the SEE core is the calm self-confidence at rest. "Classical" EIE charisma is rhetorically powerful but unstable; it runs hot, has self-doubt underneath, requires constant reaffirmation from the audience. Ali didn't have this. The "I am the greatest" routine was delivered with the certainty of a man who actually believes this. The pre-fight confidence before Liston in 1964, the sustained calm during the three-and-a-half-year exile after the Vietnam refusal under threat of five years in prison — all of this is grounded SEE self-possession. He had moments of theatrical excitement, but the underlying nervous system was very settled.

The social-emotional intelligence applied to combat and to media is the next clearest signature. Ali read people extraordinarily well, certainly better than your typical SLE. He understood exactly what would unsettle his opponents: Liston (the manic pre-fight act that made him think Ali was actually unhinged), what would enrage Foreman (the racial provocations, the deliberate angering during the rope-a-dope). His pre-fight psychological warfare with the press was not EIE rhetorical-prophetic preaching; it was SEE brand-and-people management at very high level. "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee," coined by his trainer's brother, was integrated into his self-presentation because Ali heard immediately that it would work.

He was also a good present-moment improviser, which fits the irrational-sensor-extravert profile. The rope-a-dope was made up on the night in Kinshasa. Ali had not trained for it specifically; he saw, as the second round began, that Foreman was punching too hard too early, and adjusted his strategy in real time, turning what looked like a beating into a tactical victory. 

He was also, characteristically, not an ascetic — irrational sensors are called "hedonistic" for a reason, and this applies to the ethical half of this small group even more than to the logical one. He loved beautiful women, fine cars, elegant clothes, good food, the sensory pleasures of being a famous and attractive man... He took risks across his career with the SEE's characteristic willingness to try anything that seemed like it might work. The body itself was a source of obvious pleasure to him, and he showed it off in the trademark SEE physical-sensory register at maximum intensity.

His cruelty to Joe Frazier complicates the saintly mythology. Ali called him "ugly," "gorilla," and "Uncle Tom," and sustained the campaign across years. Frazier truly did not deserve such treatment; he quietly lent Ali money during his years of exile, appeared in court to defend Ali’s right to obtain a boxing license, and was by no means an “Uncle Tom.” It is tempting to interpret this as cruelty dictated by a principled stance and an abstract idea of racial authenticity. I think the more accurate interpretation is the one offered by the SEE interpretation: Frazier was a rival by nature, the racial-political weapon was at hand, and Ali used it. 

The Vietnam refusal and the civil rights advocacy were for himself first in a very literal way. The war was a constraint on his life, his religious community, and his physical safety, and he refused that constraint because he wouldn't accept it being imposed on him. "No Vietcong ever called me [racial slur]" is compatible with an SEE statement of grievance: those people haven't wronged me, you've wronged me, why should I fight for you? Initially, at least, it seemed to be less of an abstract principle, but the specific refusals to join a side he personally has no reason to. He fought for Black freedom in part because he was Black and he wanted to be free; the advocacy was inseparable from his own dignity. In any case, he was definitely a socionically "static" character in being willing to fight for his beliefs.

The Nation of Islam conversion fits the same pattern. He converted to a movement that gave him a community of his own kind, a refusal of the white world's framings, a name that wasn't a slave name, dignity within his own tradition. He took the name change with absolute seriousness — "Clay is the name of the people who own my ancestors, and I no longer want to be called by that slave name" — but the seriousness was about personal identity and respect, not about doctrine. He moved away from the Nation's specific theology over the next decade as he recognized that the weird racial cosmology wasn't credible, eventually settling into mainstream Sunni Islam and engaging with Sufi practice in late life mostly through devotion rather than textual study. He absorbed the faith as a usable identity and let his understanding deepen through living it. This is what reasonably intelligent people of most types do when they take a faith seriously, and Ali's general intelligence was relatively high.

The slight emphasis on Fe is evident in his willingness to make genuine sacrifices when the situation demanded it. A pure SEE type in his position in Vietnam would have found a compromise that allowed him to save face (a non-combat assignment, a deal of some kind). Instead, Ali went to court and lost three and a half years of his prime, his title, millions of dollars, and faced the prospect of prison. And this is also evident in his moral and symbolic activities in his later life. After Parkinson’s disease robbed him of his speed and most of his speech, Ali maintained his public role for thirty years.

He was, by every account, even child-like sometimes in his warmth, generous to fans, kind to children. He was also capable of notable cruelty when a rival was in his way. The typical SEE temperament holds both — the charm and the tactical viciousness are aspects of the same approach to the world, for SEE perhaps more than for any other type. He was his own creation: a heavyweight champion who took his name back from his slave-owners, refused his country's war, and aged into a kind of secular saint. In all this, he still was the swaggering young man from Louisville who said, in accordance with the Talanov trait list ("look how awesome I am" as a SEE feature), before he had any right to, that he was the greatest. Eventually, he was!