Orders with a surge in it will be attracted to a kind of personality

[Young Bard he/him]

Please Note: The following is all speculation, and not necessarily correct.

 

I could not help noticing that a number of people with the same surges seemed to have similar personalities. I'm not sure whether this has been discussed before, but here is my theory.

 

Orders with a type of Surge in it will be attracted to a kind of personality.

 

I have a few examples.

 

Windrunners/ Skybreakers: Shared Surge = Gravitation

 

Both the Windrunners and the Skybreakers seem to feel the need to uphold what they believe to be right. In the Windrunners case, it is their own personal ethics, while in the Skybreakers case, it is the law they attempt to uphold. This could be why their is anger between them, as when their beliefs conflict, both sides will feel the need to uphold their own belief.

 

Lightweavers and Elsecallers: Shared Surge = Soulcasting

 

Shallan Davar and Jasnah Kholin both have a keen interest in the scholarly arts. This is probably just due to a co-incedence, but what if the spren associated with Soulcasting are attracted to scholarly figures in the same way creationspren are attracted to Shallan when she creates an artwork?

[kaellok he/him]

I don't see how this is much different from saying that spren are attracted to people that act or behave in certain ways--which we already know to be true.  Although, I guess this would really be more saying, "The Surges determine the type of people that spren are attracted to."

 

We have also seen incredibly few examples to be making any sort of assumptions about relations.  For example, we have only actually seen Lightweavers/Elsecallers at all of the examples you've given.  Although Szeth being a Skybreaker is assumed, he as yet has attracted no spren while on-screen, so comparing his personality with anyone in regards to your theory is flawed.  Comparing Kaladin to vague generalities of Skybreakers based on WoB and the epigraphs in WoR is also a flawed method.  Also, even if everyone with a name in the books became a Radiant, it would likely be possible to find connections in personalities that you describe that are merely happenstance; it's actually very, very difficult to find that there's no commonality between people; and the smaller the sample size, the easier it becomes.

 

However, I wouldn't be surprised if a form of your theory were true.  It would be a way to demonstrate the push/pull mechanism that seems to fuel Sanderson's magic systems, without the blatant use in Mistborn.

[Kyats Rani she/her]

Technically, Windrunners and Bondsmiths also share a Surge (Adhesion) and we have seen both a Windrunner (Kaladin) and a Bondsmith (Dalinar). In my opinion they do share a personality trait (or maybe I should call it a predisposition) of being good leaders. One of the Windrunners attributes is leading, while one of Bondsmiths' is guiding, which I see as very similar (in my mind the only difference is that somebody who's leading is also actively taking part in action and somebody who's guiding stays behind).

 

Though I fail to see a similarity between Renarin and Lift and Truthwatchers share a Surge with Edgedancers... Same goes for Renarin and Shallan - they seem to have nothing in common.

 

This being said, your theory has potential, especially since we know that spren are attracted to certain personalities. I think it's possible to assume that spren granting the same Surge have something in common so they may be attracted to people with somewhat similar personalities (or at least ones having the same particular personality trait among many others that are different).

[Edgedancer he/him]

You might have a point but as people have said we don´t really have enough data to go on. Something I was just reminded of however is the theory that the position on the surbinder chart defines the closeness to Honor/Cultivation (up and down) and the physical/cognitive (right to left) orientation of the order/their Spren/ their surges. I could see a personality progression if we replace physical/cognitive with practical/scholary (or something like that) based on the same orientation.

Naturally that´s going on even less data and way more sterotypes and speculation than you are so the following might be complete crem.

Bondsmiths essentialy pure Honor are about uniting people and (at least going from Dalinar) doing so for the good cause.

Windrunners are a little bit less of Honor but more practical, so they concentrate on the smaller groups they are protecting and leading them to go out helping others.

Skybreakers are even less of Honor but more practical ditching "doing good" and instead stick This post has been reported for attempting to skirt the rules a more reliable method of doing the right thing and namely the law.

Dustbringers/Releasers are mostly practicallity with some Cultivation deciding to deal with evil just as you would with weed.

Edgedancers are more Cultivation with some practicallity leading them to go out there and care for the ones that have been "forgotten."

And so on, just a little pice of speculation that´s probably baseless.

Edited November 21, 2014 by Edgedancer