Why do some people like morbid things, more than others?

[RedAmazoneFriendZone]

it's not. you being angry and beating the shit out of horses that party too hard will not change that fact.

I suck at dark stuffs I'll let drop the moon, I have an appointment with the sun...

 

[Mal12345]

For me, I like feeling unsettled -- it's a form of anxiety that is actually stimulating to me. I also like the new, the strange, the honest, the real. I feel like much of the casual happy stuff is actually not real or at least not honest, although I can appreciate elements of honesty I see in such things.

I also like to explore things through distortions; if I bend this this way and that, while trying to preserve its essence, what will it look like and what could it do?

For me, I experience it similar to a 5w4 thing -- the distortion of known items into potentially unsettling directions, the better to explore it and understand it. But there's still that weird blend of repulsion and intrigue. It reminds me a bit of the bittersweetness I enjoy in something good -- I like my good stuff to feel sad as well, based on how I see the world.

I can't really speak for others. Perhaps some people just like the jolt of being scared?

I changed my mind about my last response to this. Interest in the morbid can also be a 5 thing.

 

[Hitoshi-San]

It could be an adrenaline rush for some people, especially sensation seekers (ISTP, ISFP, ESTP, ESFP). Or, it could be a lack of sensitivity, and not getting bothered as easily as others. Sorry to be bringing this up to anyone who was long ago corrupted, but I didn't get that freaked out by 2girls1cup. Sure, it was gross but I didn't run around screaming and barfing.

 

[hjgbujhghg]

Cuz Si

Si? cuz...why?

 

[Lexicon]

The fear & avoidance of exploring such things can make it all the more intriguing, for some.

 

[miss fortune]

is this about my collection of large and sharp objects?

or the fact that I dissected every dead animal I could get my hands on as a child?

or perhaps the whole whistling dies irae as a default while walking?

possibly the whole researching ancient deities that no longer have followers... or touring abandoned buildings... or a preference for being awake at night

I also have a plan to dispose of the body (several actually) if I ever DO off someone, though I have no plans to kill anyone

some people just enjoy that sensation of the hairs on the back of their neck rising and the thought that they're learning or seeing something that should not be known. I'd just think it's a darker side of curiosity in a way... desire to know that which man is not meant to know

on the other hand, I really don't get a kick out of torture porn or slasher movies... the atmosphere is lacking and I keep picturing what the physical sensation of having my eyes ripped out or achilles tendon cut would be

 

[Flâneuse]

I'm sometimes drawn to dark/morbid/disturbing things (especially in various forms of art) for different reasons, but a major one is that I often feel naturally out of touch with those darker aspects of life, even though I don't want to be. It's hard to access from within myself, so I have to turn to an external source to access that darkness and intensity. (I realize that's kinda crass, in a way.)

I've heard this can be common in e9s with a strong Sexual instinct when they start feeling too numbed out (against their will) to experience the intensity they crave. I imagine other types would have different reasons for their fascination with the dark side. My 4w5 mom doesn't seem to like dark things the way I do - (it's more like she needs it as a catharsis, a way to feel understood, purging the darkness that's already there)*, rather than using it as a path into a dark realm that's hard to access (like I do).
*on rare occasions when I do generate darkness from within, I have this need as well

In a way, I think I take darkness too lightly, and maybe I crave it because i don't really understand or experience it fully.

 

[Qlip]

So, apparently I'm a 4w5 and I'm supposed to enjoy morbidity, because it's shocking and makes me feel special and I enjoy the thrill of taboo. I don't identify with this. Taboo is fun to play with, but It's not really an aspect of my personality. I really don't enjoy anything about death other than the various ways we regard it is a property of the living, and I want to know all about living without limits of exploration.

I like graveyards, there's a reverence and peace in them that is only gained in being alive to contemplate death. I occasionally think about the horrific, imagining being on the wrong end of it and understanding that in many ways that in these events terror and fear is multiplied in people who never will experience anything other than the possibility of bad things. I find various masquerades macabre interesting in the way they acknowledge how we live with our deaths and the legacies of those who passed. I think that in your own death there is literally nothing, it's everything else that's interesting.

 

[johnnyyukon]

You can find more morbid, dark and ugly things in reality than any writer, philosopher, or artist can dream up.

 

[Ghost]

...

 

[hacbad macbar]

We all are to some point attracted to morbid, unpleasant, or violent things. It's the natural reaction of our brain, the natural curiosity that helps us prevent the real life danger and learn how to deal with real life unpleasant situations and also help us vent our own inner unpleasant feelings we need to deal with.
But why are some people attracted to dark sides for reality, more than others? Why some people enjoy horror, dramas, thrillers, while others find them unpleasant to watch and rather watch a comedy, or a romance movie? Why do some people rather listen to emotionally tensing, or raw and aggressive music and some people think that happy pop songs on the radio are the best they can get?
I have a suspicion this has to do a lot with imagination, empathy and intuition, but I have a hard time proving it. Have anyone ever made a research about such a fenomena? If not, what are your own thoughts?

What do you mean by morbid things? What's morbid for you?

You know, I like to explore the whole territory of human psyche; I like Mysteries. I do not like anything that is still hidden. I like to reveal everything and explain to myself.

I'm not affraid of the vast majority of things, so I would not say I am attracted to the morbid stuff, but they are interesting to me from a logical perspective; it is an act of sheer curiosity.

 

[Tellenbach]

Probably residual dopamine fueled ectasy from our spear-chucking past. We associated blood and killing with food and survival back then; some of that Pavlovian bloodlust has survived. When you think of it, aren't slasher movies merely a hunter/prey type of situation where the bad guy is the hunter and the prey are the victims.

I satisfy my bloodlust by slathering red condiments like ketchup and tabasco sauce on my meat as a blood-like substitute.

 

[Galena]

Not relating to the godly, not even when I was a little kid. It goes too far back for me to remember a specific source.

I'm not particularly interested in intentional drawing attention to the unappealing sides of things as much as just not being squeamish about thinking about them where they exist among the other facets of a thing. Not an interest in calling out or in iconoclasm so much as an interest in creating an accurate record. If I seem to focus on the dark, that's because other people (some of whom might be unmovably averse to looking there - those people are what really scares me) have the other side covered with their attentions. Or, I don't find it really that dark. My repulsion threshold is pretty remote.

I don't enjoy blood, and melancholy art has to be pretty subtle or naturalistic, or I won't believe it. I'm more drawn to depictions of monsters more than to human slashers, and even more to real creatures that challenge us to relate to them - bugs, large carnivores, the deep sea. And there's hell - I started out as a child who identified with those who fell to it, and I still have a thing for depictions of underworlds, but now nature's hostilities (at least to our sort of mammal) are more than enough. Places where we can't breathe, remote land to which you have to bring or create your own comfort, arctic winters, desert rays, substances we shouldn't touch, places with no ground. The beginning, interior and end of the planet. Parts of our natural, non-abnormal psychology that we'd rather not own up to. My "morbid" disposition has grown into a drive to learn about that which is physically hard to for this species get close to. The science of the unavailable.

The way I approach this stuff is rather sensing and thinking, if you want to put it into typological terms. My bottom two functions.

 

[Dr Mobius]

I think Keats summed it up with his poem A Song of Opposites:

WELCOME joy, and welcome sorrow,
Lethe's weed and Hermes' feather;
Come to-day, and come to-morrow,
I do love you both together!

The question isn't one of the juxtaposition of light an dark, but of nihilism. It's the understanding that anything that moves you, shakes you out of your apathy, an stagnation has a beauty to it. Appreciation of the human experience in its entirety is the path to a life well lived. On a more personal note the combination of being both unbelievably miserable, an happy simultaneously is an incredible experience.