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What Would the World Do Without Fi?

OrangeAppled

Sugar Hiccup
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For you, Fi is your auxiliary function which makes it feel pretty natural since it's well developed. Same as Ni feels for me.

By the time Fi hits the inferior level, it becomes an achilles tendon, especially if your leading functions are ordered as Te/Ni/Se. These three cognitive functions are logical and rational. Fi is not when it's not been well developed and is an unfamiliar decision maker since it feels really needy and overboard, very much a cognitive dissonance. Te/Ni/Se fight it, as a decision-making function. Kind of like:

Te/Ni/Se: That makes no logical or rational sense. Take a look at the world around you and look to future consequences so you understand the impact of your attitude.
Fi: But it feels right.
Te/Ni/Se: WTF does that mean and what's the significance of it? :doh:

Of course we can try to develop it and many try to do so, including myself. But it's constant effort and no amount of effort has made it feel natural for me. Maybe in a couple of decades, it will be modified to feel more natural or at the very least, not unnatural.

That's precisely it - people's own understanding of it is through how they experience it, and when it's an inferior function (and especially a shadow one), then it seems uncomfortable, to say the least...

I think that's partly why so many iNtuitives look down on Sensors - their own use of Se or Si is shoddy and they wrongly assume that kind of thinking comprises Si and Se users.
 

uumlau

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For you, Fi is your auxiliary function which makes it feel pretty natural since it's well developed. Same as Ni feels for me.

By the time Fi hits the inferior level, it becomes an achilles tendon, especially if your leading functions are ordered as Te/Ni/Se. These three cognitive functions are logical and rational. Fi is not when it's not been well developed and is an unfamiliar decision maker since it feels really needy and overboard, very much a cognitive dissonance. Te/Ni/Se fight it, as a decision-making function. Kind of like:

Te/Ni/Se: That makes no logical or rational sense. Take a look at the world around you and look to future consequences so you understand the impact of your attitude.
Fi: But it feels right.
Te/Ni/Se: WTF does that mean and what's the significance of it? :doh:

Of course we can try to develop it and many try to do so, including myself. But it's constant effort and no amount of effort has made it feel natural for me. Maybe in a couple of decades, it will be modified to feel more natural or at the very least, not unnatural.
Neither Te nor Ni nor Se is actually "logical."

To be logical or not is your choice. It's quite possible to be illogical and use any function, even Ti.

That's precisely it - people's own understanding of it is through how they experience it, and when it's an inferior function (and especially a shadow one), then it seems uncomfortable, to say the least...

I think that's partly why so many iNtuitives look down on Sensors - their own use of Se or Si is shoddy and they wrongly assume that kind of thinking comprises Si and Se users.

Real intuitives don't look down on Si or Se. All it takes is opening one's own mind, and not assuming that others look at things in "black and white" terms. Si and Se see different things, not "wrong" things.
 

OrangeAppled

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Real intuitives don't look down on Si or Se. All it takes is opening one's own mind, and not assuming that others look at things in "black and white" terms. Si and Se see different things, not "wrong" things.

I don't think how a person views Se or Si determines whether they are iNtuitive. A "real" iNtuitive may or may not view Se or Si in those terms.

I meant that it may one explanation for why some self-professed Ns look down on the sensing functions. Other explanations I see are immaturity, elitism, poor understanding of the functions, etc. There are certainly iNtuitives who don't look down on Se or Si, and I'd like to consider myself one of them.
 

rav3n

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Neither Te nor Ni nor Se is actually "logical."

To be logical or not is your choice. It's quite possible to be illogical and use any function, even Ti.
I'll give you that Ni and Se aren't always logical but when used in concert with Te, which is very logical, they become logical cognitive functions.

Ti is different from Te. In referencing Ti, you're assuming that I'm saying the dichotomy of "T" is logical where it's not always so.
 

Thalassa

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I think a lot of art, poetry, and necessary social rebellion wouldn't exist without Fi. There would be less beauty, and less emotional intensity. I think it would be terrible.
 

Ivy

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I weep just thinking about it, but I can't quite explain why...
 

Thalassa

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At this point, as a tert-Fi user, I'd like to remind the dom and aux Fi users that functional order does matter...

I have well-developed Fi, as do other INTJs on this forum, and, I don't want to speak for them (although what I'm about to say probably holds true for them as well...), but, at least for me, this whole Fi as an ocean deal really does not hold true.

That's likely your description because of its placement of in your functional order, just as much, if not more, than anything inherent to Fi...

I bet for Fi-dom's, they'd say it feels like the universe...

For Fi-aux's, it feels like an ocean...

For me, it feels like a burning fire within my soul...

For inferiors, it probably feels like that annoying angel on their shoulder...

The relative size one sees it as embodying is likely related to how much of one's mental universe it happens to embody.

:)

I also agree that the ocean metaphor is PERFECT. Unbelievably so! :wubbie:
 

skylights

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sweet thread. i was following it closely a while back. oh wait. i was the second to last post in there, lol.

though i have to tell you, my immediate reaction (seems Fi to me) to the thread title was kinda the same gut reaction as peace baby's later posts detailed: wtf someone else and not even Fi dom/aux at that explain my Fi to me! :laugh:

not at all that you can't have well-developed Fi or a good understanding of Fi in general - i'm sure i can learn a lot from you, i always do and always appreciate your posts - but there's something vaguely irritating about someone whose "specialty" is not Fi / Fi in the same order as mine to explain the workings of my self, something only i am truly familiar with, you know? lol.

and this whole reaction is a really good example of why developing Te (or "reorganizing things logically", as i called it IRL before i even knew what MBTI was) has been so freaking helpful for me. with Te i can vocalize my feelings, see how they contradict or could have been misconstrued, and then piece together a more solid logic-and-feeling-based reaction.

and i think this is part of the reason i do so much better given the opportunity to write and rewrite than voicing things on the fly. i'm an excellent public speaker if i already know my reasoning for a point, but if i don't, i'll spend a long time talking my way logically through my subjective evaluations, after which i'll finally have my point. which will probably still carry the Fi undertones of where i started, but mediated by more objective points. i tell my profs that my writing method is backwards: start with a thesis, write, and then revise that thesis to match what i wrote. it's the same kind of thing.

anyway, i think it's awesome that you're discussing it.

uumlau said:
I should also note that the Tao is a very particular and peculiar approach, that I think produces a "less judgmental" set of Fi-values than most other approaches. Personally, I don't find the complete divestment from oneself of good/evil values to be useful: some things need to be cataloged as being "intrinsically very bad ideas". However, a lot of standards of good/bad are entirely arbitrary, and it's helpful to drop them and figure out where you stand on your own.

:yes: i love the tao te ching. it resounds with me.
 

Amargith

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Te is sooo the devil on my shoulder! :D

A devil with a crude, heavy mallet :doh:

For you, Fi is your auxiliary function which makes it feel pretty natural since it's well developed. Same as Ni feels for me.

By the time Fi hits the inferior level, it becomes an achilles tendon, especially if your leading functions are ordered as Te/Ni/Se. These three cognitive functions are logical and rational. Fi is not when it's not been well developed and is an unfamiliar decision maker since it feels really needy and overboard, very much a cognitive dissonance. Te/Ni/Se fight it, as a decision-making function. Kind of like:

Te/Ni/Se: That makes no logical or rational sense. Take a look at the world around you and look to future consequences so you understand the impact of your attitude.
Fi: But it feels right.
Te/Ni/Se: WTF does that mean and what's the significance of it? :doh:

Of course we can try to develop it and many try to do so, including myself. But it's constant effort and no amount of effort has made it feel natural for me. Maybe in a couple of decades, it will be modified to feel more natural or at the very least, not unnatural.

Lol...oh hon, actually that *is* the nature of Fi, at least ime. I spent the last two years on here consciously playing around with it to *finally* get a grip on it. I spent most of my teenage years in agony without knowing why, trying to conform to what people expected of me (coz I wanna please those I respect and love), and feeling miserable in the process without a clue why. Then following that stupid crazy thing to find it going overboard in the other direction, causing hurt to those I love, which violated another value of mine, causing excruciating pain. I bounced back from one to the other for years. And it *hurt*. A lot. After a while though..you learn to dose it and..not so much reign it in as guide it.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Fi is a wild horse you need to ride in, and you're going to get thrown off a lot.

It frigging burns. And you know what? I've come to appreciate the burn. It took me 15 years, but I've come to love it. It's a matter of embracing it, and knowing the pain won't kill you, so you get a chance to look past the fear and pain to the wisdom it holds. It's a fire test. Walk through it and find the pearl of wisdom, plain and simple. Just easier said then done :D

I get that as an inferior it's even more scary and spooky probably...but it's what makes you *you*. I too find it difficult and stressful to use Si, as I'm never sure I'm not blindsighted by anything, and it costs me a lot of energy, but it doesn't burn the way that Fi does (even at aux-level). That's, unfortunately, inherent to Fi :devil:

But ya know what? The benefit is that it makes you feel alive, like nothing else does.

And that's why it's important to this world. It fuels our desires. Heck, in a way, it encompasses all of our desires. It's what you enjoy this journey called life, or..when depleted or abused..what makes this life a living nightmare.

The choice on how to wield it though...is yours ;)
 
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