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Understanding invisible threads that change how actions are judged.

heart

heart on fire
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No, I see Athenian's response as dismissal: She says, "I refuse to even consider your point. It's garbage."

By contrast, an INFP rejection is more like the disagreement Heart and I are having about taking a principled stand. We're maneuvering a bit and testing. If we decide we want to go at it, we'll remain congenial for a while but then we'll finally break out the long knives and really start carving each other up. :D


It was late, I probably didn't have the best comprehension at that hour. I think I probably misunderstood what you were saying...:blush::smile:
 
R

RDF

Guest
It's a bit like this. It's like opening up the door, and meeting a salesman who shoves a product in my face and tersely says, "Buy this." This sort of bugs me and I say, "Why should I?" Instead of trying to sell it to me, they just say "Because it's the best, it's all you need. Now buy it, or I'll just beat you up and take the money anyway."

Well I did graduate at the top of my class from the Dirty Harry School of Salesmanship.

:2ar15:Go ahead, punk, make my day sales quota!:2ar15:
 

Tallulah

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Going back and rereading, I can see what Athenian is talking about--if you're already feeling defensive, it would be tough to read a lot of "you need to" advice, no matter how insightful or accurate. I can see where it would just feel like "you're wrong, and you should be more like this."

I know for me personally, if I'm stuck in a Ti loop, I'll finally realize that I NEED others to help me see what I can't. When I reach that point, I'd want someone like FineLine to come in and help me pinpoint what I can't see. I would need someone to say, "Hey, you're doing x, and here's the reason why you're likely doing x. It's stunting your growth, and making you spin in circles. Try y instead."

Though Ath has reached out, she probably got more than she originally bargained for. (I think it's been a really fascinating discussion, though, and I'm learning a lot.) I imagine it's kind of being hungry for a bowl of soup, and being given a 6-course meal and told it's what you wanted in the first place.
 

nightning

ish red no longer *sad*
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The strange thing is, I often even perceive someone like, say, BlueWing as being the second salesman rather than the first one.

How is BW like the 2nd salesman to you? I'm curious...

This is my (bias) view.

*knocks on door*
"Hello my name is _____ I'm here to demonstrate to you why ______ is superior to anything you have currently and that you should buy it (my idea).
...
*5 minutes later*

"Uh but I already have something like this. Well not exactly the same product, but it does the same job."

"No! That's nothing like this! Here are the differences..."
...
*10 minutes later*

"Ummmm yes they don't operate in the exact same way, but mine does the job just as well in a different way... plus it can also do this... which yours can't. I don't see why I should buy another one."

"You're not looking at it correctly. They are different. Mine is superior because of this..."
... (recap of the same stuff)
*10 minutes later*

"Really, thanks but no I don't need it. Thanks for your time though..."
*slams door shut*

I see it as starting out as 2nd salesman and turning into 1st salesman within 5 minutes of discussion.
 

Ender

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How is BW like the 2nd salesman to you? I'm curious...

This is my (bias) view.

I see it somewhat the same way. Only in my imaginative mind it's Ben Stein at the door trying to sell it.
 

Wandering

Highly Hollow
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Be careful what you ask for. Do you really want to see more BW ass-kissing?
I kinda do. Because as I put it earlier in the thread: "I don't understand how anyone on Earth could think that way, so can you take me through your reasoning step by step, please?" Stupid INFJness.

***

Stealthy edit after Wandering posted: Yay, my hunch was right!
I'd noticed. You almost made me cry, you big meanie!
 

Athenian200

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How is BW like the 2nd salesman to you? I'm curious...

Well, yes he seems confident... even arrogant. But there's this implicit tone that he's still trying to get you to buy it of your own will rather than threatening you if you don't accept it. The sense is still that it's your loss, not his, if you don't accept what he's saying.

It's like there's a basic respect for people choosing to believe/act as they will, as long they're willing to accept the consequences. There's no feeling of demanding me to accept something that I don't understand. In fact, I think he might be mildly bothered if I did. The demand is only that I try to understand it, and he usually tries to explain it as many ways and in as much detail as I need.

Although he can be very long-winded, technical, and argumentative. He is capable of thinking very precisely for an INTP (most are a bit more vague, but still intelligent), although he's a bit less open. My guess is he just has slightly more Si/Ti and less Ne than normal.

To me, it usually seems like he has a point, and is good at understanding your point if you explain it very carefully and elaborate as much as he asks. It's actually kind of interesting to talk to someone like that at times. It can help you become more aware of exactly what something means. It's kind of like taking a Philosophy class.
 
R

RDF

Guest
Athenian,

You've been pretty negative about the tone I used in delivering my earlier message, and I don't begrudge you that. Part of the problem may be a generational thing. I really am pretty old-school. I don't mind getting up in people's faces and telling them what I think of them, and I appreciate it when people do the same to me.

As I said earlier, the tone of my messages didn't go over well at INFP-GC either. I'm an old ex-Marine from the Vietnam era, and my tone was too direct for many of the younger INFPs over at INFP-GC as well. I expect they thought I was talking down to them, whereas I just thought I was being direct and treating them as equals.

I actually get along with NTs better. They're not so sensitive to style, and they have an ethic to the effect that they don't mind conflict as long as it teaches them something new. So I take advantage of that to get in their faces at times, and they seem to handle it okay.

Anyway, we've all dissected the delivery of my message pretty thoroughly at this point. But what about the content--either of my message or of the website that I linked? After all, the delivery is just a tangent. It's the message that matters, and I was in fact trying to address honestly the questions that you raised. Was the content of my message (or the linked website) applicable to your situation?

If you want to respond that my delivery was so toxic that it poisoned the content for you as well, I'll respect that and drop out of the thread. As I said previously, I'm not trying to bully you into anything. It's your life.
 

Athenian200

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FineLine, I didn't know you had served in the military. If I had known that, I would have been a lot more respectful. :blush:

I've never really considered myself sensitive to style either. I usually get along fairly well with NT's, but perhaps that's because even when they're being shocking or cruel, they still put out a "neutral" vibe. I wouldn't forgive myself if I rejected your contribution solely based on it's style.

My main contention is with the idea that first way of processing (blunted and immature) is inherently regressive and wrong. The thing you seem not to be getting is that my inner world really is more important than my outer one. It is necessary for me to protect the ideas at times. Asking me to constantly force all information into it unfiltered is basically asking me to torture and violate myself on a regular basis. It would be rather like asking you to actually change your values (not just pretend) every time you interacted with someone who's values differed from yours, and I'm rather sure you wouldn't do that.

You also don't seem to realize that forcing the information is not the only way to accept it, and is actually the most destructive way of inserting it. I can assimilate new information very comfortably if I'm allowed to examine it and ask for clarification about what it is and what it means. An NT probably wouldn't have reacted that way to your tone, because they would have taken the liberty of examining it based on their own sense that they have a right to do so, regardless of whether you wanted them to or not. I actually feel like the person I'm talking to can take my right to do that away if I let them, which is why I get so defensive if I become worried that they're trying to do that.

I'm actually saying that if I forced information into my system constantly, my inner world would be nothing but a disconnected series of facts and impressions, that I couldn't make any inferences from at all. I do indeed take in all information I'm exposed to in a certain way, but I only use information I've accepted in a particular way in making choices. The only way the information can be useful to me is if it doesn't violate/contradict what I already know, or that if it does, it's shown to be due to incomplete understanding rather than "just being so."

Does that make sense?
 

MacGuffin

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This thread is insane. But in a good way.

I think I once told Athenian I found Athenian's view of life to be almost evil. Not that it was wrong or right, but that it was so alien and threatening that the only way to protect oneself was through violence.

To further illustrate how far apart we are:

Sometimes I enter an ordered situation and purposefully create chaos. For fun.
 

ThatsWhatHeSaid

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Fineline, no offense, but I find it very ironic that you're criticized someone for weak Fe in the way that you did. I agree with Athenian that your tone is rather accusatory and judgmental. Mature Fe, I would think, would include knowing that accusation and judgmentalism will only make people defensive and thwart any attempt to help them.
 

Athenian200

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This thread is insane. But in a good way.

I think I once told Athenian I found Athenian's view of life to be almost evil. Not that it was wrong or right, but that it was so alien and threatening that the only way to protect oneself was through violence.

Can you please tell me what seems to be wrong with it, in your opinion?

My worldview wasn't one of the current reality, but of what I imagine things to be like without reasonable rules, which is why I try to preserve them.

Here's that idea, one more time:

athenian200 said:
Life without definite rules is a terrifying thing. You have to, single-handedly, ceaselessly outwit and outmaneuver everyone around you 24/7, while they cooperatively in rapidly changing alliances and rivalries, that you have to predict and play off of one another, use every trick they can think of against you in order to take everything they can from you to improve their own life unless you succeed each time. And the deck is always stacked against you because many of them are more experienced, have more intrinsic intelligence, more creativity, and have particular natural talents they can use. It's like living in a nightmarishly difficult, endless strategy game.

So you can see why I would value rules, right? Of course, such a world might not be so terrifying for an xNTP (especially ENTP)...

Sometimes I enter an ordered situation and purposefully create chaos. For fun.

:horor: How could you?!
 
R

RDF

Guest
FineLine, I didn't know you had served in the military. If I had known that, I would have been a lot more respectful. :blush:

No problem. It was a long time ago. I don't raise the issue to curry respect; I mention it because it pegs me as an old dinosaur. I mention Vietnam, and people suddenly realize that I really do date back to another era and another world. :)

My main contention is with the idea that first way of processing (blunted and immature) is inherently regressive and wrong. The thing you seem not to be getting is that my inner world really is more important than my outer one. It is necessary for me to protect the ideas at times. Asking me to constantly force all information into it unfiltered is basically asking me to torture and violate myself on a regular basis.

Okay, fair enough. You're young. You're still at the age where you implicitly trust the signals from your Dominant function and tend to experience input from your Auxiliary as painful or disconcerting. So it is perhaps age-appropriate for you to use your Auxiliary to screen out the world to protect your Dominant function from disconcerting ideas. It's probably wrong for me to label your use of your Auxiliary as "stunted."

Eventually you will learn to use your Auxiliary in the way I described (and as described at the website). It's part of the natural progression as we age. And that, in turn, will resolve the problem you described in your OP.

Basically, in my post I was just trying to describe how a change in your use of your Auxiliary will resolve the problem described in the OP. But if my tone came off as bullying or judgmental, I apologize. The changing use of your Auxiliary is part of a natural progression; it will happen by itself and in its own time.

Of course, I'm looking at things from my point of view. I see things in a developmental progression, in which case I see one way of using the Auxiliary is "immature" or "stunted" whereas the other use is "mature." But at your age, a certain way of using the Auxiliary may simply be age-appropriate. Labeling these things correctly is important. As an INFP, I don't tend to pay as close attention to the labels as I should.

It would be rather like asking you to actually change your values (not just pretend) every time you interacted with someone who's values differed from yours, and I'm rather sure you wouldn't do that.

For what it's worth, I do routinely pry open my Fi and question the values contained in there. Like I said in my original post, it's part of the natural progression of age to use my Auxiliary (and eventually even my Tertiary and Inferior functions) to serve as a "check" on my Dominant Fi and to keep my Dominant Fi under control and in touch with reality. At my age, my Fi tends to get stale and turn rancid if I don't give it a good airing on a regular basis. :)
 
R

RDF

Guest
Mature Fe, I would think, would include knowing that accusation and judgmentalism will only make people defensive and thwart any attempt to help them.

FWIW, I've never claimed to have good Fe. My Fe sucks. Fe is a shadow function for me; IRL, I really have to exert myself to remember to practice even basic social courtesies.

My point was simply that better use of the Auxiliary function (as part of natural age progression) will solve the problem mentioned in the OP. In Athenian's case, the Auxiliary is Fe, so the discussion became about Fe by default.

FWIW, I do agree that you were doing an excellent job of communicating with Athenian via some very skilled use of your own Inferior Fe (very impressive, by the way!). I also agree that I barged in and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with an over-enthusiastic description of the functional process. :doh:

As I said, my own Fe is practically non-existent, so I simply didn't pay attention to how I was labeling things or how I might be ruffling people's feathers by barging in.
 

bluebell

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Athenian, I admit I've only skimmed the last few pages and not read carefully (other than the first bit, I mean). As far as I can tell, it's easier for you to think about others points of view if it's an explanation without it being forced on you? Like a question and answer thing. Not sure I'm explaining what I mean.

:horor: How could you?!

An interesting mental exercise might be to try to see why that might be appealing to others - even if it might always be anathema to you (and it's ok if it's always anathema to you).
 
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Ender

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FineLine, I didn't know you had served in the military. If I had known that, I would have been a lot more respectful. :blush:

This is a good example of those invisible threads. Where upon finding out a new piece of information can change one's perspective on things.

For example the Police officer not giving a ticket to someone for say speeding. One could argue that the officer was wrong for letting the person off without a ticket. However what if it was found out that the reason the Officer didn't issue a ticket was due to that person in a rush to get to a hospital because of something like a family member was just taken there in critical condition? Could one fault the officer for showing leniency in a situation like this?
 

Athenian200

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Okay, fair enough. You're young. You're still at the age where you implicitly trust the signals from your Dominant function and tend to experience input from your Auxiliary as painful or disconcerting. So it is perhaps age-appropriate for you to use your Auxiliary to screen out the world to protect your Dominant function from disconcerting ideas. It's probably wrong for me to label your use of your Auxiliary as "stunted."

You're not giving much ground here. This isn't validating. You're completely dismissing it as immaturity all over again, and taking away my right to choose my own path of development by saying "It will happen, you're just too young, so you just have to gain experience." Maybe I don't want it to happen that way? Maybe I want to take a different path than other people do? You're forcing your truth on me, and I don't like it one bit. I really don't agree with your idea that all people are somehow predestined to go through particular stages and feel particular things in fairly predictable ways, and they have no choice about what or how they do anything, and that there's little room for variation.

I don't think that discussing an idea and explaining what I disagree with and why rather than accepting it without question is immature. Accepting things without trying to understand them is not my idea of intelligence. Of course, neither is rejecting things without trying to understand them (which I think is your concern). ;)

Here's what I think is happening. You see two extremes... one that doesn't let any information in at all because it screens too much, and another that accepts all information received. You consider the second one better, because it's closer to your approach as an xNxP. But what you don't realize is that it's different for J's, and we don't have the same kind of inner grounding regarding things. You don't seem to be aware that it is a reasonable approach to apply certain filters to information, in order to make sense of it and integrate it with what you already know in order to use it more effectively. Just because I choose not to place something into my way of dealing with things doesn't mean I don't recall or process it. It's just that I only acknowledge or use it in my judgments after I find more information that reconciles it with what I already know, or shows something I believed to be incomplete or false (which is something I usually seek out when confronted with such information, after having dismissed it for the moment). This doesn't involve discomfort. I don't appreciate your insistence that growing to a point where I unconditionally force the information in regardless of how it relates to what I've already perceived is the next step, hands down.

The separate mental structure you seem not to be as aware of is the one that holds information that is not applied to judgment, because it's deemed too incomplete. You seem to think that if I had been aware of the information and not dismissed it, I would use it in my judgments regarding what you think the information ought to be used for. In reality, I'm dismissing it right now because it doesn't seem valid in context of what I know, but will reevaluate it later if I get more information about that perception. In fact, I periodically reevaluate information I haven't accepted all the time, I just refuse to use it in my judgments until I can somehow reconcile the contradictions that exist between it and what I already believe is true. I probably couldn't do otherwise, although I might pretend to if I were concerned that someone else would be a threat if I didn't.

The thing you don't seem to get about my judgment is that it's always applied to past information. In other words, I'm applying my judgment to the information you've already given me, as I have processed it. Not to what information you will give me. The underlying assumption here is that it's obvious to everyone that I can't apply judgment to information I don't have, so that if you give me other information, or tell me to process it a different way, my judgment will be different. It's like this:

(processes information) This is my judgment. (anticipates information intended to confirm or refute said judgment.)

But you somehow miss the first and last parts because they are understated. Come to think of it, it's almost as if many P's think (or believe that I think) that I can apply judgment to information I don't have, and assume that's what I've done.
 
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