[Ne] Is sadness beautiful to any of you?

[You]

Mostly an INFX thing. The sad fucks.

 

[CuriousFeeling]

I think melancholy in general can be beautiful in art, music, cinema, and literature. It has a strong emotional effect on me. When it comes to my own life, sadness is an essential part of it, because without sadness, joy wouldn't feel the same. It can be beautiful when the sadness is turned into art and music, which is often the case for me... I need to express it in some sort of creative work. Do I enjoy sadness? Not necessarily, but it is a component of life that I don't shy away from.

 

[Salomé]

I’m a bit schizophrenic on this, and I put it down to being 5 with a strong 4 wing (occasionally I test 4w5). The 5 is highly intolerant of mawkishness and sentimentality and the glorification of misery – it’s self-indulgent and I hate it. But the 4 is also highly susceptible to melancholy (which makes me hate it even more).

So why do beautiful things move us to sadness, or why do we find sad things beautiful? I don’t know. I have a couple of ideas.
Keat’s wrote “Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”.
Schopenhauer said that life is essentially a painful and miserable experience for most creatures, and I would tend to agree with that. So there is a universal truth in sadness that is beautiful, when contrasted with superficial elations and minor triumphs. (That just begs the question, why is truth beautiful? though...)

Beauty has an intrinsic sadness in that we perceive it’s ephemerality – we mourn it before it is lost because its passing is sad, and everything that is beautiful must fade, every beautiful experience must eventually end. I think maybe it’s more poignant for Ns since we are rarely completely immersed in the moment, but always looking ahead to what might be and what will be - dissolution.

Beyond that, I think maybe we find sadness in others (or in works of art) beautiful because it means we are not directly experiencing it ourselves – it’s akin to rejoicing in someone else’s misfortune. As Victor would say, “we perceive by making distinctions”: without sadness, there would be no joy. I think there is a kind of sadism in enjoying another’s sadness, Schadenfreude. And a kind of masochism in enjoying our own. (We all know NFs are masochists ) Of course, masochism emerges as a psychological defense against childhood injuries we are powerless to prevent. Finding pleasure in pain as a way to endure the unendurable - escape through transformation.
So yeah, a slightly cynical take, but I’m a 5 at heart.
I don’t find my own sadness beautiful. It’s ugly and dark. And anyone who has really been depressed knows it’s as far from beautiful as it’s possible to get.

 

[KDude]

Mostly an INFX thing. The sad fucks.

Don't be silly. Stop imagining stuff. If you're Ne and inclined to see the big picture, then you would actually search for ways to see it. And not just, like, randomly make up ideas - that's not Ne. That's just being arrogant. It's kind of simple in this case too - you could read to get a better picture of things. Problem solved. I was just reading Naomi Quenk's book on the inferior function, for example. She coauthors the official MBTI manuals by the way, and isn't some random dipshit. So you have a good start here.

She says that INFPs are self-confident, don't bottle up, and are likely to try to confront and solve stressful situations. It applies in all kinds of ways. Also, that they are among the types with the least reported cases of hypertension and emotional burnout. Go figure!

The minute people realize that Fi types are driven by their independence, ideals, and values, and that it is has nothing to do with being highly emotional, then posts like yours will stop (I don't expect that to happen though ).

 

[ThatGirl]

I never understood the whole sadness is beautiful thing. I always found sadness just sad.
Not that I don't respect it, just that I don't find it to be pleasing in any way.

I suppose if I believed in ritual more, the symbolism would seem meaningful, but I don't.

 

[KLessard]

When I think of the best films I have watched, Franco Zeffirelli's Jane Eyre, Christian Duguay's Joan of Arc and The Green Mile come to mind. They made me weep for like an hour during and after the film. I think sadness is beautiful because it so true and so honest.

 

[Queen Kat]

I'm not attracted to sadness. It's never a theme in the things I make, I feel more attracted to absurdity. Death is a subject, but moarning never is. I once made a portait of myself, sitting on a fork stoicically, while nearly getting eaten by a dinosaur-Pacman hybrid while thinking "Oh, shit". I need to find that painting again, I'm afraid my art teachers threw it away. I also wrote a long story a while ago that was about cannibals, so you could say "getting eaten" is one of my main subjects. It's some sort of fear all creatures on earth have, it's the oldest of fears, that's what I like about it. Sadness, however, isn't as old and universal, it's an emotion that has nothing to do with the survival strategy of your earliest ancestors. Then I haven't mentionned I find sadness really depressing and not exciting at all. The fear of getting eaten, however, is exciting in a strange way, it's essential if you want to stay alive, it makes you want to go faster, stronger, smarter, it makes you go back to your REAL roots. That's why I prefer the fear of getting eaten over sadness.

 

[You]

Don't be silly. Stop imagining stuff. If you're Ne and inclined to see the big picture, then you would actually search for ways to see it. And not just, like, randomly make up ideas - that's not Ne. That's just being arrogant. It's kind of simple in this case too - you could read to get a better picture of things. Problem solved. I was just reading Naomi Quenk's book on the inferior function, for example. She coauthors the official MBTI manuals by the way, and isn't some random dipshit. So you have a good start here.

She says that INFPs are self-confident, don't bottle up, and are likely to try to confront and solve stressful situations. It applies in all kinds of ways. Also, that they are among the types with the least reported cases of hypertension and emotional burnout. Go figure!

The minute people realize that Fi types are driven by their independence, ideals, and values, and that it is has nothing to do with being highly emotional, then posts like yours will stop (I don't expect that to happen though ).

I was joking.

 

[swordpath]

I don't find any sort of artistic element to it. People are able to channel their sadness into art forms, but as for the emotion itself, it's just.... sad.

 

[skylights]

not really. i think it blows.

i think sadness is a useful emotion because it reminds us to slow down and recenter on what is really important to us, and to gather with others, but in and of itself i really think it blows.

there is just that one deep freeing feeling of being at one with everything and feeling strength enough to move on that sometimes i get as i'm coming out of a dark moment that makes it somewhat worth it.

Don't be silly. Stop imagining stuff. If you're Ne and inclined to see the big picture, then you would actually search for ways to see it.

i think it was in part a joke. but i think amongst the people i know IRL, INFxs are willing to stay in sadness longer than other types. T types just don't emotionally wallow as much and ENF just finds something else to do.

 

[jcloudz]

an emotion that does not exaggerate reality from what it really is, is beautiful.



No

 

[Vamp]

I LOVE sadness. I am attracted to tragedy, the unbeatable tragedy of living that no happy ending can cure. My stories are about things like sexual abuse, human trafficking, murder, rape etc., My drawings were always of some kind of torture. I used to refer to it as a pain hard-on. I love angst but too much is not healthy.

It doesn't have to be about wallowing, for me it's about awareness of the human condition and realizing most things cannot be "fixed".

Nature is quite tragic but that doesn't make it any less beautiful.

 

[guesswho]

Sadness may or may not be beautiful.

I get nostalgic everytime the Autumn starts, I feel the emotion quite intense, and for a couple of days, I experience things in an sensitive way. That sadness is beautiful.
The sadness in movies/paintings/poetry/pictures is beautiful too.

But.

Sadness with a real reason, when something bad happens to you or someone you care for, which only reminds you of the bad thing that happened , that sadness I do not like.

I'm a very funny person, but I never watch comedies, I mostly watch dramas.
There's something about the tragedy of human life that wakes up some deep feeling in me.

 

[cascadeco]

Hmm. I find the capacity to experience and acknowledge sadness as a component of life, and the myriad of other contrasting emotions, beautiful, as I think that's what makes us feeling, reflective, human beings, and to deny the truth that many aspects of Life are in fact sad and tragic is to deny the reality of life as, well, it is sometimes.

But I wouldn't say I'm drawn to sadness in particular, because to dwell on the sadness, and focus on it moreso than on joy and peace and wonder and curiosity & tons of other stuff, is to deny that other side of life, that other potential -- that truly amazing antithesis to the sadness, which is equally if not moreso beautiful, imo. And on a personal level, when it comes to the people in my life, I think I am more drawn to those who embody more joy and optimism out of life, and would be quicker to label this joy as beautiful than sadness as beautiful.

 

[onemoretime]

The beautiful thing about sadness is that there's a necessary component of love involved. You don't get sad about things that you don't care about.

 

[tortoise]

I am deeply moved by war romance films such as The English Patient or Atonement. I like to watch films like that.

Those two films are probably the most moving I have ever seen.

I can't imagine anything that is sadder than having to leave the woman you love inside a cave to die because a war and soldiers prevent you getting help to her.

 

[KDude]

I was joking.

You've made comments like the above elsewhere though. It's not easy to tell if you're joking. And now you're trying to say that you knew this. If that's the case, you're baiting. If you feel confused on ETP or something, I'm going to say you are then. That's what they do (young ones at least). With Fi or Fe, you'd have a better sense of mutual or social space and not use this thread of all places to find an audience.

 

[HotpinkHeatwave]

The beautiful thing about sadness is that there's a necessary component of love involved. You don't get sad about things that you don't care about.

Wow. I really like this, this could be reworded into a beautiful quote.

 

[stringstheory]

i think it's beautiful in the sense that it relates to this:

I just think life is beautiful.. Being alive is beautiful.. Being sad is part of being alive and so it has value and beauty.

i wouldn't say I'm attracted to sadness in particular, though. It just moves me by nature of being one of the many facets of being alive.

also this does not strike me as "sad", just creepy

 

[tortoise]

The fact there are 2 areas of very bright 'sunlight' suggests this is during a nuclear conflict. The man knew it was coming and killed himself out of defiance: he wasn't going to let himself be killed in a state of terror, or be half-killed and die a slow, horrible, painful death. He wanted to control his own death. His daughter knows that very very soon, the blast wave will destroy her. She wants to be with her father on her favourite swing when she dies.