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[NF] NFs and the Global Village

Atomic Fiend

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In all honesty, after seeing so much, you kind of get to the point where if it doesn't directly effect you, you try not to think about it, that doesn't mean you don't, you just put it in the back of your mind as you go about your daily affairs.

Desensitization, is it a coping mechanism?
 

LadyJaye

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Yes, I had to learn to create some barriers within myself with help of family and friends. When I was younger I couldn't understand why some people would tell me not to help (their way of trying to help me help myself) when I couldn't fathom WHY!!! There's people suffering, kids need help...I HAVE to do something...and then fretting and worrying because I feel like I can't.

I do the fretting! I actually had to train myself to say, " I'm not going to worry about this now" because I would sit up all night pouring over a problem. I couldn't stand the torture of knowing that someone else was suffering if I could prevent it somehow. Or at least having long discussions with God about something I'd seen that disturbed me, children starving, or people being abused. I couldn't process it alone sometimes.
 

heart

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How so?

To be honest, I found Katrina slightly more disconcerting than 9/11.

Whilst 9/11 did have an element of "Shock and Awe", it did not produce a fundamental, prolonged, break down in society.

I found Katrina to be way more disturbing than 9/11. 9/11 was a terrorist attack. Katrina was our nation failing its own people.



What I found disconcerting about Katrina, was that it demonstrated how thin the line is, between civilization, and 'rule of the jungle'. Seeing the fabric of a civilized Western city tear so easily, and turn into a fairly Darwinian situation was very strange to observe. It just served to show how quickly what we all take for granted can unravel.

I don't believe Katrina had to go down the way it did at all. I don't think it was a sign of the thin wall of civilzation falling at the moment the levies broke , I think it was a sign of what happens when warnings go unheeded and action is not taken. Nothing had to unravel as it did in Katrina and that's the real horror and crime of it.

Further disturbing was the willingness for the other people in this nation to not question deeper why warnings went unheeded and why action was delayed. I don't know how much racism and classism played into that but it sickens me to think about it.

I certainly will be looking forward to the personal stories that begin to leak out of New Orleans as time passes and proper historical perspective can be gained on what exactly happened there. All we can know now is the media spin. But there is a definate trail that points to years of denial that led up to the weakening of the levies.
 

SillyGoose

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I do the fretting! I actually had to train myself to say, " I'm not going to worry about this now" because I would sit up all night pouring over a problem. I couldn't stand the torture of knowing that someone else was suffering if I could prevent it somehow. Or at least having long discussions with God about something I'd seen that disturbed me, children starving, or people being abused. I couldn't process it alone sometimes.

Oh my gosh, I know. It would help immensely (sp?) just by talking about it to someone.

:hug:
 

heart

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Honestly, I usually just get more disturbed talking with others. So many people I know vacilate between being totally overemotional to being numbed out. There's no middle rational ground where they will talk about things so far as looking at root causes or anything.
 

LadyJaye

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Oh my gosh, I know. It would help immensely (sp?) just by talking about it to someone.

:hug:

LOL. Looks like we fell off the same tree.

When I was younger, I used to go and wake my mother up, and pour it all out to her, even if I felt ridiculous about it. Once, when Pink and I were driving home, we were coming up the boulevard, and this guy who clearly had muscular dystrophy was crossing the street - I looked into the rear view mirror to check and make sure he made it across the street, and I saw him FALL into the curb trying to get onto the other side. I flipped out, because he was in danger of being hit by an oncoming car. Pink was trying to slow the car down, find a place to pull over, but we couldn't because we were on a four lane street - I looked back and saw that he had gotten back up onto the curb and had continued on okay, but the image of him wallowing around in the road like a baby deer was too much. We got home, and I sat out on the porch until my mother got home, when all the tears I'd been holding in came flooding out.

Lol. I have to laugh at myself sometimes, at how much things bother me. But, I can't control the instinct - people's well being really matters to me, on a core level. It's automatic.
 

Members Only

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I found Katrina to be way more disturbing than 9/11. 9/11 was a terrorist attack. Katrina was our nation failing its own people.

9/11 was/could also be a case of the Government failing the people. And that can be taken in many directions.

I don't believe Katrina had to go down the way it did at all. I don't think it was a sign of the thin wall of civilzation falling at the moment the levies broke , I think it was a sign of what happens when warnings go unheeded and action is not taken. Nothing had to unravel as it did in Katrina and that's the real horror and crime of it.

Further disturbing was the willingness for the other people in this nation to not question deeper why warnings went unheeded and why action was delayed. I don't know how much racism and classism played into that but it sickens me to think about it.

I certainly will be looking forward to the personal stories that begin to leak out of New Orleans as time passes and proper historical perspective can be gained on what exactly happened there. All we can know now is the media spin. But there is a definate trail that points to years of denial that led up to the weakening of the levies.

Very true, all though the Goverment reaction was less disconcerting to me because, and it's a sad state of affairs when prior evidence leads me to this kind of thinking... I expected it. I expected the Goverments reactions to be at best inept, at worse criminal.

The US Government in its current state, is corrupt, bloated, diseased, and a poison to the nation. The same goes for the Government of the UK.

A Government serves its people, not the other way around. This got switched somewhere along the way, and most people accept it.
 

Jack Flak

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Lol. I have to laugh at myself sometimes, at how much things bother me. But, I can't control the instinct - people's well being really matters to me, on a core level. It's automatic.
That's the beauty of humanity though, isn't it?
 

SillyGoose

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Ooooo yeah, I have similar stories as well.

A few years ago I saw a guy in a wheelchair hit by a van, (at a really low speed, but still) it knocked his chair over and he was knocked out for a few minutes. I stayed with him until an ambulance came but they wouldn't let me come with him. I kept calling the hospital from work and they wouldn't give me any info at all whatsoever.

I couldn't stop thinking about him, still haven't in fact. My co-workers were so nice (and I wasn't a walking emotional wreck you t's hahaha) and supportive, it was helpful just being able to get it out.
 

heart

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9/11 was/could also be a case of the Government failing the people. And that can be taken in many directions.

The most distrubing thing about Katrina was the nation's reactions to the failures. I think people got very worked up/concerned about 9/11 but not so much about Katrina. I saw/heard more contempt for those left behind and abandoned than I saw/heard concern.


Very true, all though the Goverment reaction was less disconcerting to me because, and it's a sad state of affairs when prior evidence leads me to this kind of thinking... I expected it. I expected the Goverments reactions to be at best inept, at worse criminal.

The US Government in its current state, is corrupt, bloated, diseased, and a poison to the nation. The same goes for the Government of the UK.

A Government serves its people, not the other way around. This got switched somewhere along the way, and most people accept it.

Yes, I should have seen it this way, but for some reason it just hit me very hard that the nation basically stood by twiddling thumbs as if we'd never faced a natural disaster before.
 

proteanmix

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I had an epiphany. You, being NF, tell me how accurate it is. I don't have much to say of it other than:

It doesn't seem NFs are built for an environment in which news of the wicked can reach them from anywhere on the globe without hindrance.

Add: This is not criticism in any way, shape or form, only an attempt to better understand the NFs relation to the world.

That epiphany is incredibly loaded. The most basic thing I can suggest is "Ask, don't tell" e.g. ask NFs how they deal with the harsh realities of life. Then ask SFs or other types to see how they deal so you'll have a basis for comparison to see if your theory is true. Can you explain what you mean when you say hindrance? I'm not really sure what information you expect to get back that will confirm or deny what you think. I'd guess I'd wonder how all types deal and then sort to see if there are anything specific to the way NFs cope.

BAH, MBTI as it's commonly presented is losing it's appeal. I don't even know if I can blame you for asking your question like you did. There are some threads around here asking NFs are they hypersensitive and the consensus was yes, and are they super intense and the consensus was yes, so I guess it's not surprising that you'd ask this question, which is why I think threads like that do more harm than good. I think people are so caught up in forcing themselves into the stereotypical NF mold that they just sound silly, so yeah the more I think about it the more your question makes sense.

For me, I've never thought of myself as one who needs to be shielded from the thorns of life. In fact, I'm pretty disdainful of people who run around muttering platitudes like "it's going to be OK!" and blindly skip around sniffing roses going on and on about sunsets.

Life is real, people have real problems and living in a fantasy hardly helps people cope with the realities of life. I'm not ethereal and shimmery. I'm a tangible person (maybe that makes me not an NF??). If NFs are supposedly skilled in coaching, teaching, counseling, and communicating then I'd think the ability to cope with the harsh realities of life is somewhat of a prerequisite. But I think that's a prerequisite for anyone who wants to lead a healthy life.
 

Jack Flak

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^Will respond via PM. Have added that which may be of general interest:

"Hindrance" refers to the data. Through most of human history, people have not had easy access to information outside their direct observation. Things have changed, which is the subject of my contemplation. I have noticed behavior which alludes to perturberance in NFs, less so in other types.

I am the last person to become caught up in a trend-of-stereotype. I've been studying types for a long time, and my hypotheses are ultimately based on my own observations.

I don't believe people usually force themselves into molds, nor should they. People don't follow rules, they act based on their motivations, and how they act allows them to potentially be classified and studied. Tendencies of those in a classification can be noticed and discussed.

Hence, this discussion, which was intended not only to gain feedback for myself, but to provide for NFs' contemplation of their own psyches.
 

Anja

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As someone who carries a good ability to identify with other people and feels intensely, I have learned that a steady diet of unpleasant news is not mentally healthy. But I don't imagine it would be healthy for any healthy person.

It's something I've thought about. Is the world going to hell in a handbasket or did we prairie folk just think we had good neighbors because they were so far away we couldn't hear them beating their kids?

At any rate, I think many other types get irritated by the steady stream of bad news which is so readily available all around us. I've learned to limit my intake of the daily horrors to maintain a positive spirit.

Those who read the election news, economic news, whatever, constantly, tend to be the ones going off on preoccupied rants. It does have an effect on all personality types, I think. TMI, too much stimulation, too much sorrow = unhappiness and distress for the consumer. Or in the case of sociopathic types who feed off it, disastrous results for the public in general.

There's an unoffended NF's perspective.
 

cafe

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Exactly. Before the information age, news was filtered a great deal more, to a greater degree the farther we go back in time.
This is why I rarely watch TV news. There's so much I really can do nothing about, so I'm okay with a little blissful ignorance.
 

colmena

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Sometimes I'm sensitive to everything.
Sometimes not caring is a good coping strategy.
Sometimes I just don't care.

and sometimes I think 'wicked' is natural.
 

Anja

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I've been thinking overnight about this issue in a broader way. Thinking about locus of control. Everywhere I look on the board I see threads complaining about something/someone in one's environment.

We are all very much affected by the people around us and their acts. If one has not developed an internal locus of control it is easy to feel at loss, manipulated by things we have no control over.

And, it being an obvious fact that there is very little personal control a person has over their environment in general, it seems important to me for a person to understand that and to focus on themselves and their reactions in order to live in a sane and satisfying manner.
 

Anja

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Illustration?

Everything's going to hell all around me, but I'm just fine, thank you. :cheese:
 

proteanmix

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I've been thinking overnight about this issue in a broader way. Thinking about locus of control. Everywhere I look on the board I see threads complaining about something/someone in one's environment.

We are all very much affected by the people around us and their acts. If one has not developed an internal locus of control it is easy to feel at loss, manipulated by things we have no control over.

And, it being an obvious fact that there is very little personal control a person has over their environment in general, it seems important to me for a person to understand that and to focus on themselves and their reactions in order to live in a sane and satisfying manner.

Excellent point although I disagree on one small thing. I too noticed a while ago that most people on the forum seem to feel that they have little control over their environment. They feel like it acts (usually unwelcome encroaching) upon instead of them trying to act upon it. There's a thread right now about controlling people and situations. When I see things like this I try to think about them in as neutral way as possible. All of us need to exert some control outside of ourselves and towards our environment. If only for the basic need to have some comfortable space that we can have to ourselves. I don't believe we don't have control over our environment. Some people only feel comfortable exerting the control in smaller spheres whereas other feel comfortable exerting that over larger areas. It seems like to me that many folks here don't like to try and influence their environment but there are high levels of resentment towards their environment and the people that inhabit it. They don't want to push out or when they do it comes out in uncontrollable spews. And they resent people who do because they think they're going to gobble them up or something. Personally, I don't have a problem with people trying to influence me because I know that ultimately I'll choose my programming and I should choose wisely. The reason I think we choose our programming is exactly what you just said. We're all bombarded by messages from the outside world. There's no way we can keep it from seeping inside of us, influencing us unconsciously or subconsciously. So what I can do is figure out what information I want to give preferential treatment.

It's like when someone says someone is manipulative. Instinctually we react to someone being manipulative in a negative way. But I'm starting to look at manipulation in a strictly denotative way. I personally don't have a problem when I push out against my environment and conversely I don't have much of a problem when my environment pushes back out at me. I usually don't feel like it's going to consume me. When it pushes out against me I feel that in most situations I can push back out at it. There are times when it exerts itself on me that I don't feel like I can do anything about it. I guess then it boils down to how can I handle those times when I can't do anything, so basically coping mechanisms.
 
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