I think I understand where you're coming from, but it seems a bit idealistic and impractical, honestly. (And ironically enough, I'm the NF?) .
I didn't say it wasn't. You said you didn't understand the logic, so I tried to explain. I have a lot of time on my hands lately.
Well... if you did have a choice between living alone in a jungle and having to fight dangerous animals for food, or work in society, would you choose the former?
Honestly, some days I'd be sorely tempted. More risk, true, but my decisions would be my own and I'd be accountable only to myself. It cuts the Bill Lumbergs out of the equation.
NP's are creative machines... SJ's aren't, and fear change even when it's beneficial. NJ's and SP's are somewhere in between..
Well, the SJ's apply their talents to keeping things running smoothly. Just because they aren't "creative types" in the narrow artistic or intellectual sense doesn't mean they don't seek out opportunities to apply themselves and influence the world around them (think people who join volunteer fire departments or the Red Cross). How many of them are working their way up the ladder as security guards for cosmetics companies and jewelry stores so someday they'll have enough money to travel around and help disaster victims (or whatever)?
I would work towards society working in a more efficient way, dividing labor to suit people better while still working to maintain its own existence as well as possible. I wouldn't want it to fall apart completely, after all.
Uh, read a history book. Spend too much time trying to "work towards society working in a more efficient way" and you get wiretapped, hauled in front of congressional committees and blacklisted. If you're lucky (and by "lucky" I mean "white.") The people who benefit from the status quo know how to keep would-be reformers out of positions where they can do any real damage.
What if things had to "get worse before they get better"? Surely an NJ understands "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." Again, it's just idle speculation driven by an unusually acute sense of alienation, but I do have my days...
True enough. But the point is, if you did work that paid more and had more opportunities for advancement, you would be able to make more money, and thus have more freedom. You might even make enough that you could live off the interest from your investments/accounts, and not have to work anymore.
You would be able to get out of "the system" faster that way, and at the very least retire earlier than you could have otherwise. By remaining in a service job, you never go up, you serve the system faithfully, and you go through the exact motions you've predicted. I choose to exploit the system to get what I want/need out of it. In my opinion, you have a choice between exploiting the system, and letting the system exploit you..
Whose talking about remaining in a service job? At the moment I'm stalling and waffling on the question of law school vs. getting a PhD, either of which would of course be contingent on my finding a workable combination of distractions and anesthetics to hold back the self-destructive/ anti-social urges produced by the realization that in any case I'll be spending half my waking life pretending to be someone I'm not.
It's not that I can't climb the ladder, it's that I think the equation "money = freedom" is bullshit. Money is
ersatz freedom to replace what you surrender to get it.
It's called selling out for a reason. They get what they pay for.
The other thing is, it seems like you're worried about a choice you don't have. Complaining about what already exists, what's already happened. ...Talking about what should have been, could have been ideally if people had thought of it, rather than what should/can be done now. It's like you're constantly thinking of either how things should have been done, or how people should do them, rather than whether you can actually do anything about it. Even more, you don't even do anything to try and change it, you just sit and complain, which doesn't make sense to me.
Excellent synopsis of how Ti/Ne works. Congratulations. I'll forgive the condescension, since you're a J and you can't really help it.
But with that attitude, you could probably get a cabinet post in the Bush administration.
E.g. the whole F---ing mess in Iraq is the result of nobody taking the time to consider the interplay of factors they don't directly control. And it's going to keep happening as long as people like me are marginalized as "idealistic and impractical" for raising these kind of objections.
And for the record, prior to the onset of my most recent major depressive episode (now entering year 3, but I'm bouncing back) I was heavily involved in political activism. I was one of the people protesting the war before it started. If the 70% of the American populace that now realizes the invasion was a colossally stupid idea had been paying attention to the kind of big-picture thinking I'm talking about, we might have had a chance of preventing the whole debacle in the first place.
But the national conversation was more like:
-- "W-w-w-well, what if Saddam's got a nuke and he's going to give it to Osama bin Laden? Shouldn't we do something before it's too late?"
--"You know the chances of that actually happening are laughably small."
--"B-b-b-but we don't know for sure. What if it was true and we didn't do something?"
--"Uh, what if we get involved in a war for no reason and get bogged down in a conflict that does nothing to make us safer?"
--"Well, now you're just wildly speculating. Let's get back to the issue at hand."
--"OK, even a cursory knowledge of Middle Eastern politics should tell you that Saddam and bin Laden have nothing to gain from helping each other..."
--"Dude, this isn't some complicated philosophical issue. This is life or death, man!"
--"your ignorance amazes me."
--"Maybe, but it's not like it affects me. I'm not in the Army."
--"You pay taxes, right?"
--"Yeah, but I pay taxes either way. I just don't want to get nuked. It's that simple."
--"Actually, I think
you're simple."
--"Shut up, hippie. Go back to your books, I have to work for a living."
At this point I basically started drinking myself numb. Then I started drinking more when everbody was like "Oh, sh-t. What happened? Totally didn't see that coming. Who could have?"