edit: apparently i have been kind of an ass in general today. i'm sorry if this post comes off that way. my intention is just to clarify/help...
holy hell this thread moves.
tl;dr version of this whole post: not believing in your actions can be just as harmful as not acting at all.
proteanmix, i just have felt (just an emotional sense) like one of your main points in every Fe/Fi thread that i have read is to talk about how little or how low-quality empathy Fi thinking has. perhaps that snippet i quoted was not an example of that, but i have felt it elsewhere in your posts in this thread. it's frustrating, because i identify very much with being empathetic - it is a core part of who i am - and i see plenty of empathy coming from what orobas has written here. i also have trouble thinking that you, especially as a mod, were not aware that i deleted that post within seconds of writing it because i realized it was an overreaction and unfair. i don't really retract my comment - i still feel disdain coming from you towards how orobas felt and that was what caused me to react - but i am sorry that i posted it. it was a dumb reference and not meant to misconstrue your point. it should have been a type-and-backspace; alas, i acted in anger and posted. this thread has me heated because of the value judgments being thrown left and right... i can feel anger and frustration from others and it builds inside me until i do dumb things. so, i am sorry for making that comment, but i do sometimes feel that maybe your protectiveness of Fe ends up slipping into disdain for those of us who utilize less of it. in any case, my apologies.
If some expectations were not communicated, then it's simply because the ISTP/INTJ overestimated the good sense/functionality of the family that they were taking in. [...]I mean, since no repayment was being asked for at any point (hence no legal documents were required), why would anyone have drawn up a list dealing with that kind of minutiae? With less ignorant beneficiaries, such a list would have only served to condescend.
good point.
First of all, given the things the "ISTP" supposedly said in the OP, it is an extremely over-dramatic interpretation to say that she was "negating their worth as people." All she did, so far as I can tell, is sneer at some of the ISFP lady's crude behavior behind her back. What is the harm in this, besides being perhaps in poor taste? It's not like the ISFP lady even knows what was said, or that anything was said at all. Second, yes, shelter and physical well-being are MORE important than the ISFP lady's feelings, especially when it's not only her own well-being involved, but that of her children as well. If she thinks otherwise, then she IS just as stupid and irresponsible, and unsuited to parenting, as the ISTP was implying in the OP. Third, why is it necessary, in the first place, for the ISTP lady to respect the ISFP lady in order to give her aid? Why is that an expectation of her giving? One can maintain civil interaction without sharing mutual respect, and respect is something that has to be earned anyway. So why, especially given the description of the ISFP lady's ignorance, should the ISTP lady respect her? What has she done to earn it?
please don't call me or my interpretations dramatic. it's not drama; it's Fi judgment. i think it's great if we're debating and you refute my points... i mean, i'm not going to learn or grow otherwise... but saying that my points are dramatic seems like an attempt to discredit them without really even addressing them.
as to your questions – one of the the problems with helping someone while not respecting them is that your negative attitude will almost invariably seep into everything you do. sometimes my INTP dad, for example, will come to the kitchen table for dinner raging about some frustration or another. he thinks it's good that he has shown up to family dinner, but he is snappy, blunt, bangs things around, and makes it a generally unpleasant experience. similarly, this woman might be trying to help, but invariably her disdain is going to show up in how she treats the family. it's bad because it hurts at a soul-level - though i'm going to go ahead and assume this is a Fi thing.
why should her aid be accompanied by such feelings anyway?
because in an ideal world, all people would care for others at both a behavior level and a heart level. because otherwise, she has some other motive for helping - serving herself, most likely. and that will motivate her actions. will they help? perhaps, but it's living a shallow husk, in some ways. living pretense. what if everything was like that? what if our friendships were like that? what if no one you thought liked you and appreciated you really did?
At least the ISTP lady condescended to treat her with the appearance of respect to her face
we are different, then. i would prefer for someone to be frank with their feelings about me.
i have to give props to orobas, too, for suspending judgment in the situation. to Fi that feels disingenuous, but as i read others' posts i see more and more of how the Fi reactions are one-sided.
You make it sound as if this is some lifestyle disagreement, with the ISTP lady trying to impose her own lifestyle on the equally plausible/functional lifestyle of the ISFP lady. That is most certainly NOT the case.
do you know that? i thought it was assumed that we did not know the extent to which this woman was maltreating her children.
Well it seems like you expect the ISTP lady to be perfectly magnanimous because she's a Christian.
not perfectly magnanimous. i would be frustrated too... if i seem a bit harsh on this, it comes from years of being raised in catholicism. you see a lot of hypocrisy, a lot of people doing things for their own benefit that appear to serve others. it doesn't work to a certain extent because the heart of it is not there. it's a gesture, but a meaningless one. there is little goodwill behind it, just a latent desire that the problem goes away so we don't have to deal with it. it's entirely self-motivated, nothing altruistic. nothing that those people claim they stand for. it's weird: people who preach, who practice, yet who... don't
believe.
incidentally flannery o'conner is an awesome writer on this sort of thing.
why don't you step into the gap and up to the plate? [...] If you care about something, there will be fruits of your caring...there will be some sort of output.
i think orobas already mentioned it... but there are so many cases like this in the world and only one of me. why does this woman in particular need or deserve her more than everyone else? i would not feel a moral mandate to help because there are so many people in situations like this or even worse. someone should help her. someone should help everyone. there is so much to deal with...
I think I view things a bit oppositely […] The offerer to me shouldn't be the one who bends to accommodate the accepter of the offer, since it's the offerer who's sacrificing some aspect of their life in the first place -- it's the accepter who should be flexing, and if the 'terms' of the offer are unacceptable to them, then they'll need to find another alternative.
i see your points. i just think you have much more of an awareness than this family does. they probably have no idea they're being so disruptive, or at least don't really know how to change it. FWIW, i feel a similar way about being in someone else's house. i've been told i have decent Fe, but i don't know. i feel like that is general respect. but if the family has little idea they're acting in a disrespectful way... then... how could they know?
How, exactly, do you have the moral high ground here???
in my eyes Oro has the moral high ground because she has turned anonymously to a group of people who are gathered to help one another. she has not named the person she feels upset towards. it seems like a neutral case study. no names, no disclosure, no harm done.
In other words, I don't think that the ISTP intended to come across as devaluing the ISFP as a human being, but only to express her frustration and get sympathy. She may have sounded like she was condemning the person, but that's because we tend to identify the emotions with the ACTION, so what we really mean is that the actions appear uncaring, not that the person does. We don't know what the person is feeling, but the point being made seemed to be that the ISFP is performing poorly in her role as a mother, not that she's a bad person. Fi users tend to identify the emotion with the PERSON, so when we condemn the action as uncaring, it's assumed that we're condemning the person as uncaring, when that's not the case at all. We just want the person to start acting like how we believe that someone who cares should act.
this ^^ is excellent.
That is exactly the kind of behavior Fi users tend to engage in that frustrated me a couple years ago. I later discovered that Fi users tend to espouse ideals, not expecting us to take them as realistic depictions of their behavior. They tend to judge things according to ideals as well, while not really expecting them to be practically achievable. Also, I first assumed that they wanted to be seen as unconditionally moral or loving, when in reality, they merely mean to say that they value such things and strive for them, not that they embody them. It seems like she's talking about behavior, when she's actually judging the (seeming lack of) ideals she believes that the other person holds, based on their words alone. This can be very aggravating, I realize.
accurate. and the opposite can be aggravating, obviously. why bother to act on something you don't believe in? what's the point? who can ever trust you if your actions are not always in line with your beliefs?
I'm reading some Fi comments as "it's better to not help, rather than help while secretly being horrified at this person's neglect" and I'm sure you're not saying that, but it's hard not to hear it from what you're saying.....
it's better to not help than make a show of helping while secretly spreading hateful speech.
edit:
Z Buck McFate said:
Anyone woman who is 20 years old, with children and basically homeless is probably going to have a very depleted self-esteem and be impressionable (value the judgment of others over her own). Having someone around her who is disgusted with her (at least, before it's made clear why the judgment is there, thereby opening a door to show how change is possible) is not a good idea.
EXACTLY