^ ^ I feel like this puts into words something I was thinking but couldn't figure out precisely how to say. I was thinking something along these lines: "Fe is about human values, and human values don't have any clearly agreed-upon standard to assess what is a fact (or what is true) and what isn't. In contrast, while Te is not any sort of pure objectivity (IMO it's a culturally constructed format and only one kind of logic) - but even as an outsider to Te use, it seems to me that kind of logic (deductive/universalizing/etc) seems to have clear and obvious rules that people who use it already agree on." [MENTION=9310]uumlau[/MENTION], is this along the lines of what you're writing about here - am I understanding correctly?
Yes, that sounds about right. I like the "seems to have clear and obvious rules that people who use it already agree on."
There is a remarkable analog with what Hayek calls micro- vs macro- ethics. He notes that one set of ethics evolved around individuals living together and interacting on a daily basis, which I would say is roughly analogous to Fe: of
course you decide things together with the group, for the group (family, tribe, though not larger than a small village). That's the micro-ethics. A different set of ethics evolved around
strangers interacting with each other, especially in terms of commerce and trade, especially between disparate groups of individuals, perhaps separated by thousands of miles. In this set of macro-ethics, the concept of "property" has a much more significant meaning, and there developed ways of signaling the level of trust needed to allow exchange of property to take place.
Note how the concept of "property" doesn't make much sense in the micro-ethical scale: in that small scale, it is appropriate that stuff be shared, because the group is in it together as a group. It would be remarkably selfish (and impractical, and wasteful, even from a Te point of view) for a hunter to claim all of a kill for himself, for example, and force others to buy it from him. But without a concept of property, things stop working on the macro-ethical scale. Recall that the macro-ethical scale is about interaction between strangers, and is about exchange and trade: without a concept of "this is mine and that is yours", the concept of trade is meaningless. Because these strangers are part of a community remote from your own, the concept of "sharing" is what has no meaning: the object(s) in question cannot be in both communities at once. It has to be in one or the other. Trade and commerce rules were developed in a spontaneous way to handle this issue. If a community didn't at least abide such rules externally (if not internally), it would be excluded from trading. Eventually, with civilization, communities became large enough that the macro-ethics became as common for most people as the micro-ethics, to the point that most people wouldn't see them as different things with different evolutionary causes.
See how there are two parallel rules spaces, each of which is kind of unaware of the other? Or perhaps more aptly, kind of annoyed by the other? This micro- vs macro- ethics is a subset of the overall Fe/Te interaction, but perhaps it helps make the abstract more concrete.
And I'm only speaking for myself in this next part but to be as blunt as possible on this point: I myself feel like the whole arena of human values, and this includes both Fi and Fe, is quite unfortunately ripe for interpersonal power struggles in ways that Te and Ti are probably not.
(Not to say that Te and Ti don't have their own versions of bullshit nasty power struggles etc. I'm sure they do and maybe people with Te and Ti as aux functions might have a lot of interesting stuff to say about that, since they use the functions relatively well, but aren't completely immersed in them like a fish in water as with dominant functions).
The are indeed power struggles. I would say, however, it matters what the power struggles are about. Fe and Fi appear (at least in threads around here) to have some very petty power struggles. Inevitably, one side hears the other as saying "My type is superior to yours," in whatever respect, and bam, you just have a stupid argument. The Te and Ti side occasionally gets into a similar argument, but it's more about which approach is "more correct", as opposed to "superior". Same thing, different emotional tone.
But anyway, for me as a Fe-aux/Ni-dom, I feel like there's something ungrounded-in-solid-reality about using human value systems as a means to assess facts or truth, and for me it feels like this whether it's introverted (Fi) or extroverted (Fe) versions.
I myself personally would have a lot more respect for human value systems of any sort as a way to asses facts/truth if they were accountable to actual reality in some very clear and unshakeable way - for example, if they were deeply sourced in/emerging from something like ecosystems, and "wrongness" would show up in physical ways related to survival, wellness etc, occurring whether or not anyone decided to "believe it" or have an emotional narrative about it. But without that kind of hardcore grounding, using human values - again, in my view, Fe OR Fi, same basic means of assessment but different approach - using human values to assess for facts or truth seems to me to easily be a matter of who can impose their will, stay most stubbornly self-referentially/group-referentially tied to what they believe (narratives are quite often self-justifying), deceive and/or manipulate best.
On reflection, I really don't think I could handle being a judging-dominant of any sort. And as far as Fi and Fe in particular .... yeah, from my perspective, there seems to me to be no way to actually get at truth/wrongness/accuracy from the space of human value systems (Fi or Fe), not in the cultural contexts I've encountered at least. But then again, if I was a Fi-dom or Fe-dom, I probably wouldn't feel this way to begin with.
I think what happens is that Fe and Te, in spite of the differences we've been discussing, are both about negotiating human cooperation. The problem arises, however, that Te does not see that cooperation as arising from "human values", while Fe does. Thus Fe sees "power plays" on the part of Te, because of the human value implications of Te choices, where Te sees no "power play": Te fully cooperated in Te terms,
but not Fe terms, in this case.