I dont think that Thinking users are heartless,
Me, either, Lark. That's why I said that. I think that anyone who is made of flesh and blood and lives in this world, has the potential to show compassion on another person.
that's just a ridiculous and stereotypical understanding rather than typological understanding of how people reason and rationalise.
Yep. It's pretty one-dimensional.
I've always believed, and there's sufficient evidence from my reading on the topic, that mankind is more rationalising than reasoning and that affect is over riding of logic,
I have experienced this in conversations more than once. A person can rationalize anything but that doesn't make it reasonable.
anyone who claims to be purely logical doesn't get it and can be the most dangerous sort of being lacking self-awareness.
No human is completely logical and given the nature of human beings, it would be illogical to assume that we could be or should be. However, some are more objective than others. And some, well, some are just plain loopy.
A thinker I'd suggest is someone who tries to reason rather than respond to emotional twinges or crisis,
That's a good way of looking at it.
who is self-aware, who values reasoning practically or theoretically (someone could be a practical reasoner who objects to abstract or philosophical reasoning or logic puzzling and still be a thinker by this measure) and displays or attempts to build their personal resilence through rational and consequential thinking. Most of all I'd class as a thinker anyone who is more comfortable behaving this way and who does so automatically or habitually.
Yeah, I can see that.
So far as "between types" goes, I think that everyone will display a stronger preference for one type than another, even if they feel an attachment to both and I do think that under stress or when euphoric for any reason (usually an organic chemistry one) when people are "besides themselves" they can display the traits of their "opposite", it doesnt make them their opposite though.
Hmmmm...now that is something to think about. Now, you've got me trying to dissect how I act under stress. I'm usually very calm, but under stress? I spring into action, meaning I don't freak out and am apt to slap somebody who does and tell them to hush so I can think and think, I do, as fast as my brain can work. I start looking for solutions. Wow, cool, you helped me figure out how my brain works under stress. haha. I wonder if my eyes dart back and forth like a cartoon character's [you know how they do on cartoons when they're thinking really fast?]
Seriously, I analyze the situation and do whatever needs to be done to solve the crisis and I don't think about it until later, then after I think about it, I have an emotional [and sometimes physical reaction]
Someone had a good diagramatic description of how personalities could alternate between types in a sort of spectrum in another thread once,
Sounds interesting. And I think that they do, maybe as you say, the real one comes to the surface under stress.
although it was a sort of cyclical reasoned idea which I'm not sure about, there are seasons in nature, in life, in time, although I am not sure about it because I dont necessarily believe either the linerar liberal version of history or degeneration/regeneration version of history held by conservatives to be correct.
Yeah, that's a whole new can of worms and I'm too busy to go fishing today
Plus at the base of it all, on this forum no less than any other context, people valourise and villify different types and thereafter its just a matter of labelling people are good or bad in accordance with those ideas. The greatest examples I can think of in that regard is how sensing is universally condemned in comparison with intuition
Well, that's just not right. I mean sensors are all right. The world needs them. Besides, one of my best friends are ISTPs and ISTJs and I am okay with them. They look at me like I'm from Mars sometimes, but it's not their fault they don't speak alien dialects. They're still great people and very smart in the areas where I am lacking.
when Jung and others thought that was definitely not the case, something similar has happened with feelings, when more sensible thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, have reflected upon the value of feeling functions and their universal devaluation or invalidation at the cultural level. Solitary Walker did a good thread on this sort of folkish typology and its errors.
I'll have to check out Erich Fromm. Thanks. Rats. Lunch is over. Gotta get back to work,