I think most people use hybrids of the processes so it can be hard to distinguish IRL. That being said, it's a theoretical construct though and within that construct, I believe them to be very different. Fi is highly personalized. It involves subjective values vs. objective ones. Fe is about upholding values of a group - it strives to hold everybody to a common standard. So it involves objective values vs. subjective values. I don't think either is better than the other but I do believe them to be very different.
This just occurred to me. From a Fe perspective when I hear the word "group" I believe my baseline picture of a group or is way different than yours. Maybe we should clarify this. When I re-read the OP and hear words like "groupthink" and "conformity" I get confused about how that differs from agreeing with someone or holding similar beliefs. If someone believed similarly to you and enough of you got together would it be groupthink anymore or just the right thing to do?
I checked out wiki to find out exactly a
group is and maybe some ideas on why I'm not getting this at all. This is helpful, at least for me.
...a group can be defined as two or more humans who interact with one another, accept expectations and obligations as members of the group, and share a common identity. A true group exhibits some degree of social cohesion and is more than a simple collection or aggregate of individuals, such as people waiting at a bus stop. Characteristics shared by members of a group may include interests, values, representations, ethnic or social background, and kinship ties.
When I think of group, the focus for me is not a bunch of faceless, nameless hunks of flesh amassed together, my interest is focused on the
shared interests, values, and ties. So what rankles me about these threads is that when I personally tell people what my focus is--the ties between people--it gets reinterpreted as disregard towards the individuals or tripping over social ritual. I suppose this is annoying as well for other Fe-users or maybe just FJs, IDK. I admit, the individual tends to blur a bit, but ultimately there is no tie or bond if there are no anchoring points. The anchoring points (the individuals) get a significant amount of attention too, especially when I'm one of them! And then when you think about the ties and connectors themselves: what are they, why are they important, just so many things to look at it even further annoys me when there is no thought into why I/a Fe user does what I do or just goes along with what I'm told to do when I feel like it's way more complicated than that.
It always depends on how much it matters to me and what I think I can do about it. Especially, when I know within myself a lot of mental and emotional energy goes towards figuring things between myself and another person or between other people. A lot of it points back inward to me and I start realizing things about myself when I think about these connections and ties, so even internally it's a chain reaction even if what catalyzed it happened externally. For me, this is a 360 degree process and ranges in scale, zoom in/zoom out as best as my mind can grasp it.
For example, a friend of mine recently told me she's having trouble sustaining a mentor relationship with someone she asked to mentor her. My mind immediately went to crunching on the nature of mentor/mentee relationship, why is it weakening, what can be done to strengthen it, what kind of communications between her and her mentor could occur to revitalize the relationship. Yes, secondary thoughts were why is she feeling this way, what is frustrating her about this, why is it important to her, but when I say secondary, I mean within the length of a conversation. So then that's another point of frustration for me, to say that Fe
doesn't think individual or contextual because for me it tends to happen within minutes. They may not be my first thoughts, but they're not very far behind and I'm not sure how you can even say the word "value" without factoring in the individuals. I need the anchors because it's pointless otherwise. So it's very hard for me to understand these things people say about "the collective" and "the group" because I don't view myself as operating on that level very often, at least not in my daily life. At work, I'm in a deparment, in a division, in a business unit, in a corporation, but my life mainly revolves around those small relationships, between a handful of people.
So now I'm back to wondering what group is again. Thanks wiki, you make my life so much easier!
Primary groups are small groups with intimate, kinship-based relationships: families, for example. They commonly last for years. They are small and display face-to-face interaction.
Secondary groups, in contrast to primary groups, are large groups involving formal and institutional relationships. They may last for years or may disband after a short time. The formation of primary groups happens within secondary groups.
When I think of a group, my immediate frame of reference is the primary group. Feel free to correct me, but I think when people think of Fe, they immediately think of the secondary group. highlander, just for the purposes of what you're saying here let's say generally for Fe the secondary group is the primary group. Do you think that may lead to a high level of internal wrangling and dissonance with those values are at odds? What do you think the decision points are for conflicts between two primary groups (a SO and the family) with a Fe user or between a primary and a secondary group?
I can get real with you and say that there is often a conflict with me when I'm an individual person, with my own individual interests and desires, and when I'm an African-American woman who's part of the larger black community. How do you articulate when those things conflict and how you decide how you're going to align yourself (sorry I don't opt out...it's the Jay in me) or how you move between the two or several? Sometimes it's not about me, and sometimes it is about me. Maybe it is simpler for a Fi user, who doesn't feel as much conflict between their group identity and their individual one because it's clear the individual identity will usually win. Personally, both are very important to me and I don't think my values are shadier because I hold a group identity on par with an individual one.
I know you're not knocking the Fe process, but I can't help but feel like you've oversimplified it while valorizing the subjective process and I want to address this. I get that you're venting and that's all good and leads to productive discussion, but I'm quite happy with my Fe process as well. When you get to a point when these ways of seeing and being are at an impasse, to me the next logical step is to start looking for common denominators to move pass the loggerheads and become less trenchant. It's like two people stuck in a doorway and both refusing to let the other person go so there they remain. Like we said, the problem is figuring out who's going to step back and let the other person go so both people can get out of the mess. That's pretty difficult to decide.