uumlau said:
It's not merely about consensus. It's about being able to achieve people-oriented goals. E.g., you want to sell a product, influence a vote, change a company policy, accomplish some task that requires persuading other people to agree with you. There's a bit of give and take, of course, but Fe keeps an overall goal in mind and gives up those things not relevant to the goal.
It is completely analogous to Te, in this regard. It's about people-logistics, as opposed to material logistics.
Understand that Fe is about a purpose and the Fi purpose is quite different. Te and Fe offend each other due to different core motives, but very often the motives are similar. Obvious motives/goals are aligned, e.g., making more money in a business. It's the more obscure material efficiencies and people-considerations that cause conflict.
In a thread encouraging Fi to speak up, just one word has opened a whole new insight into Fe for me: the word
goal.
When I reflected on this last night, it explained so much that was previously confusing. I'm not even sure I can put it into words yet, but I will try. It's a way of thinking that is completely alien, so if I get this wrong, I'm just trying to word it in a way that makes sense to me. Not trying to offend anyone at all.
Remember that Fe list? After examination, I was able to articulate that most of my issue with it was that it described a person who's value set is closer to mine than the Fi list was, and once I could see that I was
inferring a value set underneath all those statements, and the list wasn't describing
that aspect of the equation, it made more sense to me. Still, lingering in my mind were some questions ... does Fe have a value set? Is it this "helper" one by default? How come I think an Fe users' behaviour changes dependent upon who they are dealing with (remember now too, I assume a value set underpins behaviour, and I tend to see values as absolute, meaning if I act a certain way in situation A then I do so in situation B etc.)
So, fine, let's leave those thoughts for a minute - suffice it to say I have some lingering questions. After the debacle of the thread in question, I make
this thread because I know that it's hard enough trying to verbalize my understanding of Fi and Fe without having to deal with being made fun of for doing so. I am confident (but not certain) that other Fi-ers feel that way too, and generally are hesitant to say so out loud, and I want to explore this more deeply. I want them to feel safe, here, to say it.
Enter the word ... goal. Suddenly I transport into the shoes of the Fe-ers ... who would look at this thread and say, "What is the goal of this thread? Here we go again, more talking, talking, talking to no purpose ... there will be more dissension that I will have to deal with ... I wish these Fi-ers would just shut up already!" And so I asked myself, what
is the goal of this thread? I can tell you the purpose of the thread ... but the goal? The purpose is inform, to help foster understanding and communication, to unite a common POV. The goal is ... to be recognized and our POV be taken seriously? So, I dig a little deeper, what is the goal? And I discovered - there was no goal. I didn't make the thread with any other
goal than to serve a purpose of understanding.
No wonder this drives Fe-ers nuts. If, like Te-ers, you are "Let's cut to the chase, what's the point already?" even this preamble to my revelation will be painful to read.
So, I will get to the point dear Fe-ers:
Fi-ers find different behaviour harassing than Fe-ers. It's no less distressing for us to be harassed in this way than it is for you to find emotional threads difficult to deal with. So I propose:
1.) That all Fi-ers make a point of reporting posts and threads to the mods where someone descends to personal attack (ad hominem arguments) to undermine an individual's right to freedom of speech without defamation or censorship. Stop putting up with it; if the Fe-ers don't know it's bothering you, they never will because their Fe filters are calibrated differently than yours.
2.) That people who continually attack Fi-ers (or anyone else) in this manner are banned from the forum. The forum seems especially effective at protecting the Fe perspective but not so much the Fi one. This is evidenced by the feedback liberally found throughout this thread.
3.) That an Fi dom mod is brought to the admin staff (don't think we have one anymore) who can advocate and help interpret at the individual level what's going on when someone is having an "emo-meltdown", bearing in mind these happen to all types and Fi-ers have a unique vantage point and insight to offer in these situations.
How's that? Does that help?
And as for explaining those other questions above, suffice it to say - very, very insightful. Won't overload this thread with that.