[Si] Si as "conservative" (semantics + misconceptions)

[VagrantFarce]

As I am not Se, and could be wrong, so any Se-users, please correct me if I am wrong when talking about my understanding of Se.

Se is more outward/physical when it senses. It's more literal. Being a Pe function, when it takes in new information, it takes it in more concretely. Si being a Pi function, when it senses, instead of being outward and objective, it is focused inward and is subjective. Obviously everyone of every type uses their 5 literal senses, but when Se does it, it perceives what is happening in the now, seeing it exactly for what it is, and when Si perceives, it is filtered through the self and given subjective meaning.

A rather simplistic example would be an Se user seeing a dog as a dog, independent of their other experiences with dogs, whereas an Si user would see a dog as an enemy because when they were 5 they had a bad experience with a dog and now they can't help but see all dogs as bad, even though this dog in particular is sweet and had nothing to do with that.

I encourage anyone to correct me if they feel that I'm wrong and add in to the discussion!

How would this differ from an Introverted Intuitive's experience of the same dog? This just seems like an typical and expected behavioural reaction. And how does this relate to sensing details - the matte of the dog's fur, the colour of its eyes, the sound and force of its barking etc.

I ask these questions because I have the sneaky suspicion people confuse Ni with Si very easily, the way people talk about it.

 

[CitizenErased]

I have this idea that there are no synonyms and every word has a little of its own, so I try to choose my words carefully. For politics I'd use conservative and for a person who is fond of perpetuating traditions (from the country, family or from their own), I'd say traditional. Conventional seems a little demeaning to my personal dictionary.

One of my best friends is an ISTJ, and yes, he's both conservative and traditional. The first day I went to his house, he opened the door saying "welcome to my habitat", i.e. the place he felt most comfortable because everything was how he had learned it should be. Then I kind of... broke him, but he still has lots of "rituals". I imagine him being old and having every single day of the week reserved for a specific activity (like "Sundays are for visiting the grandchildren"). In fact, I told him that once and he said that he goes every Sunday to visit his grandparents, so my comment was spot-on.

Leaving aside all the other aspects of Si doms, I feel they are great partners, in the sense that.. I, for example, tend to have my head on the clouds too much time, so probably he's like the kite string: "come on, INTP, time to come back to planet Earth".

(That last paragraph felt slightly off-topic, but well, extra information can never do harm)

 

[Bush]

I'd like to give this a shot.

Say you've got yourself 100 points on a graph, representing.. I don't know, world merchandise trade volume. Suppose you want to forecast a bit further and see what might happen over the next quarter or so. Screen your data and choose any forecasting tool of your choice.

Si would orient oneself to use, like, 90 of those points, giving a pretty solid sense of where to head. Ne wouldn't give a flying fuck about any of them aside from like the last two, giving flexibility but also quite a bit of flimsiness to its evaluation.

Forget time, and forget world merchandise trade volume. Forget about linear regression. Forget graphs, even. Generalize all of that with, say, your wealth of knowledge as a way to "forecast" handling some new experience you come across, a stranger you might meet, a new idea you might have, and so on.

Religion and politics aren't inherently part of the equation. The only reason why they're stereotypically attached to Si (therefore SJs) is that.. well, conservatism is all about previous experience, and religion is a thing that has historical roots as well, and sending birthday cards is a tradition. Tell me that Si dictates some particular stance on religion or politics or birthday cards, and I'll tell you that Ne forces someone to try motor oil on an Arby's sandwich because hey experimentation.

 

[Yama]

How would this differ from an Introverted Intuitive's experience of the same dog? This just seems like an typical and expected behavioural reaction. And how does this relate to sensing details - the matte of the dog's fur, the colour of its eyes, the sound and force of its barking etc.

I ask these questions because I have the sneaky suspicion people confuse Ni with Si very easily, the way people talk about it.

Right, Si and Ni can actually look quite similar, both being Pi functions and all. I want to try to answer this question, but my understanding of Ni is actually quite shaky (I don't understand either of the intuitive functions all that well, but I understand Ne more than Ni--especially when it comes to manifesting as an inferior function lol).

I really only remember details if they are important to me in some way. Relating it back to the dog example, I can tell all three of my dog's barks apart because they're an important part of my life and I spend a lot of time with them, but my ISTJ friends can't tell them apart because my dogs aren't an important part of their lives. It really does just sound like something that would happen naturally with anyone. Like, there is a lot of nostalgia to Si, but anyone can experience nostalgia, even those who aren't Si types. I guess the difference would be that for the Si dom, it's not just something nice they experience once in a while and can turn off when they're bored or tired of it--it's so subconscious that you can be totally unaware of it; it's the major piece of our framework. It's the eyes we're seeing through all the time, whether we want to or not. Not just so with nostalgia, but with all aspects of Si.

I really would like an Ni dominant's answer to the dog example. Perhaps that would help me understand Ni more. I think Ni is my least-understood function in the theory, despite having read some great stuff about it.

I have this idea that there are no synonyms and every word has a little of its own, so I try to choose my words carefully. For politics I'd use conservative and for a person who is fond of perpetuating traditions (from the country, family or from their own), I'd say traditional. Conventional seems a little demeaning to my personal dictionary.

One of my best friends is an ISTJ, and yes, he's both conservative and traditional. The first day I went to his house, he opened the door saying "welcome to my habitat", i.e. the place he felt most comfortable because everything was how he had learned it should be. Then I kind of... broke him, but he still has lots of "rituals". I imagine him being old and having every single day of the week reserved for a specific activity (like "Sundays are for visiting the grandchildren"). In fact, I told him that once and he said that he goes every Sunday to visit his grandparents, so my comment was spot-on.

Leaving aside all the other aspects of Si doms, I feel they are great partners, in the sense that.. I, for example, tend to have my head on the clouds too much time, so probably he's like the kite string: "come on, INTP, time to come back to planet Earth".

(That last paragraph felt slightly off-topic, but well, extra information can never do harm)

Yup, an SJ can be totally traditional and conservative, or not at all, though most tend to automatically assume they are. My grandma is an ISFJ, and she totally fits the stereotypes. She's very sweet, highly religious, very nurturing and caring. She calls me just to check up on me, and leans towards being more politically conservative (although this has changed in recent years, and she wants to vote for Bernie Sanders in the next election). I can see how SJs would probably be the more "prone" to tradition, thus that's what the stereotypes have been born out of. Hah I can relate to your ISTJ friend there, I like having routines and specific days where I do specific things. Me and my two ISTJ friends all had no classes at the same time on Tuesdays one semester, so we made them "Musical Tuesdays" where they would come to my house every afternoon and we'd watch a musical of our choice together. It was fun, I miss those days.

Forget time, and forget world merchandise trade volume. Forget about linear regression. Forget graphs, even. Generalize all of that with, say, your wealth of knowledge as a way to "forecast" handling some new experience you come across, a stranger you might meet, a new idea you might have, and so on.

I totally do the forecasting thing... I have "practice conversations" in my head sometimes. Like, I need to ask someone for something or talk to them about something, and I'm nervous (maybe I'm going to talk to a professor one-on-one for the first time or something). I literally have a practice conversation in my head where I rehearse what I'm going to say, predict what they might say and prepare a response for it. It feels kinda nerdy. I even mentally rehearse for ordering food at restaurants.

Religion and politics aren't inherently part of the equation. The only reason why they're stereotypically attached to Si (therefore SJs) is that.. well, conservatism is all about previous experience, and religion is a thing that has historical roots as well, and sending birthday cards is a tradition. Tell me that Si dictates some particular stance on religion or politics or birthday cards, and I'll tell you that Ne forces someone to try motor oil on an Arby's sandwich because hey experimentation.

Yup, thus why I think the SJ stereotypes of today of being conservative/ultra-religious/etc. aren't actually quite that bad if we're talking about the SJs of 50 years ago. Every generation has it's own values, traditions, etc. so SJs today won't look a lot like SJs from the 50s, who won't look too much like the SJs of the 1890s, etc. Which I think is where a lot of mistypes arise from. Many SJ descriptions seem outdated to me. Of course, current descriptions will ring completely true for some, and completely off for others. They'll never be perfect and please everyone. And hah I don't know how you come up with these examples but I love them.

 

[Ursa]

I'm curious - how does any of this relate to the actual act of sensing? How does it differ from Se? How is it similar?

How would this differ from an Introverted Intuitive's experience of the same dog?

Ni does not "sense," so it is not quite appropriate to ascribe the capacity to "experience" the external world to it. Ni is characterized by spotty attention to details and extreme sensory detachment, which is actually necessary in order to turn inwards and towards the conceptual realm. (It's also why INXJs appear to be absent-minded and clumsy.) Its purpose is to synthesize concepts (usually into more visionary ones), to see the basic principles behind systems and to analyze the symbolic. Most The Great Gatsby literary analyses are excellent examples where the symbolic is perceived in text.

It may be helpful to think of Se as direct and photographic and Si as indirect and impressionistic. Si perceives the external world through a lens colored by previously catalogued sense-impressions. I love viewing flowers and tree blossoms on warm days with blue skies because those sense-experiences in sum evoke sense-perceptions and feelings from this one time my friends and I explored a gorgeous landscape in an MMORPG. I "see" a past experience with one eye, and the present with the other, in manner of speaking. Se, on the other hand, doesn't bring any preconceptions and memories to the table. It has more awareness and acceptance towards the present moment; it sees the external world as it is: "A rose is a rose is a rose."

This post on PerC, regarding the subjective experience of Si, is something I found to be refreshing and accurate, so I thought I'd share:

I personally prefer to think of them as 'mythologies'. They are personalized, highly subjective views of reality, maps on which the user treads. But Si is physical and Ni is abstract. Both seek a sort of perfection, but of a different nature.

For instance, Remembrance of Things Past is probably the ultimate Si book. In the very first section, we see the narrator walking down two paths, "Swann's Way" and "The Guermantes Way", so named because individuals named Swann and Guermantes lived along those paths. Then we see two separate volumes: "Swann's Way" and "Guermantes Way" which deal respectively with the affairs of Swann, and of the Guermantes. But you can see that the narrator has forged his own mythology, and it is set in the shape of his hometown. Does that make sense? Honestly, if you want a good idea of Si, read Remembrance of Things Past. You see involuntary memory: tasting a madeleine dipped in tea, which brings back distinct memories of a time in his life, and an idealization of the physical which is difficult to describe; I'll give you a couple quotes:

The name of Parma, one of the towns that I most longed to visit, after reading the Chartreuse, seeming to me compact and glossy, violet-tinted, soft, if anyone were to speak of such or such a house in Parma, in which I should be lodged, he would give me the pleasure of thinking that I was to inhabit a dwelling that was compact and glossy, violet-tinted, soft, and that bore no relation to the houses in any other town in Italy, since I could imagine it only by the aid of that heavy syllable of the name of Parma, in which no breath of air stirred, and of all that I had made it assume of Stendhalian sweetness and the reflected hue of violets. And when I thought of Florence, it was of a town miraculously embalmed, and flower-like, since it was called the City of the Lilies, and its Cathedral, Our Lady of the Flower. As for Balbec, it was one of those names in which, as on an old piece of Norman pottery that still keeps the colour of the earth from which it was fashioned, one sees depicted still the representation of some long-abolished custom, of some feudal right, of the former condition of some place, of an obsolete way of pronouncing the language, which had shaped and wedded its incongruous syllables and which I never doubted that I should find spoken there at once, even by the inn-keeper who would pour me out coffee and milk on my arrival, taking me down to watch the turbulent sea, unchained, before the church; to whom I lent the aspect, disputatious, solemn and mediaeval, of some character in one of the old romances...And yet nothing could have differed more utterly, either, from the real Balbec than that other Balbec of which I had often dreamed, on stormy days, when the wind was so strong that Françoise, as she took me to the Champs-Elysées, would warn me not to walk too near the side of the street, or I might have my head knocked off by a falling slate, and would recount to me, with many lamentations, the terrible disasters and shipwrecks that were reported in the newspaper.
The places that we have known belong now only to the little world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; remembrance of a particular form is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.

 

[á´…eparted]

Ni does not "sense," so it is not quite appropriate to ascribe the capacity to "experience" the external world to it. Ni is characterized by spotty attention to details and extreme sensory detachment, which is actually necessary in order to turn inwards and towards the conceptual realm. (It's also why INXJs appear to be absent-minded and clumsy.) Its purpose is to synthesize concepts (usually into more visionary ones), to see the basic principles behind systems and to analyze the symbolic. Most The Great Gatsby literary analyses are excellent examples where the symbolic is perceived in text.

It may be helpful to think of Se as direct and photographic and Si as indirect and impressionistic. Si perceives the external world through a lens colored by previously catalogued sense-impressions. I love viewing flowers and tree blossoms on warm days with blue skies because those sense-experiences in sum evoke sense-perceptions and feelings from this one time my friends and I explored a gorgeous landscape in an MMORPG. I "see" a past experience with one eye, and the present with the other, in manner of speaking. Se, on the other hand, doesn't bring any preconceptions and memories to the table. It has more awareness and acceptance towards the present moment; it sees the external world as it is: "A rose is a rose is a rose."

I really like this way of differentating between these functions. It makes perfect sense to me and fits me exactly too.

 

[Olm the Water King]

Sorry if this is too off-topic, but your writing about the word conservative reminded me of some interesting things. For example, back in Socialist Yugoslavia, when you said conservative, you meant someone who wanted to preserve the status quo, and there was hardly much that was "traditional" about the regime in the usual sense of the word (e.g. the Party's members were not allowed to be religious). A liberal was someone who wanted to reform it significantly (just how and to what extent depended on the individual thinker). This distinction was especially prominent in the 1970s when there was a clash between "conservative" hardliners and "liberal" reformers in the party (even though most of the latter wouldn't go so far as to actually abolish the regime in its entirety, but they did want to implement significant reforms; and the rulers had already de-Stalinized the regime much earlier than that, but that's beside the point for what I'm trying to show here).

Just trying to point out how context-dependent the word is.

 

[Pionart]

Si is seeing things as the past. Basically, nothing new is ever happening, it's just the past repeating itself, it just looks a bit different.

To get new shit, you need Ni. Ni is like king shit, it creates new worlds. For the Ni user. Everyone else thinks you're a fucking nutjob.

 

[Eric B]

"Conservative" and "traditional" deal with past tangible reality.

If we all perceive by "images", if a person chooses to focus on images that match what's still right in front of him (and emerging) in the environment, we say it's Se. If it's images once in the environment, but now stored inside individual memory (that may or may not still match the environment), it's Si. (And if the images were never tangible, but still based on objects in the environment, which can be shown others, it's Ne, and if these images come up strictly from the individual's unconscious, it's Ni.

So this is why Si will seem so "traditional"; and "conservative" is simply holding on to what was known, rather than letting it go (as in spending something). There are other things that could change this in a person's actual behavior, so it can't really be generalized but so much. Like in politics, a large number of blacks are SJ's, but most will not be "conservative" politically, because of the very fact that they remember what "traditional society" entailed from their freedoms in the past (so many, end up "conservative" in individual areas such as certain apsects of spirituality, morality and social roles, but greatly advocating change or "progress" in politics).

Both "conserve" and "preserve" come from "-serve", meaning "to watch, keep safe"; "con-" is "with" [intensive], and "pre-" is "before" (hence, "guard beforehand"). So where Se will deal with emergent (ever changing) tangible reality, Si will deal with previously known tangible reality, which it will try to "guard" (hence, SJ="Guardian").

 

[Yama]

Keep this alive

Bumping because I keep coming back to it to get the link to give people anyway

 

[Entp/infjGal]

I like the preserve thing. But I like best the suggestion that Si leads you to keep what is "best". In other words, Si doesn't like to waste effort relearning what is already learned.

Without Si, no progress is possible. For whatever is learned will be lost leading to future generations having to relearn it all over again.

I think of Si as the person that decides to create a manual, an encyclopedia, a museum, or even just a book...or a simple song or poem containing wisdom! He may not have come up with the knowledge, idea, technique in question, but he realizes that now that it is discovered, learned, created, there is no reason that any one else henceforth should start from ground zero or the absolute beginning. It seems very rational, actually. So it makes sure these are passed on or preserved in some way.

This way, 2 centuries from now, the seedling idea is added to by succeeding generations who find the knowledge preserved by Si, test it or add to it or change it, and then it is preserved in the new form by other Si's so that a whole mountain of knowledge is the result after a few lifetimes.

All 8 functions have a core purpose in furthering the human species. For Si, that purpose seems to be to retain as best as possible all that is deemed good and useful so that effort may be better focused elsewhere besides what is already known. Si really shows the species as a unit, because what is learned by one person can, through Si, become the property of the family, community, society, eventually the whole species. Without Si, everyone would have to be their own damned Newton, Edison and what-not to better their lives. But with Si, one Newton leads eventually to the whole race of humans benefiting greatly.

Si is AWEsome!!!!

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

So, SJ types aren't conservative so much as they're preservative?

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Lux flexed his Ti

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

I think 'preserving' is much better and getting more to the core of Si and SJ than 'conservative', any day of the week. Your post is great, you shouldn't be self conscious of it, if you are.

This generations' SJ's are nothing like one or two generations ago. To me, it is probably more accurate to describe a given SJ generation as embracing the shifting cultural norms. So older generation may have more difficulty doing that in todays' culture since their life was prior to that embracing and preserving their own generations' overall values, and also their personal store of experiences that they individually value - like your example. vs younger SJ's will take on and preserve their own set of experiences and the culture they arre immersed in right now, and may work on 'preserving' that in the here and now. In 40 years, todays' youthful SJ's may be seen as 'traditional' by the new generation.

General upbringing seems to play some part. I remember [MENTION=4945]EJCC[/MENTION] talking about being raised by culturally liberal parents and how she doesn't resemble stereotypical ideas of ESTJs

 

[ZNP-TBA]

I could see how an SJ type is more likely to become politically conservative (to some extent) than the rest. Functionally SJs have a sense of deferred gratification and a cautionary approach to life. Contrast that with the EP types functionally. We're predisposed to probably lean more liberal because, functionally, we don't pay a whole lot of heed to preparing for the future because we want to dive into it right away and deal with the consequences later (if even at all). However, I think there are tons of exceptions, [MENTION=23583]21lux[/MENTION] being an SJ and liberal politically whereas I'm an EP and definitely not liberal.

 

[SpankyMcFly]

... whereas I'm an EP and definitely not liberal.

How about classical liberal?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/classical_liberalism.htm

 

[ZNP-TBA]

How about classical liberal?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/classical_liberalism.htm

Perhaps but we just call CLs today libertarians. It seems the SJs functionally naturally recognize hard limits and work within those limitations to try to create the best outcomes even if that means saving and deferral of gratification. EPs, stereotypically, do not like limits and will sometimes even outright refuse to recognize them. A modern liberal political system offers an 'opportunity' to take risks (which EPs are wired for) with very little to no consequences because the costs of those risks are offloaded on to everyone else ( actually onto SJs haha). Seems the EPs would be wired to actually love a system that offers the ability to take risks with as little penalty as possible.

 

[fetus]

I think stereotypical Fi is more Si than real Fi.

 

[EJCC]

I think stereotypical Fi is more Si than real Fi.

Would you mind elaborating on this a bit?

 

[fetus]

Would you mind elaborating on this a bit?

I addressed this in my "You're not an INFP" thread. People think Fi is all about journaling about the past, thinking on personal growth, introspecting...but really all of that can apply to Si, too.

At least that's how I feel. Si-aux might feel differently (though it's possible I'm ESFJ).