G
Glycerine
Guest
I take in the information from the environment, analyze it, and decide on my OWN what my morals are but typically, I would say my morals aren't absolute... i see it more in shades of grey and nuances.
I've been watching my daughter (INFJ) grow up, she's 13 now. I find her fascinating.
My ISFJ ex has this very regimented set of social rules of what is expected and what must be done and how it should be done. So my daughter, with her IFJ approach and Fe secondary, has absorbed SOME of that... except that absorbed is not really the right word.
Instead, I find that she chooses to honor and speak in that Fe style language in order to implement the goals she has for herself inwardly. She definitely will bend/break rules that aren't suiting her purposes. She also doesn't seem hung up on the rules as some sort of universal absolute in themselves. They are just tools. (I feel like the rules/tools and the goals are much more closely tied, or perhaps the same, in ISFJs.) She knows the likely result if she follows them vs breaks them, and she chooses what she wants to do based on what outcome she desires at the time. (She's also the most strong-willed of my three children -- the others are Ti primary boy and Se primary boy.)
I would have to say that her own internal morality is more broad, ambiguous sense of equal respect for all people. Where I have seen her really stretch herself and take risks is in befriending people who are ostractized by her classmates. She sees all people as worthy of respect on some level, and so when someone is cut out of the group just for being different or as a target, she specifically will befriend them and build a connection with them.
Sometimes that investment has been hard on her -- she wants to reaffirm their personhood but then often has to draw additional boundaries since she has other friends as well she wants as part of her life, and she has limited time and resources -- but basically I just see it as some sort of broad philanthropic sense. She also cannot handle watching violence directed at others. She can't really discuss people being hurt badly or watching violent movies where people are badly hurt and/or emoting a lot of pain.
So where do NFJ morals come from? She's only Fe secondary, so here she has some broad morality all of her own, and she is using Fe perspective in order to express and channel that morality, I think. I'm just not sure it's this cut-and-dried thing. Function theory has its limits.
Oh, you're not off-topic. (I think Jim's comment was meant more as a typical mod dig than as any sort of real assessment of your posting intent, so take it in that light.)
Since I'm Ne-intensive, I see all topics as connected anyway; I usually only get concerned if something completely derails, doesn't show signs of going back, and the culprits are aware that people are trying to keep things marginally on track but keep dragging them elsewhere.
(In that case, Fe rules dominate: Don't take over someone else's thread, start your own instead. Virtual real estate here for you guys is free. There is no reason to swipe someone else's thread. Where does that Fe rule come from, for me? I dunno. It seems Ti/Fe, it's a rational judgment based on the logic above -- give people autonomy to do their own thing, do your own thing in your own space, there's no real need to disrespect someone else's space.)
re the bolded: I'm ISFJ and I'm more like your daughter.