greenfairy
philosopher wood nymph
- Joined
- May 25, 2012
- Messages
- 4,024
- MBTI Type
- iNfj
- Enneagram
- 6w5
- Instinctual Variant
- sx/sp
I was reading some Keirsey last night and saw a lot of NF in your posts based on his description of the Idealist type.
There's a lot of good comments in that thread on PerC. It's debatable to me that there's even such a thing as personal ethics per se because those are limited to birthplace and historical context. And then a universal ethics is either a set of values that everyone normally believes everywhere, or values that they should believe everywhere normatively. But such finer distinctions are rarely made on forums where nobody has read a book on ethics, just a webpage or two at wikipedia.
As far as my ethics go, it is mostly applying objectively true impersonal principles to social areas based on what produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people, balancing the needs of individuals against each other. It probably looks NF, but the thing is I think some amount of idealism is necessary and true and fits neatly into this objective way of looking at things. Like we all recognize the value of something, like being free from political oppression. To that end, that ideal, we act in accordance. An ideal is simply a vision of a positive situation which one would like to manifest. It might be possible or it might not, but it is logical to get as close to this situation as possible within reason. If you think of ideals as "perfection," then it is like an asymptote you move ever closer to but never reach. But you still go toward it, even though you know it is technically unattainable. If you modify your idea of perfection to be the best possible situation that could occur, it is completely attainable, and everyone acts to that end (of producing the best possible situation) whether they are consciously aware of it or not. That is just the way humans work.
Anyway, that's kind of a long winded explanation, but it serves to put idealism within the context of rationalism. I think I am more NT than NF because reason has the final say in everything.
And if my value/ethical system is not significantly different than other INTP's, I see no reason to think it has anything to do with Fi and everything to do with developed Fe (and maybe developing Fi as a shadow function). But good point about the NF idealism, a lot of it does apply to me- just within a rational context.
I may look into this Ni-Ti loop thing.This is only confirming my INFJ call for you. It's not about being 100% this or that, and the scales tip toward J. But if you think more in terms of Ti (objectivity and logic) then I'd look into the concept of a NiTi loop which I've seen played out quite often.