This is what occurred to me while watching (in the way of criticism):
“If you watch the full length interview, you will see that Garfield rarely demonstrates awareness of what is appropriate or checks in to see how Mulligan or the interviewer are responding to what he is saying.â€
There’s little doubt in my mind that I’m J (and so supposedly, Fe, albeit aux) and I do this myself. It’s like my focus either goes to observing or participating, but I’m not very good at doing both- so if I become engaged in a topic, my awareness of how others are responding or appropriateness can fall to the wayside. Because of this, though, I usually need to quietly observe for a little while within any foreign environment before I participate in anything. And when I
do jump into participating in an environment I’m not particularly familiar with, I’m usually left worrying in retrospect about whether or not I spastically monopolized a conversation or behaved inappropriately. Sometimes afterwards some cue I took note of will only register in retrospect as an indication I should have modified my behavior- but my awareness of what that cue means in the moment
can get eclipsed easily if I’m engaged enough in the discussion.
It’s hard to comment on this because what he’s complaining about in this video is actually something I already feel strongly about myself. I’m inclined to think the difference between myself and a Fi’er who also has strong feelings about it is that my priority- in talking about it- is figuring out who to say it to (where it might make a difference) and how to say it in a way which makes it most palatable, whereas a Fi’er might say it aloud from some need to express it? Although I guess in that position I might drop “Well yeah, I have strong opinions about public education†before actually delving into a tangent- to watch expressions and find out if it’s worthwhile to further explain my position- but if I’d become accustomed to being interviewed and my experience had been that I almost always get asked to expound then I’d go ahead and go on the tangent before being asked to.
“Their emotions tend to be either directed at or shared by the people around them- not felt ‘in their bubble’.â€
I’m more inclined to say it’s preoccupying to have feelings that aren’t mirrored by anyone- but it’s not like they go away when they aren’t shared. For example- the pressure for children to conform to something that isn’t self-actualizing for them personally is upsetting to me. But if I’m around people who do not share in this opinion, it doesn’t go away for me. I’ll refrain from going on a tangent about it until I can figure out how to make my argument appeal to them (by learning about their values and figuring out some common ground)- but until I can find some semblance of a way to merge others’ values with my own, I’m distracted by that difference and distracted by the urge to understand why something is important to me and not important to others. Stuff is definitely felt ‘in a bubble’, but I suspect I become more preoccupied than the average Fi’er with figuring out why it’s ‘in a bubble’ instead of being a shared value. There just seems to be more of a sense of urgency in understanding why that value is ‘in a bubble’, why it isn’t more ‘universal’- and that doesn’t seem to be *as* distracting to Fi’ers.
“They are also not above telling white lies to make others feel better. Hence Mulligan’s reassurance may not be sincere- maybe she thinks that Garfield talked for too long.â€
The truth is that I might notice someone has talked longer than I’d feel comfortable talking about something myself, but it doesn’t mean I ‘secretly’ automatically tag that observation with some kind of internal judgment. This might be the Ni > Fe talking, but I don’t share it because it would feel rather self-absorbed and egocentric to think my immediate impression should really matter to anyone else. I’d need to see the person doing it consistently and gleam that it was a problem for other people as well before attaching enough weight to a “this person probably talked too long†judgment to see any point in sharing that opinion. [Also, I don’t really trust immediate judgments- I’m reserved about sharing them because I want to make sure it’s not just selfish impatience on my part.]
Just throwing that out there ... it's something that always glares out at me in these discussions. I, as an Fi-dom so-dom, do LOTS of the supposed Fe things. It's just not so cut-and-dried to me.
+1 As a supposed ‘Fe’er’ and least so variant, I find a lot of things considered ‘Fe’ just don’t resonate much with me. It seems to me that so-dom Fi’ers are often more aware of how their behavior is being perceived by everyone than least-so Fe’ers, for one.