Little Linguist's Type Rant

[Jeffster]

This is just pretty much picking on each other for no good reason, without any hope of a constructive outcome.

That's what NTs do best.

 

[simulatedworld]

That's what NTs do best.

lol now that I can't actually deny!

 

[Little Linguist]

LOL OMG, you may hate me, but I love you guys. You have just made me laugh harder than I have in a long time.

Okay, so I took a break last night, really thought about how I 'think' and 'feel' and came up with this rather amorphous result:

I'm sorry if I was a nitwit, but I'm just starting to get really engaged in this stuff, so I admit my 'knowledge' (if you really want to call it that) is extremely limited. Therefore, I'm relying overly heavily on what other people think, as I only have a few books and a whole bunch of Internet sources to go on.

What makes this system quite challenging is akin to what makes math different from languages: Whereas there is usually a logical, limited scope for correct answers in math, language is more amorphous. And I see MBTI like the language branch of psychology - a seemingly ever-evolving, ever-changing mass of - well, jack shit! LOL j/k - that I am trying to grasp.

It is like trying to capture fog....grasping at something seemingly tangible, and having nothing but a slightly moist hand.

At the end of the day, there is but one question:

What makes up the essence of human beings?

What makes Carolyn - Carolyn? What makes Little Linguist who she is? Is it her outward appearance? Her actions? Her thoughts? Her feelings? Which thoughts and feelings are hers, and what is 'programmed'? And how do you learn to separate the two? How do you define the 'natural' from the 'learned', or is that even desirable?

In essence - what makes you who you are?

This question and this answer may be super-apparent to most people, but it has been a constant struggle for me. Why? Because I always define myself through some outside parameters and not inside. My family always 'tried to get me' to go inside for the answers, and I see that it has merit, but it's hard for me.

So what do I do? I go outside again, my normal tendency, only to be frustrated at asking 50 different people who cannot know the correct answer (if I am fair) and getting 500 different answers, confusing me all the more.

How do I find myself? HOW? It's easier to catch the myriad of snowflakes falling down from the sky right now outside my very doorstep than to capture the essence that makes me who I am.

And at the end, I'm forced to stare at myself in the mirror and admit that I know nothing. And that all that I know is meaningless and could be rendered absolutely meaningless, also in this crazy world we live in, at the press of a button or the one-step-too-far that human beings always go to destroy their own environment, be it natural or manmade.

Tell me: What makes up the essence of a person? Is this all a construct? Is all this posturing about type merely another trick our minds are playing on us?

I really don't know. But I seek to find. And maybe therein lies the error. I need to let it come to me.

Often, with knowledge of self, I find that if you look for it and search, like a lover for your life, you shall not find it. One morning you wake up, and you can do it. Or so it seems. The baby steps are not apparent until one day, you wake up and realize the days are a lot longer. Do you notice that?

When the winter solstice arrives, the days start getting longer, but you do not realize it for a long, long time. Until one day, you get up and say, "Whoa, it's light! It's bright out! A month ago it was dark."

And so it is with the discovery of self.

So, damn it, I'm trying to rush things and getting nowhere. I need to let it happen and come to me, and it will manifest itself in time.

YAY for stream of consciousness.

 

[The Outsider]

:rolli: Guys, can we not let this go over into a warzone? Maybe you didn't agree with the way me and SW went about it, but at least we had a civil debate about something we speculated and theorized about, something we both found interesting. And we shared some point of views. If anyone gets to complain about it, it's LL, as she was the topic.

This is just pretty much picking on each other for no good reason, without any hope of a constructive outcome.

You dirty Fe user. You're an ESFJ from now on.

 

[Little Linguist]

You dirty Fe user. You're an ESFJ from now on.

Fe can be useful, you know.

 

[Amargith]

You dirty Fe user. You're an ESFJ from now on.

I had to Fe it, there's NTPs in the room

 

[simulatedworld]

imho, what really makes people who they are is not that hard to find.

You ask why they did something, or why they believe something. When they answer that, you ask "why?" again. When they answer that, you ask "why?" again and again until ultimately you reduce the answer to "Because that's just what makes sense to me."

Once you get down far enough, you can reduce all motivations for everything down to a few simple axioms that people accept as an inherent part of their being and that are very unlikely to change.

This question and this answer may be super-apparent to most people, but it has been a constant struggle for me. Why? Because I always define myself through some outside parameters and not inside.

That's what I was saying about leading with two extroverted functions, whether or not Jeffster is willing to acknowledge the value of my perspective here.

Extroverted functions are defined according to the environment. They adapt to what is going on externally in an effort to synchronize with outward conditions. If we depend too much on extroverted functions (as in your case), we become too dependent upon external validation and cannot get in touch with what is really subjectively important to our inner selves.

Introverted functions are defined according to the self and uninfluenced by the external environment. These are the priorities that we use to look inside ourselves and determine what is really of value to us without anyone else's influence or opinion. If we depend too much on introverted functions, we become detached from the outer world and unable to take feedback from others seriously.

So it's important to have a combination of both. Healthy, balanced individuals are proficient in both introverted and extroverted functions so that they can balance unmoving personal values with accepting and responding to feedback from the outer world.

Jeffster's advice, though he may not realize it, is actually instructing you to develop your introversion so that you'll have a better idea of who you are on the inside, which can balance out your own stated overdependence on external validation.

Jeffster, Amargith and I actually all gave you basically the same advice worded several different ways; Jeffster is just too averse to abstract theory to realize we were all saying the same thing.

 

[Eric B]

I don't think it is so much an introverted (auxiliary) function not being developed.
It looks to me like the "Tertiary Temptation", with Te "inflating" itself, to give the ego an excuse to remain in the dominant (extraverted) attitude, according to Lenore Thomson, or at least the LT exegesis wiki. For whatever reason, LL is fixated on the outside world, and the Te is stemming from some form of vulnerability (rising to compensate for it), according to the tertiary's "child" complex. (Ne doesn't seem to be vulnerable like that, and neither does Fi, as any "inferior").
I think her Fi came out in full force in the post from this morning, above.

 

[Little Linguist]

I don't think it is so much an introverted (auxiliary) function not being developed.
It looks to me like the "Tertiary Temptation", with Te "inflating" itself, to give the ego an excuse to remain in the dominant (extraverted) attitude, according to Lenore Thomson, or at least the LT exegesis wiki. For whatever reason, LL is fixated on the outside world, and the Te is stemming from some form of vulnerability (rising to compensate for it), according to the tertiary's "child" complex. (Ne doesn't seem to be vulnerable like that, and neither does Fi, as any "inferior").
I think her Fi came out in full force in the post from this morning, above.

That could very well be. Perhaps I will 'normalize' once I get out of this stagnating vocational school environment and get back on track. Then my Te/Se or whatever-the-fuck it is will help me again (I hope) instead of freaking crushing everything in sight.

Recently, I have always had to be a freaking military commander in these classes because these people begged to be whipped and bullied (with words, of course, I mean this figuratively) and don't listen to my natural mode (inspiring with encouragement and energetic enthusiasm along with a fair amount of strictness to keep people on track and reach their goals, with a healthy balance). I've been forced to permanently act on Te/Se-CENTRAL 24-fucking-7, and it's starting to make me go a little bit apeshit. These guys beg for a lousy ESTJ on the one hand and an ESFP on the other, and I'm playing the role quite well in two of my classes, overcompensating in other classes by 'trying to be their friend' as they put it; of course they mean it in a disparaging way and also practically beg for the whip in the anonymous questionnaires. In my other classes where I act like an ESTJ, they are all like, "It's great that you are in control and blah blahblah."

But the way I have to do it is simply SOUL-CRUSHING I tell you. I can't wait to get the fuck outta here.

They will literally provoke me in any way possible to test their boundaries and just make things difficult, and no matter how much I try to win them over, they are just too damned STUPID to appreciate the fact that they have an engaging native speaker in front of them. In fact, my husband said, "They do not want to be encouraged or coddled. They don't want to learn and expand their horizons. They don't want to develop and grow. They want to be metaphorically beaten to a pulp." I have to alternate between being a drill sarge and a fucking clown face.

Lovely. Just the job I want.

/end sarcasm

It's not about learning information here. This is more akin to elementary school, where you have to bend people to your will and socialize them and shit. Ugh. Disgusting.

In the normal world, that is the private sector, where people pay for lessons and actually want to learn, my natural tendencies work quite well. Satisfied happy clients and a satisfied, happy Carolyn leave the lesson. But here, I feel like taking an AK-47 and mowing down some people. ARGHHHHH! (Not literally of course).

 

[MacGuffin]

If LL is ESTJ, I'm ESFP.

 

[Little Linguist]

If LL is ESTJ, I'm ESFP.

You are, MacGuffin??? You evil devil, you, convincing us all you're NT!!! Nah, just kidding, c'mere!

 

[MacGuffin]

You are, MacGuffin??? You evil devil, you, convincing us all you're NT!!! Nah, just kidding, c'mere!

Awww... ESTJ hugs! So much like a punch in the face!

 

[Little Linguist]

Awww... ESTJ hugs! So much like a punch in the face!

C'mon you know you wanted to have a punch in the face. RAWRRRRRRRRR! So full of love and caring.

And now that I posted that I couldn't stand imaginary friends called Sarah who hogged the swings on the playground that were obviously available as a child, I'll never live down the ESTJ reputation. I should 'a' known better.

 

[Sniffles]

I'll called it, LL's primary function is Extraverted Delusioning!

 

[Little Linguist]

I'll called it, LL's primary function is Extraverted Delusioning!

How can that be when I wanted to knock the living lights out of people who did that on a regular basis as a kid.

 

[Sniffles]

How can that be when I wanted to knock the living lights out of people who did that on a regular basis as a kid.

I dunno...how can you be ENFP one minute, ESTJ the next, ENFJ after that, and after that it's just a match to the death between ISFJ and ESTP?

 

[Little Linguist]

I dunno...how can you be ENFP one minute, ESTJ the next, ENFJ after that, and after that it's just a match to the death between ISFJ and ESTP?

I have MPD? Maybe? LOL j/k

 

[Sniffles]

Yeah sure.

 

[Eric B]

That could very well be. Perhaps I will 'normalize' once I get out of this stagnating vocational school environment and get back on track. Then my Te/Se or whatever-the-fuck it is will help me again (I hope) instead of freaking crushing everything in sight.

Recently, I have always had to be a freaking military commander in these classes because these people begged to be whipped and bullied (with words, of course, I mean this figuratively) and don't listen to my natural mode (inspiring with encouragement and energetic enthusiasm along with a fair amount of strictness to keep people on track and reach their goals, with a healthy balance). I've been forced to permanently act on Te/Se-CENTRAL 24-fucking-7, and it's starting to make me go a little bit apeshit. These guys beg for a lousy ESTJ on the one hand and an ESFP on the other, and I'm playing the role quite well in two of my classes, overcompensating in other classes by 'trying to be their friend' as they put it; of course they mean it in a disparaging way and also practically beg for the whip in the anonymous questionnaires. In my other classes where I act like an ESTJ, they are all like, "It's great that you are in control and blah blahblah."

So that must be it, then. You're just adapting to that circumstance, and since Te is tertiary, you can engage it a lot, though it is still somewhat taxing after awhile (and Se would be the worst, since it is way at the bottom of the preference).

As for you saying that you were Te-ish when young, it was probably some other circumstance like this that necessitated it. That would also make it even more developed than normal now.

 

[Kalach]

Okay, once again....

First, I'm not complaining about people who genuinely help me with my type. Those who ask questions, and give me detailed reasons for their answers. People who really help me. These people bring me further, and I have really thanked them in the open and in person for their efforts and help. These have included, among others, BrainandHeart, SolitaryWalker, Ygolo, Jeffster, Wonkavision, VagrantFarce, Amargith, INTJMom, and a dozen others who have actually sat down, talked to me, and know me as well as anyone can know me on an anonymous medium such as the Internet. Or people who have asked me several questions and have actually worked together with me.

The thing that pisses me off are two things:

a) People who just throw something out there with no background or reason. These include people who just acted like they had a cactus up their butts and threw ESTJ at me for no apparent reason except that they noticed certain undesirable traits in my character. AND YES, I'm human and have UNDESIRABLE traits like anyone else does.

b) This whole system seems to be contrived in a way that is confusing and makes no sense for me. As soon as I seem to be on the right path - BOOM it's wrong. Therefore my rant about how, "Maybe these people are full of shit and they don't know jack shit about what they are talking about." That was not addressed towards any random members, but the people who designed the system in general.

Secondly, I think it is important for you to know that when I get frustrated, I often speak in sweeping generalities that is not addressed to the people here or any others. This comment about how, "At first, when I posted crazy blogs, everyone was so sure I was an ENFP; now that I post differently, I hear ESTJ, ISTJ, INFJ, ENFJ, etc." was not an attack on the people who said it, but an attack on the system itself. Meaning, the system obviously provides too much maneuvering room for people to make an accurate assessment!

If I had a problem with the people, I would have said, "X is a bitch because she said this." or "Y is an asshole because he said that." or "Z drives me nuts because he keeps changing his mind."

Did I say that? NO! Because it wasn't SUPPOSED TO BE PERSONAL. It was a general critique and an expression of my extreme frustration during this whole search.

Because I realized that my general intent was not accepted and/or understood, I simply removed it. Perhaps I did not express myself properly enough, and on objective viewing, saw how it could possibly be misconstrued. Therefore, when I have developed an argument suitable for posting (rather than in the heat of the moment, so to speak) I will post it. Then you can see what I really wanted to say.

I AM GRATEFUL FOR ALL THE HELP (GENUINE HELP) I received. I think I said that several times. How many more times do I have to say it and express it for you to accept it???? I am simply expressing my frustration over a seemingly unending, unproductive, and completely tail-chasing search DESPITE all the wonderful help people have given me, leading me to believe that the people who developed the system, "don't know jack shit." But I really don't know. I need to think about it more.

NOW, hopefully, you understand me. (Finally)

P.S. If it had been intended as personal, I would have called it "TypoC Member Rant" or "All the stupid idiots who thought they were TRYING to help me rant". I didn't call it that. I called it "Little Linguist's Type Rant" for a reason, namely, that *I* am frustrated about *MY* type.

I assert all that above is one or the other of these:

Tertiary Ne (ESxJ): "Ok, then, I'll bluff. We'll see how he responds to that. I don't know where this is leading, but at least it's leading somewhere new. This takes courage. Most people wouldn't have the courage to reach for the unknown at a time like this, but I can, because I can trust my principles to work in any new situation." The Secondary Function (Si) would say: "What are the facts here, really? Set the decision-making criteria aside and look at the facts freely, without without regard to any particular purpose or how the facts appear to others."

Tertiary Te (ExFP): "Unfair!! I have to stick to my guns, I will not be bullied or cheated. Any number of authorities agree with me. All my friends agree with me. Everyone can see that my response is directly mandated by the situation: anything else would be irresponsible. These facts absolutely settle the matter, and there is no point in looking at it any further." The Secondary Function (Fi) would say: "Fair or not, reasonable or not, recognized by anyone or not, what would truly accomplish some good here?"

Why? Because, as someone pointed out to me a while back, and as I currently over-state as a hypothesis: online, in-forum, we all tend to write from the tertiary. INTJs sound emo-whiners, ISXPs are wholistic world-viewers, ENXJs are slick sensory groovers, INFPs reminisce, ENTPs promote togetherness, and so on and so on. And--I corral the thesis further--the above quoted rant sounds like Ne or Te.


I almost hesitate to provide yet another link, extending the research phase weeks and months longer still, but: Which one is you?