Ni, Ne, and Creativity

[freeeekyyy]

So is this!

What if the moon were made of barbecue spareribs? :yim_rolling_on_the_

 

[redacted]

I'm Ni.

I'm not very creative moment to moment. But when I think of something new, it usually just appears in my head fully formed -- I don't have to do anything or really even think that hard. (Obviously, if there's math involved I have to think it through, but I don't have to think about how to think it through.)

Brainstorming is more of a thought clarifier for me than an idea generator.

 

[skylights]

Ne, and i don't really like brainstorming with other people. it feels limiting. too much Fi interference.

[MENTION=5489]shortnsweet[/MENTION] pinpointed it though, i brainstorm in the sense of STORM OF IDEAS.

alternatively, "sea of ideas".

i enjoy doing "variations on a theme" and i feel like most of my creativity comes from new arrangements of existing concepts. they don't come to me full-formed, though. i swim the sea of ideas and spin them and turn them and attach and detach and click and change and filter until all the systems align as one. but that's the fun part, you know. getting them all to come together as one. Ni sounds awesome but i would miss my idea-swimming.

also Ne:

ENFP specifically. pop-tarts, cats, space, rainbows, annoying repetitive cute music... yeah that's us

MEOW ME ME MEOW ME ME ME ME ME ME MEOW ME ME ME MEOW MEOW ME ME OW MEOW ME ME MEOW ME ME ME ME ME ME MEOW ME ME ME MEOW MEOW ME ME OW

 

[Walking Tourist]

I love brainstorming. It helps me come up with ideas that were under the surface but not quite there yet.
I don't know the difference between Ni and Ne as neither is my dominant function.

 

[lunalum]

i brainstorm in the sense of STORM OF IDEAS.

alternatively, "sea of ideas".

I see both. I was watching a real storm the other day and pictured how the storminess of the sea and sky are just.... stormy, a lot of the time, but then there are those moments where they seem to connect and communicate to each other, and try to one-up on their storminess.

And this is doubly representative as model and example so I think it works

Ni sounds awesome but i would miss my idea-swimming.

We get the fun of going out on the open seas, casting out the net, picking the biggest fish, and cooking up something with it. Ni has the advantage of having a complete set of salmon dinner wrapped and delivered to the doorstep after saving up enough. They each have their advantages, but yeah I'd rather pick out the stuff myself too...

also Ne:

ENFP specifically. pop-tarts, cats, space, rainbows, annoying repetitive cute music... yeah that's us

MEOW ME ME MEOW ME ME ME ME ME ME MEOW ME ME ME MEOW MEOW ME ME OW MEOW ME ME MEOW ME ME ME ME ME ME MEOW ME ME ME MEOW MEOW ME ME OW

Kind of repetitive to be Ne, isn't it? But yes the combination itself of poptarts, space, cats, and rainbows is very representative but I object to this being limited to the Fi flavor of Ne

*And on a nitpicky note, Nyan Cat says "Nyan" not "Meow" (He/she speaks Japanese..)

 

[Southern Kross]

I always thought of brainstorming as an activity designed to help people who aren't naturally "idea people"; they have to consciously form connections. Those little brainstorm charts in school seemed tedious & pointless to me. Let's just jump to the end.

Ideas have to flow naturally for me too. They often arrived fully formed; sometimes I just get an image or phrase that is interesting & inspires me to use it exactly as is or as a theme of sorts. I know something is interesting enough for me to do when it keeps "bothering" me. Other stuff just amuses me & then I forget about it.

Agreed. I don't tend to like brainstorming sessions and I suppose it is for this reason. The process is often just too easy for me and I'm forced to tailor it to fit others that find it difficult. Brainstorming always feel so slow and laborious, and we have to list all the obvious and ludicrous ideas down in mind-numbing detail as if they are as potentially useful as the truly imaginative or insightful. I've already mentally tossed out the unworkable ideas and skipped ahead in the process, while people are still discussing the merits of a nonsensical idea. I often end up just sitting there shifting in my seat at how painful it all is, wishing for it to be over.

I do sometimes take from other things too; I like looking at fashion magazines for inspiration. I don't copy what I see; I just use it as a springboard & then form something of my own. My brain sort of immediately discerns the base concept & tosses the obvious; a lot of this is Fi-ish too - there's some feeling-tone attachment that says "this is good, keep this, toss that" so you end up with a very vague framework to use. Nothing is wholly original anyway; it's all derivative if you consider it closely enough. I'm driven to improve also, and I think that is a Fi (maybe just Ji) influence. It can be frustrating to know exactly how something could be better but not have the ability to do it, whether financially or talent-wise or whatever. I'm very much a "dreamer", always thinking of a better future.

I agree with this, especially the part in bold. I'm very vibey in terms of ideas too - I like to have something to set the wheels in motion and provide the lighting bolt of inspiration. I then combine that inspiration with other smaller ideas that I have on the backburner and fit the pieces together in a new and different way. Perhaps this reflects a particular XNFP skill, in not only being idea driven but having a extremely astute and prompt evaluative process combined with it. We can spot a potential idea or fragment of an idea quickly and then imagine it's potential in very abstract terms - using those feeling tones and such - and then reconstruct it into a more pure form. In fact, you could say it's like painting in feeling tones.

I spent a lot of time creating things which mirrored some fantasy ideal I had or expressed my view of how people/the world are, and I didn't even quite know it then. The desire to create to express a hard to articulate concept - that is Fi motivated.

Yes. So much of my ideas and my creativity in general are based around trying to illustrate a particular sense of the world that is difficult to comprehend. I want to convey that internal experience that is so interesting to me.

 

[skylights]

I see both. I was watching a real storm the other day and pictured how the storminess of the sea and sky are just.... stormy, a lot of the time, but then there are those moments where they seem to connect and communicate to each other, and try to one-up on their storminess.

And this is doubly representative as model and example so I think it works



We get the fun of going out on the open seas, casting out the net, picking the biggest fish, and cooking up something with it. Ni has the advantage of having a complete set of salmon dinner wrapped and delivered to the doorstep after saving up enough. They each have their advantages, but yeah I'd rather pick out the stuff myself too...

Kind of repetitive to be Ne, isn't it? But yes the combination itself of poptarts, space, cats, and rainbows is very representative but I object to this being limited to the Fi flavor of Ne

*And on a nitpicky note, Nyan Cat says "Nyan" not "Meow" (He/she speaks Japanese..)

fair point. nyan cat is pure Ne. and hey the counterpart shadow to Ne is Si anyway, so the repetition makes sense, can't have the Ne without the Si

NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN

(better? )

 

[Glycerine]

I love how you posted the post twice.

 

[skylights]

I love how you posted the post twice.

it was an accident! my computer is being an ass.

though Ne never really complains about more information

 

[lunalum]

fair point. nyan cat is pure Ne. and hey the counterpart shadow to Ne is Si anyway, so the repetition makes sense, can't have the Ne without the Si

NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN

(better? )

Much better

Yes, Nyan Cat probably wouldn't have been nearly the phenomenon it was without the Si balance to it. Stripping it to the essential impression and repeating it ad infinitum made it memorable, and then in turn led to the creation of MOAR AND MOAR VARIATIONS of the original filling the webs.

So pretty much: throw dash of Si into the Ne mix= explosion of nyan-esque creations taking over the world

I can... kind of see why this seems scary to some people now

 

[Sniffles]

[youtube="GSMCRD35ch4"]Meow[/youtube]

 

[violaine]

^It's quite the toe tapper.

 

[skylights]

[youtube="GSMCRD35ch4"]Meow[/youtube]

that right there is terrifying Ni creepiness.

 

[Barlwooh]

Not sure if I'm exactly on topic here, since I'm not bothered to read the whole thread cos I should be reading. But I just thought of a nice explanation for how Ni and Ne come up with stuff, and I thought it might fit in this thread.

So to put it shortly, to me it seems like Ni generates a new idea by looking at something from a different angle, whereas Ne takes the same thing and "forces" it to be viewed from another angle by adding something to it from another context. Both act on connections between stuff, but there's a small difference.

John Cleese! On some episode of that old show where he runs a hotel tells his spanish employee to "know nothing" about him winning some money in a horse race, and when he wants the man to tell someone the truth later on, he responds "I know nothing". Didn't sound funny there, it was sort of funny in the show though, BUT! The point. To me that seems like a really Ni:ish idea, since the funniness of the whole thing is based on taking something "that's there", the fact that the spanish guy is told to know nothing about the whole affair, and looking at it from another point of view, suddenly wanting him to talk about it, which then results in a strange situation that I wasn't exactly able to present here in all of its glory.

AND THEN! On one episode of Adventure Time, Jake the dog (A magic dog, if you aren't familiar with the show.) is injected with poison strong enough to kill 9 dogs, after which he magically makes his liver 10 times its normal size get the poison out of his system, it was funny there too, sorry for these explanations. But this then, would appear a Ne:ish idea, since it also takes what's there, the poison in the dog, and resolves it by adding stuff from another context, which is that livers do weird stuff.

I have no idea if this is making any sense. Ni looks at stuff from different angles, but then is restricted by the context in which the object of interest appears to be in. Although then, seeing something from all angles makes them see those weird subtleties behind stuff, which I find strange. And Ne takes something from a certain context, looks for another context that might have had some similarities with the other one, and then forces them to "Melt" together by forcing something into the idea that would bind them together, like massive poison burning livers, or something stereotypically Ne:ish like rainbow coloured dragons.

 

[Barlwooh]

And I apologize for the messiness of everything in that post, a nightly Ne rampage.

 

[Lady_X]

i feel like i use both but ne more often. they come out of nowhere...or not really...i guess i'll be thinking about a thing and then...oh this would be cool...and that and that which later on would make this possible and then this thing would happen which would lead to that and then i should start doing that oh and use this and wouldn't it then be cool if this happened and we got to do more of that.

i always feel like typing that sort of thing out is so pointless. like that's how everybody does it. it's just called thinking.

edit: oh and i love to brainstorm. it makes me very happy when people do this with me. i feel like i think much better with someone else.

 

[Mia.]

For me it's a combination of Fi + Ne working together to find ideas, sort through them, and explore them.

Ideas are never a problem for me. Follow through and focus are my problems.

If I do manage to cho-cho-choose (and there is a picture of a train! yeah, that's great ralph...) one idea, then I will allow it to expand outwards naturally.

Possibilities both fuel and block me with their tantalizing tapestry of delights.

This. Spot on.

 

[Porcelain Hearts]

Hmm this thread really helped me understand my Ni.
Brainstorming is definitely not my strength because I study something very intensely before I can consider alternate ideas. When I worked on ads with my partner, she would always say I was a good critic but too much so that it's spoiling the brainstorming process. I either gave an in depth reason why it would or would not work.

 

[Mia.]

I'm pretty sure I'm Ni dom, because I'm the worst brainstormer the world has ever seen. Group projects with my ENTP buddy go something like this: she spitballs infinite crazy ideas. I shoot them down, one after another, until some little aspect of her plans just sets off the wheels of my brain, and the answer/plan comes together, all in an instant. Voila. It's magical, but not really, because the answer was waiting there all along. It just had to be found.

Hehe, Ne and Ni working together is a beautiful dynamic, n'est pas?

 

[1487610420]

First, state whether you use Ni or Ne (doesn't have to be dominant or auxiliary). How do you come up with ideas? What do you think of brainstorming?

I think I use Ni more than Ne, but I'm not sure about my type right now. When I come up with a creative solution or idea, I usually wouldn't be able to explain how I came up with it. I just think about it and an idea comes to me. If I like the idea, I might go with that, unless I think I can come up with something better, then I'll keep thinking. I'm not really trying to grasp at many different possibilities and then evaluate them later, it's more like I'm diving into a sea of ideas, searching for the one perfect idea, and when I find it I'll just know that's the one. Though it's not often that I actually find "the one". I usually end up settling for an idea that's good enough, though not really what I'd been searching for.

I've never really liked brainstorming. To me it just doesn't seem necessary, because if I focus on the kind of idea I'm looking for, I can come up with something creative. I don't really need to make a list of possible ideas, because all I need is one good one. I also don't like writing down every idea I come up with because I like to filter it out right away and only keep it in mind if it's one of the best ideas.

Fi inner-value driven Ne asserted by tert Te.