I hate Fe properness

[ashlesha]

this thread is confusing to me. but i think i sort of have the gist of it. what feels relevant to me as an EII is something i brought up recently in a different thread: the idea of looking at someone as a "person" versus looking at someone as a "compilation of behaviors and actions," and how i automatically do the former. this is something i've sort of associated with Fi, though it might also have to do with my upbringing (in a way that is traceable, albeit uncomfortable and maybe pointless to go into). and maybe its just something that most people do, at least up to a point.

idk, though, when i think of paying attention to everyone's ethical behavior, what i picture in my mind is this image of a person with a steno pad and a pen, keeping track of others' behavior and tallying it against some kind of checklist of what is preferable or acceptable. and i just absolutely do not have the time and energy to think of people in that way...not to mention, something about that mindset feels kind of inhuman and gross to me (sorry). so if Fi has to do with such traceable and explicit sorts of judgments, than i know i am definitely not Fi ego.

that's not to say i don't see the wisdom in being careful and maintaining some kind of objectivity when it comes to who you associate with. but people are people, and we're all kind of crazy and we all fuck up all the time because it's just the nature of being a person. obviously, things like morality and social codes are pretty complex, there are very few universal rules, so it really comes down to how you feel. which makes a checklist kind of impossible, at least for me. i guess what i'm basically trying to say is that it's complicated.

What happens during the judgment process is that when you consider everyone as in individual, you understand that people have their own personal ways and do not seek to impose a fixed standard than is not flexible. When you consider everyone as a collective, you understand that not every single person can be satisfied and so you seek to find the option that suits the most amount of people.

i like this.

[marooned]

i don't think i really understand this topic without examples. somehow i don't think the torturing kittens example works. i mean if you were really close friends with this person already and then you find out, out of the blue, they torture kittens in their spare time, then it's kind of like figuring out you didn't really know them to begin with... because i mean if you didn't notice this sadistic side to them at all and they never did anything that would hint at it i might feel that they just well might be a very convincing psychopath... and their torturing of kittens raises some interesting questions about how they feel about other things... furthermore if i continue associating with them and don't do anything knowing full well they're torturing kittens it's like i'm an accomplice. i think i would feel that i had to do something (to stop them), so then it would turn into betrayal. anyway my point with this is that the kitten torturing is obviously too extreme an example and as most people don't do this it wouldn't come up in typical relationships obviously. anyway if you were madly in love with the kitten torturer before learning of his/her awful secret i doubt most people could just fall out of love with them at once because of it. and some kind of ultimatum like "i want nothing to do with you! you torture kittens! so either stop or i'm out of your life!!!!" seems really ridiculous especially considering they might not be able to stop because they're sick.

[717495]

i don't think i really understand this topic without examples. somehow i don't think the torturing kittens example works. i mean if you were really close friends with this person already and then you find out, out of the blue, they torture kittens in their spare time, then it's kind of like figuring out you didn't really know them to begin with... because i mean if you didn't notice this sadistic side to them at all and they never did anything that would hint at it i might feel that they just well might be a very convincing psychopath... and their torturing of kittens raises some interesting questions about how they feel about other things... furthermore if i continue associating with them and don't do anything knowing full well they're torturing kittens it's like i'm an accomplice. i think i would feel that i had to do something (to stop them), so then it would turn into betrayal. anyway my point with this is that the kitten torturing is obviously too extreme an example and as most people don't do this it wouldn't come up in typical relationships obviously. anyway if you were madly in love with the kitten torturer before learning of his/her awful secret i doubt most people could just fall out of love with them at once because of it. and some kind of ultimatum like "i want nothing to do with you! you torture kittens! so either stop or i'm out of your life!!!!" seems really ridiculous especially considering they might not be able to stop because they're sick.

Yeah, this viewpoint just seems rather to me. I mean it is a bit incomplete and also kind of extreme to make a serious decision about, but its still valid in my experience after experience with types and how they would judge the situation.

Well I don't know for sure if it's type related, but your wall of text displays no logical sense or factual examples. As such you might not even be an valuer, and I've no clear idea of why you're posting this or just muttering to yourself.

If anything, types are more likely to forgive social slip ups because it's not so much about forming a static opinion of you, .

But mostly this is depending on the person, and unless you want to be more precise in what you're complaining about-please provide examples, then most people on the thread will struggle.

I guess you didn't understand the context I was using? I was speaking of being about relationships, not objective ethics. I don't know what's so hard to understand. I'll let people give their own experiences about it.

this thread is confusing to me. but i think i sort of have the gist of it. what feels relevant to me as an EII is something i brought up recently in a different thread: the idea of looking at someone as a "person" versus looking at someone as a "compilation of behaviors and actions," and how i automatically do the former. this is something i've sort of associated with Fi, though it might also have to do with my upbringing (in a way that is traceable, albeit uncomfortable and maybe pointless to go into). and maybe its just something that most people do, at least up to a point.

idk, though, when i think of paying attention to everyone's ethical behavior, what i picture in my mind is this image of a person with a steno pad and a pen, keeping track of others' behavior and tallying it against some kind of checklist of what is preferable or acceptable. and i just absolutely do not have the time and energy to think of people in that way...not to mention, something about that mindset feels kind of inhuman and gross to me (sorry). so if Fi has to do with such traceable and explicit sorts of judgments, than i know i am definitely not Fi ego.

that's not to say i don't see the wisdom in being careful and maintaining some kind of objectivity when it comes to who you associate with. but people are people, and we're all kind of crazy and we all fuck up all the time because it's just the nature of being a person. obviously, things like morality and social codes are pretty complex, there are very few universal rules, so it really comes down to how you feel. which makes a checklist kind of impossible, at least for me. i guess what i'm basically trying to say is that it's complicated.

I definitely know and appreciate where you're coming from. Thanks for the info. I've found that oftentimes after the cloud of perspective fades and is cleared up, people in general are left with a better sense of what the originally was or is. Just because I'm an valuer, to me always has to add some kind of twist on things, and isn't objective in the sense that it's true, all objective means is that it aims towards an objective judgment. What you described seems easily like a take on things and what I like to hear.

[marooned]

Yeah, this viewpoint just seems rather to me. I mean it is a bit incomplete and also kind of extreme to make a serious decision about, but its still valid in my experience after experience with types and how they would judge the situation.

out of curiosity what would you see as more ?

[marooned]

Since I already have a relationship with this person, it's going to be hard for some objective factor to change that. I don't think an type would see a factor like that as mattering, because it doesn't effect the relationship.

although i didn't say i would end the relationship because of it (i mean if someone's important to me, they can be a murderer and they'll still be important to me). i do see it as mattering though because i like kittens and they're helpless creatures and this person is torturing them and i can't not do something about that. i mean i guess for this to work i'd have to know just how close this person is and the specifics... i am prone to regularly being unsure of relationships with most people and so a factor like this can tip the balance rather significantly especially since it would probably send all of my previous doubts screaming to the surface as one causing me to mull it over for a very long time... i mean often with torturing animals, it evolves to torturing people (although this too would depend on my feelings, as i might feel that in their case maybe not), so to me this would be a serious concern and also a question regarding my personal safety (although i mean this really is hypothetical because i probably wouldn't have ended up near this person to begin with because i probably would have gotten some feeling early on that it wasn't safe and went the other way, but anyway). it would largely depend on which doubts i've already had regarding the relationship and what realizations hit due to the new info about the person changing my conception of who they are and therefore also about how they may actually feel about me (were they using me? is there any genuine feeling of friendship? is anything between us a figment of my imagination?) i guess it just also depends on the stage of the relationship... for instance i don't doubt things about my immediate family members as i know who they are and what our relationship is... but anyone i met who is more in the friend category, i mean it would already have to be a certain kind of relationship for me to have not detected this. the main problem is that they are hurting others (it's an actually act, not simply a view). and to me torturing animals is basically as bad as torturing people (as i certainly wouldn't want to be a torture victim and i would hope that someone would stop the person doing it if they knew).

this sounds like more hah

[717495]

Yeah obviously safety is another issue, but I don't think that's incredibly type related. Because when I think of animal torcherer, I do think about what other implications that might form and happen to me to that effect, but I can't say it has much to do with or because there is literally no ethical judgment being made on my behalf. It has easily been a different thought process in similar situations for types I've known, as I see them attach a whole lot of personal judgment to those sorts of things, and as -PoLR that can get pretty annoying fast. types think I'm being insensitive, they have no idea what I think about them really, and their attempt to know what's right or wrong. They're just two different mind frames. I find that will also assume a lot more ethically about a situation than what I see there, just as does with intuition, etc. I hate when people get the two information elements confused though, it's so frustrating having to explain why... I just don't .

[marooned]

...

yeah well this has cleared up nothing for me, but that wasn't the point of this topic anyway. i can usually relate to a lot of Fe complaints but it doesn't necessarily mean anything (as i think that Fe types can as well). also with this topic another of my points with my sort of sarcastic quote in exclamation marks about the ultimatum is that i really think that most people aren't going to just ditch someone that's important to them (or even someone not important to them, depending... for instance someone one is starting to get to know) because they discover something disturbing about them (whether Fe or Fi valuing). in this way i can basically reduce all of this back to being relative without having any actual specific examples that make something clearly not relative. of course in my own thoughts i can often make everything relative as well.

[Santa Claus]

i like kittens

That's wonderful Loki! You've been such a very good girl this year! I have some extra special presents for your stocking, ho ho ho!

[marooned]

die santa!

[717495]

out of curiosity what would you see as more ?

The person I already knew before I found out something that doesn't really matter anyway. If I didn't know him I wouldn't necessarily seek out to befriend some torcherer, nor would I think badly towards him because I don't really know him (which is what I was originally trying to explain)...wouldn't fully befriend him unless I felt the development of an internal/personal connection with him, like our personalities meld in a way that isn't explainable, we just have the connection and it could definitely be due to the work we put into it, but in other words it's a subjective preference, nothing that strives for an objective judgment. Since I already have a relationship with this person, it's going to be hard for some objective factor to change that. I don't think would see a factor like that as mattering, because it doesn't effect the relationship, maybe they have a few learned expectations? (which I find rare of -PoLRs) is the judgment of objectifying the ethics of the situation, that I think will try to alter whatever perceived relationships, instead of the opposite. But to me feels a lot more disconnected from truly understanding the status of relationships, instead of just "what I like about this certain person and why," which an type might not know enough about because we don't try to objectify it to a large extent, which could thus reduce the relationship to mere terminology and principle, in other words an emotional sort of idea, and we wouldn't be honoring the reality of our personal relations.

[717495]

The Lenore Thompson wiki describes what you're saying as something related to :

Great perspective I find the 2nd and 3rd paragraph the most valid. "Inner essence," which is a great reference to how "relationships" are formed.

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

But Fe types do that as well. Everybody is like, paying attention to how their environments naturally clash with them or not. Stop acting like you're these pristine beautiful unique snowflakes with a 'higher moral purpose' or something and that only you as a Beautiful and Magestic Fi type can understand the truest most pure form of love. It's making me vomit. Can't you guys be clearer on what you really want from somebody, in a physical context? Jeesh. That's why I like estps. They are so direct and so clear on what they want. It seems like all fi types do is hold out for some 'deep and meaningful' thing THAT DOESN'T FUCKING EXIST. I mean jesus christ, what do you really want to do? Do you want to play video games together, do you want me to get a real job? Do you want to be nicer? Do you want others to be nicer? Do you want to go to the park and throw a ball around.

I'm only being like argumentative because it's like what you guys want. It's how you can relate to people. It brings out the fight in me.

[Words]

I guess you didn't understand the context I was using? I was speaking of being about relationships, not objective ethics. I don't know what's so hard to understand. I'll let people give their own experiences about it.

Yeah but you made the thread and I want to know what you mean by and examples pertaining to your life, because surely things must have happened to you to have formed an opinion.

[ashlesha]

@ashton: thanks for that quote, it matches my experience with Fi quite well. and, lol, the intangible things, ya

@poli: i think we have a similar view of the Fe/Fi difference, though i have a hard time following your wording (i'm going off the basic gist and feel i get from what youre saying). what is mostly confusing me is that i largely agree with what loki wrote, maybe not every detail, but nothing she said stood out to me as particularly egregious, idk. so i'm having trouble seeing where the Fe/Fi line is here.

@bnd: do you honestly not see any parallel between describing Fi as something all mystical or whatever when compared to the way you talk about Ni? i dont blame you for being annoyed, cos that annoys me too

i also feel like its probably important to clarify that its not as though im completely blind to behaviors...i have instinctual reactions to behaviors as well as to people, its that when it comes to putting the two together there isnt any kind of direct line or anything. its not like there is zero correlation between the person and what they do, just that they are very far from being one and the same. bleh, hard to explain.

[Sir Knight]

I had an experience with this once. I was listening to NPR and there was an interview with an author on his new book. They were talking about a specific set of side characters- Israel-born Jews who had emigrated to Britain and were very outraged at the actions Israel was taking. The author was very critical of these characters, saying that he found their outrage "arrogant" since they had removed themselves from that situation and, in doing that, given away any ability to change it.

And while I can understand that idea, it still completely bowls me over. How can one not get outraged at legitimate ethical violations happening in the world? When I read about stuff like that I, without any direct control over it, am immediately moved to rage, to sadness, to despair... The whole spectrum of emotions that man's inhumanity to man can cause in a person. It puzzles me that a person could see that as arrogant, when it's just my most natural response to something like that.

But I can see where that perception of "fakeness" comes in. I can be shaken to the core by an issue but, really, what can I do about it? When it gets right down to "So I'm angry, what am I going to do about it?" the answer is almost always, "Shit. Nothing I guess."

I mean, could I legitimately do something to change a situation? Not with my piss-poor resources. Then, if I had the resources could I change something? Well, certainly, but with all the effort involved in changing something far beyond your countries borders, couldn't those hard-earned resources be better spent on my own domain or on more immediate concerns?

It seems like the reason Fe could be perceived as fake is that I can get really god damned angry about something and, realistically, be able to do nothing about it. So what was the point of that anger in the first place? Just hollow ethical pride? I don't know.

/ types do seem to operate by much more explicit standards when evaluating others and their behavior. It's as if they have some amassed database compiled in their minds which correlate X behaviors with Y intentions. And because of that, can often readily explain how and why they deduced something about a given person.

I can definitely relate to this. I watched this video about Jeremy Irons decrying the death penalty. And while I can certainly agree that the death penalty should be abolished or at least significantly narrowed in the scope and scale of crimes for which it is applied, the reasons he gives for doing so make me want to scream, "BUT THAT'S WRONG!"

He talks about how, though they have tortured and murdered, the people we put on to death row are still human beings, and still deserve the same human rights that are given to all human beings. I would argue that, because they have tortured and murdered, they have demonstrated a complete lack of regard for the rights of other human beings, which is why it is perfectly ok for us to do the same for them. They've killed other people and, so, why should they be able to turn around and expect fair treatment in the context of innocent, law-abiding citizens, when "fair treatment" at this point would be karmatic retribution via electric chair?

[Sir Knight]

The video, by the way:

[golden]

I continue to be fascinated by how Fi-valuers' complaints about Fe-valuers sound an awful lot like whatever complaints I might deliver about Fi-valuers, lol. That is, sometimes Fi seems fake to me, especially if it is being offered repeatedly over time by someone who greatly dislikes my Fe.

But look, maybe sometimes my Fe is fake. It ranges from (1) Fe deployed in a situation where my feelings or ideas toward another person run very deep, to (2) an important social situation in which I might step in to provide some kind of smoothing or ease, to (3) one-off instances where some dose of Fe can get something accomplished.

In the above para, item 1 describes my relationships with close friends, partners, family. As in other threads on Fe versus Fi, it was implied here that that Fe-valuers don't make real friends? Please. Example of number 1, childhood friend who suffered from psychosis for years. She called me every three or four days at the height of her illness, and she could count on me any time, day or night. She really needed what I could call Fe--doses of surface-readable emotion where nothing feels hidden.

Item 2 examples: (a) Being the maid of honor at a wedding where the bride and groom's families were greatly at odds, for three days constantly smoothing over tense interactions, giving people ways to connect, etc. (b) Being the go-to person to put authors' minds at ease and iron out their issues and worries (back when I worked in-house for a book publisher).

Item 3 example, from last night: In an interminable line at a department store, people had to leave space for others to pass through, where two aisles intersected, and every so often someone would think the line ended at that space. Once that gap was just behind me, a couple of guys approached the line and cut in. I glanced behind them and saw that the guy in back of them was boiling mad but didn't seem to know how to handle the situation. So I smiled at the two men and politely, with a light laugh, pointed out the end of the line, about 20 people back. They laughed too, apologized, and found another line. I was able to do this in a cute-n-harmless way. The pissed-off guy clearly could not have.

Maybe in some of these situations I am quite fake? But really, doesn't fakery depend on the person? Generally, in the social sense I use Fe to be helpful, so even if it looks only skin-deep, I'm doing something with the Fe because I think something matters. My friends matter to me, potentially implosive social situations matter to me, people being wronged matter to me, and if Fe is something I can use to have a positive effect, then I'll use it.

In the negative, I might use Fe to "go off" on someone. And there, I admit my wrong. Occasionally it's called for; usually not.

[ashlesha]

i personally wouldnt describe Fe egos as generally taking everything personally. that really is something ive seen more with Fi egos in my experience. but thats not what i think this thread is about. i think its more about whether assessment of people is based more on subjective versus "objective" criteria, or something like that.

when Fe egos have been offended by something i've said its been more along the lines of, "thats wrong" or "youre not supposed to say that." when Fi egos have been offended, its been more like, "that hurt me because..."

[golden]

i personally wouldnt describe Fe egos as generally taking everything personally. that really is something ive seen more with Fi egos in my experience. but thats not what i think this thread is about. i think its more about whether assessment of people is based more on subjective versus "objective" criteria, or something like that.

when Fe egos have been offended by something i've said its been more along the lines of, "thats wrong" or "youre not supposed to say that." when Fi egos have been offended, its been more like, "that hurt me because..."

Ok, I get you, then, I think.

Thinking of the last time I was truly, deeply hurt by someone, it was because I feel that person had violated some basic human principles in his dealings with me. I couldn't think of any justification under the sun for his behavior. I also saw a huge gap between his persona and stated values, on the one hand, and his cruelty, on the other.

My mind kept turning it around: how is this possible? Why would anyone do that?

Often, for me, these matters boil down to WHY. If I can't understand why someone is being hurtful, I find it almost impossible to overlook and forgive it.

In that "why," I feel pain.

Does that sound like an Fe-valuing reaction to you? Or is it better described in some other way?

[717495]

Which I've seen frustrate / types, as it gives them the impression of something entirely baseless, arbitrary, or disconnected from reality (as B&D criticized).

Yeah this is quite true. I feel the same way when those same types give me logical input. I kind of feel inside "on what basis are you saying this"? It seems a lot more intuitive to them, I guess. But I don't feel compelled to question it, I just kind of nod my head and forget all about what they were talking about lol.

Yeah, I find most of his reasoning annoying. While I personally don't agree with the death penalty on grounds that I dislike the State having legal authority to kill, and while he's right to say it isn't an effective deterrent against crime… to say we shouldn't do it because "they're human beings!" undercuts the value of human life; killing those who dishonor it seems perfectly justifiable. If a man kills someone who murdered his family, is he wrong?

Hah, my valuing friend talked to me about the same thing months back, and we had this big disagreement, the same opinion difference which felt to me rather type-related in that instance.