Question for IEIs/INFps

[tcaudilllg]

Do you think in terms of metanarratives? Can you conceive of worlds of characters and their emotions, and contrast their choices against each other in the search for meaning?

[strrrng]

I suppose so. I definitely tend to see things in more "theatrical" terms, as far as what's depicted representing more story-like, archetypal activities. People have specific roles and their 'characters' are assessed based on what they embody. It can actually feel like a burlesque often, because certain situations can feel very thematic, their development unraveling in unique yet predictable ways.

[ArchonAlarion]

Mmm, that seems to be a major mindset or thought topic of INFp's.

[sigma]

Can you conceive of worlds of characters and their emotions, and contrast their choices against each other in the search for meaning?

I felt the smell of the sand on Arrakis, I heard the wind going through the dunes as the subtle vibrations of thumper heightened my senses.

When a book is good enough, I don't read it, I live it.

Oh, and it is not something I DO, it is something I AM, I'm not conceiving the world, its creation is not voluntary. It is closer to looking through dirty glasses that get progressively clearer as the narrative develops.

[ArchonAlarion]

er that seems Si...

You're basically describing the idea of "subjective sensorics" perfectly.

I mean, anyone can imagine sensation when reading a book, but the particular almost spiritual way you say it sounds like an Si seeking type, dude.

[Morcheeba]

I felt the smell of the sand on Arrakis, I heard the wind going through the dunes as the subtle vibrations of thumper heightened my senses.

When a book is good enough, I don't read it, I live it.

Oh, and it is not something I DO, it is something I AM, I'm not conceiving the world, its creation is not voluntary. It is closer to looking through dirty glasses that get progressively clearer as the narrative develops.

That's exactly what si would be like in my opinion. Ni is more like taking that same concept but making it more abstract like not so much the feeling of vibrations from your imaginings of dunes, but more like there meaning in a bigger context, it's really hard to explain.

[Morcheeba]

I think this is a good example as to why I get annoyed sometimes that si is my polr function; I would like to simply enjoy the sensations of whatever I'm imagining, but ni I always gets in the way of that and expects some greater reality from it.

[Sirena]

That's exactly what si would be like in my opinion. Ni is more like taking that same concept but making it more abstract like not so much the feeling of vibrations from your imaginings of dunes, but more like there meaning in a bigger context, it's really hard to explain.

I agree. With Ni, physical concepts seem fuzzy and unclear. They definitely don't become focused or the focus when I read and it tends to annoy me when too much emphasis is placed on them in a narrative because I feel like it is trying to pull me toward all that detail, which takes a lot of effort for me and I ultimately don't get anything from it. When I read, my imaginings are very much more of an abstract feel. My brain tends to ignore how something is actually described physically.

[Morcheeba]

Yeah, like ni is really hard to put down into words. Alot of times when someone wants me to tell them something related to or for that matter, I want to put my words into a song because I feel like I can better express myself in that manner, hence my reason for playing piano.

[Sirena]

Yes, I really struggle with giving that sort of verbally detailed feedback. It's been really frustrating when it's been expected of me and I find myself totally at a loss. My brain just doesn't function that way. Like those people that describe an event in extensive physical detail, like an ESTj I used to know. I'd have to write things down word by word as it is narrated to me and then read it back. It's why I always found it hard to take specific notes about any case I worked with. Concepts, that's a different story, which is why it was easier in school.

[tcaudilllg]

Uh I didn't mention anything about functions. Only IEIs. The Si discussion has nothing to do with the question I asked.

[silverchris9]

Uh I didn't mention anything about functions. Only IEIs. The Si discussion has nothing to do with the question I asked.

.... Silly LIIs and their expectations that people will "stay on topic" and "not digress". Ni is the mother of digression! All things hang together! The universe is connected, bit by bit! Just fyi.

Anyway, I don't know that I think in terms of unifying narratives. I mean, in Christianity I tend to focus on the unifying narrative (God comes down to earth, makes man capable of being like him, etc.). But I'm also aware of the pitfalls of metanarratives and their inaccuracies. I'm sort of suspending judgment until I can make myself a "Supreme Fiction" as Wallace Stevens calls it; that is, a foundational assumption (or metanarrative) that I can be satisfied with, that excludes things that I'm OK with excluding, and includes everything I feel must be included. American culture (and most of Western and Westernized culture) lacks such a supreme fiction or fundamental metanarrative, which is why, as Harold Bloom says, we are not a religious culture or a political culture, but a literary culture. Anyway, that's a complete tangent.

As far as my thinking style, I'm more likely to associate specific events with general concepts. For example, my friend was talking about politics and he gladly admitted that he was the sole determiner of what was "good" or "bad" and he didn't really have a complete objective standard for determining good or bad political action. Then he made a comment about how life has no meaning inherently, and we give it meaning. So I happily announced to him, "Wow, a solipsist and an existentialist! You're halfway to being a poet already!" Obviously, I was being a little facetious there, but that's an example of how I think: internal connections between general concepts.

I can think in dramatic terms (people as characters and so on), but I think of this sort of thing in much the same way as I think about metanarratives; I'm not smart enough yet to create a conceptualization of a person (a "character") that doesn't leave more out than I'm comfortable leaving out.

But, when I was younger, I 100% thought about imaginary worlds of characters. Not sure I contrasted their choices...

Oh! Now that I think about it, I do think about people's personalities in terms of what I call "tropes of the good"; that is, I focus on what people are sensitive to seeing the good in. I even apply this to simple things: I love the TV show Bones, because I think it's cool when Hodgins declares himself King of the lab. I think this is cool because it's a way of combining intellectual prowess (which I feel I have) to create something like social acumen or some sort of higher hierarchical standing (which I feel I lack). I like higher hierarchical standing because I associate this more readily with the good than others' might (I'm sliding into a bit of socionics here, Ti valuing blocked with Se and all that jazz). Different people are just more able to see the good in/through certain things rather than others. That's how I tend to view other people, and to a degree, this is concerned with creating a narrative of sorts about the individual, and providing an account of why they making their choices, why one thing has a greater meaning than another, etc. But again, I know that this way of perceiving leaves too much out, and I don't want a system for thinking about the world that limits my perception thereof, so I prefer not to have a system at all, and just filter all of my impressions, sensory and otherwise, from myself, without a particular set for understanding, hoping that gradually accepting all these impressions, amassing all this information, all these memories, will gradually enable me to discern a greater pattern among them all, one which will be less reductive, which will not leave anything out. Of course, this is impossible, but there's always the example of the miracle of Shakespeare to lead us forward...

[tcaudilllg]

Have you ever played the game Grandia, where the little mouse says "everyone has a role to play"?

That's what I mean by "metanarrative". Do you see people acting in a larger scheme to solve big questions? Do eras seem to you to be marked by these big issues?

[ArchonAlarion]

That seems like Merry quadra in general. Gulenko describes it as "ascending". My ESFj mom loves that stuff where unrelated people end up crossing paths and affecting eachother, which i guess represents the complexity and dependency that occurs in our social lives.

I'd expect INFp's to do this, perhaps with more abstract imagery and less focus on the mental characters' roles and more on the sum total of the story or sumptin.

[silverchris9]

Have you ever played the game Grandia, where the little mouse says "everyone has a role to play"?

That's what I mean by "metanarrative". Do you see people acting in a larger scheme to solve big questions? Do eras seem to you to be marked by these big issues?

Oh. That's a easier (maybe also boringer) question.

Yes.

[tcaudilllg]

Oh. That's a easier (maybe also boringer) question.

Yes.

I don't think it's very boring at all. Personally I see some of the more extreme voices as having pretty no role the metanarrative. Do you see it differently?

[silverchris9]

I just meant that I'd prefer to talk about fundamental modes of perception than something I sort of take for granted (of course, insofar as I take it for granted, it is a part of my "fundamental mode of perception).

But actually, yes, I quite agree. One of the crucial insights of postmodernism is that to make a metanarrative you *have* to leave something out. Of course, poets have understood that implicitly for millennia (or at least since Wordsworth), but you know, people always want to give things official names and what not. I think as long as you're aware that by making a metanarrative, you will inevitably leave something out, you can more towards correcting it, but also towards manipulating what you let in and what you keep out (remembering always that the ideal thing would be to let everything in, but also know that's impossible, for right now).

So, when you look at historical situation and try to "fit in" a radical movement into an overall picture, it does necessarily do some damage to that radical movement. When you put it into your box, you lose something. But people *have to* put things into boxes. Most people aren't strong enough to live with mental chaos/uncertainty (I call it "unmoredness" because of the play on words between "moorings" as in a ship's moorings and "more" as in morals) any more than they could live with political chaos.

What's really weird is when you encounter something so big and so self-evident that you can't fit it into a box, like the Holocaust. This is why people have declared "No poetry after Auschwitz". It's more than just saying "you can't write pretty words when the world is ugly," it's saying, "you can't come up with a overarching way of viewing things, or a historical metanarrative or whatever, because then you'll inevitably minimize this event, and that is unacceptable." "No poetry after Auschwitz" is another way of saying "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." I doubt that even Shakespeare would have had a morally intelligible way of speaking about the holocaust other than "bad" and "not good".

[pluie]

Do you think in terms of metanarratives? Can you conceive of worlds of characters and their emotions, and contrast their choices against each other in the search for meaning?

yes, probably. next question.

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

Yeah but I don't do it to give myself meaning, really. I do it because it excites me and makes me feel like I'm really here. 'Meaning' is a loaded word, really -- and meaning changes a lot. I liked everything except the last part.

I've been seeing Ni being contributed to meaning. I guess, in a way they are related. Ni is introverted intuition, and you can only find meaning in life by looking within subjectively - but I think that's as far as the comparison goes.

[some chair]

Man this thread has been in my mind a lot for years now. I know I'm typed as IXE, but the concept of metanarratives is sort of the keystone in the edifice of my understanding of subjectivity and human reality-modelling. Not only do we tell stories, but we tell stories about stories. Even mathematics is just an ironclad form of logical rhetoric spoken out in a metalanguage with specifically defined rules, and is subsumed under my idea of a story. Maybe I just read too many science papers that all disagree with one another.

EDIT

The definition of metanarratives as in organising grand themes, rather than meta-level narratives is also interesting, but I organise locally by what my life and the world's events have to say about some topic, or sometimes themes and dialectics evolve spontaneously from pieces of information that come in. I think that's just being isolated and kind of a fruitloop to begin with.

That said, since tends to be nearly identical with trans-contextual thinking in this community, it could also be symptomatic of , or even just "intellectual and spiritual development" as Gulenko put it, with regards to literacy and taste in media.

[ashlesha]

I suppose so. I definitely tend to see things in more "theatrical" terms, as far as what's depicted representing more story-like, archetypal activities. People have specific roles and their 'characters' are assessed based on what they embody. It can actually feel like a burlesque often, because certain situations can feel very thematic, their development unraveling in unique yet predictable ways.

maybe i'll be iei in my next life. it sounds so cool.

[strrrng]

Man this thread has been in my mind a lot for years now. I know I'm typed as IXE, but the concept of metanarratives is sort of the keystone in the edifice of my understanding of subjectivity and human reality-modelling. Not only do we tell stories, but we tell stories about stories. Even mathematics is just an ironclad form of logical rhetoric spoken out in a metalanguage with specifically defined rules, and is subsumed under my idea of a story. Maybe I just read too many science papers that all disagree with one another.

I definitely think all types can engage in metanarratives to a degree, but there are a few distinctions. Fe-valuers in general seem to put aside the tangible happenings of something in favor of its thematic progression, focusing more on universal metaphors than the observable sequence of events and their respective nuances. where I think Ni comes in, is in defining a kind of internal 'course' or map that gives a kind of unspoken, figurative weight to things, i.e. 'I've seen this scenario before.'. I think Si is more expansive and open-ended in this regard, focusing on an array of storylines and themes that intersect and various points without ever fully whiddling it down to one or two processes. you see the thematic undertones in gamma movies, where understated figures of speech and oblique references are used to signify various character traits and points of interest, whereas in beta it's a little more... sensationalistic, or poetic (think of the vividness of the scenes in Requiem for a Dream where they shoot up, the thematic import is embedded in each moment, very p-sub beta). you get sensationalism with alphas, but in a more explorative way. with deltas things are just kind of under the surface, crossing paths as they will (I think the movie Never Let Me Go is pretty delta-themed). I think what distinguishes it in IEIs is that the stories kind of tell themselves and unravel with a certain kind of consilience... so it's not even necessarily about constructing a metanarrative, just that the way it's evolving is inseparable from the subject's internal disposition and feelings. it's kind of difficult to describe, but for example in every place I've worked, I've been able to trace the evolution of the various characters as they've changed forms and moved into different lifetimes, it's like they're all a part of me but still carry their own weight and combine to form one basic story.

EDIT

The definition of metanarratives as in organising grand themes, rather than meta-level narratives is also interesting, but I organise locally by what my life and the world's events have to say about some topic, or sometimes themes and dialectics evolve spontaneously from pieces of information that come in. I think that's just being isolated and kind of a fruitloop to begin with.

this sounds potentially Ne/Si related, but I'd have to hear more.

[chemical]

It seems like this could be accomplished with Si-Fe just as much as with Ni-Fe. Using ideas like seeking meaning doesn't somehow rule out Si and make it Ni-exclusive. Si has a more immediate perception, but this isn't to say it doesn't get a deeper impression than what Ni may. After all, subjective perception of any kind is only inspired at most by objective stimuli, never determined by it.

[Aylen]

I think what distinguishes it in IEIs is that the stories kind of tell themselves and unravel with a certain kind of consilience... so it's not even necessarily about constructing a metanarrative, just that the way it's evolving is inseparable from the subject's internal disposition and feelings. it's kind of difficult to describe, but for example in every place I've worked, I've been able to trace the evolution of the various characters as they've changed forms and moved into different lifetimes, it's like they're all a part of me but still carry their own weight and combine to form one basic story..

Yeah...

[Sirena]

I agree. With Ni, physical concepts seem fuzzy and unclear. They definitely don't become focused or the focus when I read and it tends to annoy me when too much emphasis is placed on them in a narrative because I feel like it is trying to pull me toward all that detail, which takes a lot of effort for me and I ultimately don't get anything from it. When I read, my imaginings are very much more of an abstract feel. My brain tends to ignore how something is actually described physically.

Hmmm, I wonder if what I wrote here years ago isn't also applicable to Ne or even more so than Ni, given that "physical concepts" sound more related to Se.

Any thoughts?

[strrrng]

I would liken 'physical concepts' more to Si, its dealing with the reduction and often reification of observable (if at times somewhat internal) processes. I think Se can definitely be physical but doesn't always outline things in the way Si does, which supplies a more tangible context for Ne to draw up and divide ideas within... Se can naturally align itself with more intuitive notions based on how Ni feeds into it. your post overall just seemed N-related, I can also say that concrete details don't factor too heavily into my thoughts/associations, it's more like they take on an internal meaning of their own.

[Sirena]

Yeah, my impression when re-eading it was that it was N related, rather than specific to Ni.

[Park]

Yeah, my impression when reading the last couple of posts was that it was Park related, rather than specific to Sirena.

[Sirena]

Yeah, my impression when reading the last couple of posts was that it was Park related, rather than specific to Sirena.

Uh huh, it is ALL about you, isn't it?!

[Park]

Uh huh, it is ALL about you, isn't it?!

Pretty much, yeah.

[Sirena]

Pretty much, yeah.

You're lucky I like you, Mister.

[Park]

You're lucky I like you, Mister.

Like? Muhahahahahahahahahaha...

[Sirena]

Like? Muhahahahahahahahahaha...