Because we're secretly cruel, selfish and inbred?
That, or its possible that IEI's are just as cruel selfish and inbred as everyone else but that they realize that and rail as hard as they can against it?

I guess a lot of the attraction towards knights is that externally they're majestic defenders of the realm who attain an almost mythical status for their deeds and their conquests, but all. underneath that plate mail and around those codes of chivalry is a man. Just a man. As susceptible to doubt and frustration as any other man. As easily broken or killed or disheartened as any other man.

But the fact that he tries to act nobly and justly in a world that rewards neither speaks volumes about the character and the determination of that man.

But again, we're talking idealized knights here, so, yeah.

I guess its why I admire people who join monastic orders. How can someone repress themselves sexually and creatively for decades? How can one find pleasure in copying manuscripts or meditating in floral gardens for hours? Hell, Silent Orders? Orders where you can't even speak?! How people can subject themselves to that for decades and not tire of it I'll never understand, but if you can do it then its a very powerful show of your faith.

likable in that self-aware, "I'm saying something that will induce you to like me" way
Yeah, I understand this all too well. One time, this girl asked me out on a date and I agreed, not because I really wanted to date her, but because, well, I was touched that she found me attractive enough to date and I didn't want to hurt her feelings since she'd obviously been working up the courage to say this for a while. Its not that she was unattractive or had a bad personality, I just wasn't... I dunno, wasn't looking for a relationship, I guess.

I met her at a local coffee-house anyway and while I was waiting for her there all I could think about was that I really just wanted to bail and get the hell out of there but then she showed up. We order our coffees and our little biscuits and we sat upstairs and talked. I laughed, she laughed, and then we went our seperate ways. I got in my car and started it up, and looked at the clock and saw that two hours had passed and all I could think was, "What the hell did we even talk about that entire time?"

I mean, I'd been talking for hours about nothing. If I concentrated really hard I could remember specific phrases or exchanges, but I couldn't remember much of anything about the conversation or her. It was like my brain had just tuned out and my mouth just took over for a while. And she liked me of course, since she wanted to keep going out with me, but I felt like I didn't know her at all, and I was certain she knew nothing about me.

But I get that though. I just talk and joke with people and then we like each other but we still don't know anything about one another. We're friendly with one another but not friends.

As for the girl, we never did go on another date. We kept trying to plan something but our schedules never really worked. I really wanted to just tell her how I felt and that I didn't want to be in a relationship with her, but I just didn't want to hurt her feelings and, by extension, have her not like me.

I guess I just really like being likable. I doubt there is a single person on the face of this earth who would say that I'm an asshole and that I deserve to die. Hell, I was the weirdest kid I knew in high school and practically the whole school liked me. Even though they'd say I was weird or creepy at first, I'd just keep responding to them with humour and good will and chipping away at their reservations until they finally just realized, "You know, Steven's not all that bad of a guy."

And even now I still run into people from high school who are excited to see me and want to know how I'm doing and want to share their lives with me but all I can think is, "Who is this person and why is he acting all chummy with me?" I know their name. I know we had some classes together. If I really concentrate I can remember some of the conversations we've had or things we've done together. But I still just don't understand why they think I'm memorable or why they seem so excited to see me.

Hell, even in college, which is supposed to be all faceless and cold and impersonal, my teachers seem to never have any trouble remembering my name or my face which is just odd. I'm just some skinny pale guy who plays computer games all day, what makes me so special?

I guess I'm really good at ingratiating myself with people, but at the same time I feel like, even though these people like me, I'm never really all that close to them. Hence why I only have two friends.

I guess the real thing, then, is that IEIs on this forum tend to open up more quickly and reveal how well adjusted we're not.
I am a man of contrasts, it seems. After two Orange Honey Wheat draughts, Friend #2 once described me as, "the most high-strung laid-back person he's ever met." In the same vein, I'm well-adjusted but I never really feel like it. Like, I guess I just come across as this really well-togther, stable sort of guy to other people when I am, in fact, riven by a deep kind of internal angst that I don't really feel entitled to feel, if that makes any sense.

I know people who are in far worse situations than I am. One girl I know is basically in an impossible situation where to continue living as she is is to keep herself in an environment where she has absolutely no potential for personal growth and if a really big crisis were to affect her she wouldn't have any legal means of dealing with it. At the same time, getting out of this situation would mean going someplace shes never been before, where she can barely speak the language, and where she knows no one and has nothing and would lose whatever little she has carved out for herself now.

She has a shitty situation. I'm a spoiled middle class brat who eats three square meals a day, has a steady job that pays pretty well, has all the room in the world for personal growth and has the freedom to be able to sit in his computer chair and post long walls of text in Socionics forums. I have a fucking awesome situation and I still get melancholy.

We were talking online once, and the conversation turned morose. We started talking about the last time each of us was depressed. Like, not melancholy, but true, deep, nihilistic depression. The ones that don't go away after a day or two.

Mine happened last year. It was a new semester and I had taken the introductory courses to five different majors. I thought that one of these five will be my career and By God I will figure out which one it is this time. This time I really will get out of college. And I didn't of course, but I soldiered on for half the semester, hoping that one of these classes would grab me and interest me and show me what I was to do for the rest of my life and they didn't.

...and then the guilt hit. I realized that I'd wasted another semester of my time and my parent's money, and, simple as that, I just stopped going to class halfway through. I couldn't talk to anyone about it. Certainly not my parents. It didn't make any sense. Of course I wanted to do well and not waste money, but then what was the point when none of these courses were going to be worth any amount of effort in the end? Logically I should have just finished it and found something else to study next semester but I couldn't. I just couldn't make myself care, either about the classes or the truly shitty grades I was getting in them for not showing up.

I contemplated suicide a lot then. Well, I do that anyway when I'm in a melancholy but its only ever half-hearted: whenever I think about killing myself I think about all the time and the effort and the money and the teaching and, most of all, the love that's gotten me to where I am now and I really would just have to be the most callous, insensitive kind of asshole to throw all of that away, no matter how badly I wanted to die.

But then, I'm talking to this girl about all of this, and she's telling me about how, for eight months she went through exactly what I did, emotionally, and how bad it was for her and all I can think is, "What a pretentious asshole I am." Who was I to act all depressed when I had such a good situation? Here's someone with a real reason to be depressed and here I am sounding like a whiny little bitch because I had a hard time in college.

Which I know is bullshit. Just because someone has a good situation doesn't mean they're exempt from feeling depressed. Its also bullshit that I feel my problems are insignificant because you have to confront them to be able to deal with them and move beyond them. But I still felt guilty over telling her about my depression even though I knew I had no reason to.

I guess it just goes back to contrasts. For example, I'm charming, but I feel so awkward in conversation, like I need to keep the other person entertained and feeling good or something like that or else I've failed on some level. Friend #1 finds it odd that I can know, objectively, that I'm charming and then at the same time not realize it.

Its like I know what I am but I never really feel what I am. Like I knew that I was depressed and that I needed help but I felt like I shouldn't have been, that I needed to handle my problems myself.

Hell, maybe this is why I'm so hard to type: I don't even know how to be myself sometimes, since often I wonder just what my self is.