Intellectual Maturity?

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John K said:
I feel very close to this in my own way. I had a lot of problems with other kids when I was at primary school and never got on with them. I was cleverer than most of them and used it to establish superiority in my own mind - and for real in specifics. That was a sort of saviour for me because it gave me self worth, and affirmation from adults, but was not really a good way to be. It took me a lot of reflection in later life to see what I was doing and put it under control. Fortunately my infj always held sway even though I can only see that with hindsight.
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God yeah, this resonates with me too.

I was bullied for being a 'Paki' (though I wasn't), and internalised this as an inferiority complex among a lot of other things (being poor, &c.). It was only when I got into Secondary School and started to excel that I used 'being good at things' as a kind of armour. Self-validation becomes a substitute for social validation.

In adulthood I think this can become sublimated as a wilfulness and a privileging of your ideas over those of others, even if you try to consciously cultivate modesty.
 
Deleted member 16771 said:
So just for a bit of an update, I apologised to the guy over text and asked him if he felt uncomfortable.

It turns out that you and @Puzzlenuzzle were right. It's not so much about comfort, but that he wanted a more relaxed and informal get together, and my 'devil's advocate debate' did not serve that purpose. He said we could talk about it if I wanted to next time.

I actually felt terrible afterwards, and yes, confused too like I said, and it's lead to all sorts of soul searching to be honest.
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Sorry you felt terrible. I actually think it's extremely mature of you to have texted him and apologized. Fair play! Communication is always the way to go and now you know what was going on. I'm certain that the guy appreciated your text very much, it shows care.

I'm actually not all that surprised. I remember reading a post of yours where you said something like: "Had a 6 hour conversation with a friend. Not a single minute spent doing small talk." And I was like, jeez, that's scary! lol. Honestly, I think you'll manage to adapt, it's just a question of balance and reading cues, really. :)
 
Deleted member 16771 said:
God yeah, this resonates with me too.

I was bullied for being a 'Paki' (though I wasn't), and internalised this as an inferiority complex among a lot of other things (being poor, &c.). It was only when I got into Secondary School and started to excel that I used 'being good at things' as a kind of armour. Self-validation becomes a substitute for social validation.

In adulthood I think this can become sublimated as a wilfulness and a privileging of your ideas over those of others, even if you try to consciously cultivate modesty.
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Yeah - it's better to feel superior than inferior, and prove it whenever you need to from an intellectual high ground. But it's a dead end, and it doesn't endear us to others :smiley:.
But it was never more than an aspect of me, and what you've described doesn't do more than describe a part of the way you come over in the forum. That ability to value and accumulate knowledge, think with precision, and build complex concepts on top of it, all under the control of your Ni and Fe - that's precious, and you share that ability with @Ren. There's bound to be some conflicts between these different functions and it will go wrong sometimes - maybe best to pick up the pieces when that happens, put things right, keep a good sense of humour and have a good laugh about it afterwards.
 
John K said:
Yeah - it's better to feel superior than inferior, and prove it whenever you need to from an intellectual high ground. But it's a dead end, and it doesn't endear us to others :smiley:.
But it was never more than an aspect of me, and what you've described doesn't do more than describe a part of the way you come over in the forum. That ability to value and accumulate knowledge, think with precision, and build complex concepts on top of it, all under the control of your Ni and Fe - that's precious, and you share that ability with @Ren. There's bound to be some conflicts between these different functions and it will go wrong sometimes - maybe best to pick up the pieces when that happens, put things right, keep a good sense of humour and have a good laugh about it afterwards.
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Cheers, John. Yeah I'll do that.

I agree though, it feels like a foreign aspect - or rather, some kind of 'tool'. The pride thing.

It has been useful, but I've come to a stage in my life where I want to inhabit modesty in a way that feels natural. To be honest, in the way I felt before adolescence, if that makes sense.
 
John K said:
That ability to value and accumulate knowledge, think with precision, and build complex concepts on top of it, all under the control of your Ni and Fe - that's precious, and you share that ability with @Ren.
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And with you, John. :D Actually, sometimes I feel like you guys are better at accumulating knowledge. I feel like I have pretty sucky Si.

Oh and I just noticed that the name "Deleted member 16771" has got all the letters of "Historian" except n. Dats mad.
 
Ren said:
And with you, John. :D Actually, sometimes I feel like you guys are better at accumulating knowledge. I feel like I have pretty sucky Si.

Oh and I just noticed that the name "Deleted member 16771" has got all the letters of "Historian" except n. Dats mad.
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Oh, ha! I never noticed that, thanks, Ren!

I'm not a 'details' (Si?) guy in terms of memory - that I find tricky, and why I make extensive notes. I think we tend to incorporate details into our Ni 'big picture' rather quickly. Everything just gets subsumed into the whole.
 
Deleted member 16771 said:
Everything just gets subsumed into the whole.
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Ren said:
And with you, John. :D Actually, sometimes I feel like you guys are better at accumulating knowledge. I feel like I have pretty sucky Si.

Oh and I just noticed that the name "Deleted member 16771" has got all the letters of "Historian" except n. Dats mad.
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Posted this by accident !!! The Se has got me ……:fearscream:

What I was going to say was - I think there may be quite a bit of something that looks very like Si going on with you philosophers . I'm thinking about this at the moment in reply to @Asa in another thread. Certainly the way I understood my computer user community and its requirements before I retired depended on hard structured knowledge in my head as much as Ni. Same with my fluency with my family history - the way I orientate myself around my tree and the resources I use to develop and understand it is very like the descriptions of Si in the literature. It's subservient to Ni, which is where the motivation comes from and where I get the rewards of insight - but I couldn't get anywhere near this without being able to navigate a lot of retained and highly structured knowledge. I feel that Ren's fluency with Philosophy is like this on a grand scale, and probably yours too @Deleted member 16771 . What I don't do is live Si (if that's what I'm using) like I do Ni and Fe - it's a tool rather than a core part of my consciousness.

But enough of this or it'll highjack the thread ….
 
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I truly think that most people can only hold onto a neutral and detached bearing until someone steps on one of their sensitivities. And the topic breached is definitely a tender spot for a lot of people. Especially in academia.

Which, on one hand, it is understandable given the state of the world today. People have much to fear, much to be angry about. On the other hand, being able to bring people to an emotional brink just by offering a perspective different than the one that is being safely propagated by the masses makes one extremely susceptible to political and social manipulation and it's something that I side eye the fuck out of every day. We as a society have become far too polarized and too eager to wormhole through subtext seventy six degrees removed from the actual topic at hand to scratch our anger itch. Navigating conversations like this, as frustrating as it is, is now too much of a minefield.

I frankly think an ability to detach ones emotions from a logical discourse on a touchy subject is an admirable feat of which few people are capable, and as such, it's best to soften your approach to intellectual debate until you find like-minded folk.
 
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sassafras said:
On the other hand, being able to bring people to an emotional brink just by offering a perspective different than the one that is being safely propagated by the masses makes one extremely susceptible to political and social manipulation and it's something that I side eye the fuck out of every day. We as a society have become far too polarized and too eager to wormhole through subtext seventy six degrees removed from the actual topic at hand to scratch our anger itch.
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Yup. Just out of curiosity, @sassafras, do you consider yourself to have 'strong Ti'?

In any case, what happened here was a disconnect between the atmosphere I unknowingly pushed and the one the guy actually wanted, caused by me assuming that the guy was wired up similarly to me, and hence not treating him as an actual new person but rather predjuding him as a 'PhD candidate' and projecting all of my assumptions and baggage onto that label.

But nonetheless there is a broader point about how certain subjects are actually put into this category of 'not casual', and I'm not sure it's an entirely natural process.
 
Deleted member 16771 said:
Yup. Just out of curiosity, @sassafras, do you consider yourself to have 'strong Ti'?
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I've given up on thinking of myself in MBTI terms because a. I've done gone confused myself and b. I no longer find mapping the right function to my patterns of thought imperative to my growth.

But nonetheless there is a broader point about how certain subjects are actually put into this category of 'not casual', and I'm not sure it's an entirely natural process.
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It's a function of the zeitgeist and I'm sure everyone has different opinions on how natural that is in itself in the age of marketing, social media, and other such tools susceptible to social engineering.
 
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