The dark side of mbti types

Personally, considering I didn’t have a preference for a long time, my Fe has issues with Fi just as much as for another some of my functions are in another’s shadow. When someone else is using the functions that are completely opposite of yours, there will be discord amongst the two. There can be communication but it’ll be miscommunicated easily amongst opposite cognitive functions just as is can be miscommunicated within the same traits of other personalities that one is growing in that aspect of their personality. There has to be an understanding there of where another is growing and being able to control if you go there in a healthy manner. Like in reference to previous post about insecurities with @slant. I’ve learned not everyone understands or values Fe like I do as it may come off as conforming or inauthentic just as Fi would be “overly critical and drowning.” We may not respond to it the way that I would just as I have issues responding to Fi because that’s when I become my own worst enemy due to my own feelings. Whether or not that is due to my childhood or not I can’t say, as it may be a trained response due to a toxic environment, as children we do choose that preference and disregard the ones that aren’t.
 
acd said:
Stemming from the derailing of @mintoots Type Me thread -- here's a place to discuss the dark sides of mbti types.

Let's talk infamously evil people of a particular type and fictional villains of particular types.

Maybe even what the types are like under stress.
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Fascinating reading through the thread - I'll backtrack later, but just some initial thoughts.

There is a big difference between our dark sides and evil - they can overlap of course, but my Se clumsiness is part of my dark side, though there is normally no moral issue associated with it.

I think our dark sides have far more to do with our primary shadows than our secondaries. For INxJ's this is the arrogance of false certainty - the rightness that trumps all regardless. In both T and F varieties this can easily manifest in emotionally charged inappropriate aggression - overt in INTJs and passive in INFJs, though not exclusively so. Exactly how this plays out will depend, because there are several variant subtypes in each of these two MBTI types. The Enneagram is quite useful at teasing these out - so an E1 INFJ is likely to be different from an E2 or an E4 in terms of their shadow problems. I'm sure it will all come down to one or another variant of excessive rightness, or the emotional reaction to having to accept we are actually demonstrably wrong in something emotionally important to us. It seems to me that our tertiary plays a big role in justifying us in the shadows as well, with INFJs rationalising their false insights with convoluted false analysis, and INTJs with deep layers of misdirected righteousness.

What is evil? People of a variety of religious convictions will understand it as having an objective existence rather than being a human abstract construct whilst other people will see it as something that depends only on human perception. It's useful to consider the idea of the Devil, or of demons, if only because they provide a thought experiment to play with even for those who don't believe in them. The Christian Devil is said to have rebelled against God through the pride of false independence, and was chucked into hell as a result. From there he does all he can to piss us about and make our lives a misery both now and for all eternity if he can. He does this as an end in itself, rather than for any other reason.

I think if we subtract the theology from this we are left with evil as the deliberate harming of others, or of the world around us, for its own sake only. I came across an interesting contrast between the Harry Potter characters Volemort and Umbridge recently - it claimed that Umbridge was more evil than Voldemort because she had no other motive in damaging people than the harm itself. Voldemort on the other hand was motivated by the desire for power and the wish to live forever and he only harmed others as a means to this end, not as an end in itself. Of course Voldemort caused far more damage than Umbridge but that doesn't make him the more evil on this basis, it's just a natural consequence of the quest for power in the way he pursued it. I think Hitler was more like Voldemort in this regard, whilst Himmler was perhaps more like Umbridge.
 
acd said:
the dark sides of mbti types.
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Hmmm! A little tongue in cheek, and by no means the only shadows we each cast lol:

ISTJ Callous
ISFJ Moaning toadie
INTJ Arrogant
INFJ Passive aggressive
ISTP Quietly unreliable
INTP Cynically and cleverly destructive
ISFP Aloof and obstructive
INFP Accusatively disconnected
ESTJ Bully
ESFJ Collectivist guiltfest
ENTJ Abrasively bossy
ENFJ Over sensitive, harshly critical
ESTP Destructive self-indulgence
ENTP Chaotically aggressive
ESFP Chaotically unreliable
ENFP Creatively unreliable and obstructive
 
John K said:
Hmmm! A little tongue in cheek, and by no means the only shadows we each cast lol:

ISTJ Callous
ISFJ Moaning toadie
INTJ Arrogant
INFJ Passive aggressive
ISTP Quietly unreliable
INTP Cynically and cleverly destructive
ISFP Aloof and obstructive
INFP Accusatively disconnected
ESTJ Bully
ESFJ Collectivist guiltfest
ENTJ Abrasively bossy
ENFJ Over sensitive, harshly critical
ESTP Destructive self-indulgence
ENTP Chaotically aggressive
ESFP Chaotically unreliable
ENFP Creatively unreliable and obstructive
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16/16
 
John K said:
Fascinating reading through the thread - I'll backtrack later, but just some initial thoughts.

There is a big difference between our dark sides and evil - they can overlap of course, but my Se clumsiness is part of my dark side, though there is normally no moral issue associated with it.

I think our dark sides have far more to do with our primary shadows than our secondaries. For INxJ's this is the arrogance of false certainty - the rightness that trumps all regardless. In both T and F varieties this can easily manifest in emotionally charged inappropriate aggression - overt in INTJs and passive in INFJs, though not exclusively so. Exactly how this plays out will depend, because there are several variant subtypes in each of these two MBTI types. The Enneagram is quite useful at teasing these out - so an E1 INFJ is likely to be different from an E2 or an E4 in terms of their shadow problems. I'm sure it will all come down to one or another variant of excessive rightness, or the emotional reaction to having to accept we are actually demonstrably wrong in something emotionally important to us. It seems to me that our tertiary plays a big role in justifying us in the shadows as well, with INFJs rationalising their false insights with convoluted false analysis, and INTJs with deep layers of misdirected righteousness.

What is evil? People of a variety of religious convictions will understand it as having an objective existence rather than being a human abstract construct whilst other people will see it as something that depends only on human perception. It's useful to consider the idea of the Devil, or of demons, if only because they provide a thought experiment to play with even for those who don't believe in them. The Christian Devil is said to have rebelled against God through the pride of false independence, and was chucked into hell as a result. From there he does all he can to piss us about and make our lives a misery both now and for all eternity if he can. He does this as an end in itself, rather than for any other reason.

I think if we subtract the theology from this we are left with evil as the deliberate harming of others, or of the world around us, for its own sake only. I came across an interesting contrast between the Harry Potter characters Volemort and Umbridge recently - it claimed that Umbridge was more evil than Voldemort because she had no other motive in damaging people than the harm itself. Voldemort on the other hand was motivated by the desire for power and the wish to live forever and he only harmed others as a means to this end, not as an end in itself. Of course Voldemort caused far more damage than Umbridge but that doesn't make him the more evil on this basis, it's just a natural consequence of the quest for power in the way he pursued it. I think Hitler was more like Voldemort in this regard, whilst Himmler was perhaps more like Umbridge.
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This was great!

John K said:
There is a big difference between our dark sides and evil - they can overlap of course, but my Se clumsiness is part of my dark side, though there is normally no moral issue associated with it.
Click to expand...

Hmm... If I don't get my bare minimum Se needs met, I will turn into a toddler (grown up toddlers can be pretty evil, I think) :flushed:
 
John K said:
I think if we subtract the theology from this we are left with evil as the deliberate harming of others, or of the world around us, for its own sake only. I came across an interesting contrast between the Harry Potter characters Volemort and Umbridge recently - it claimed that Umbridge was more evil than Voldemort because she had no other motive in damaging people than the harm itself. Voldemort on the other hand was motivated by the desire for power and the wish to live forever and he only harmed others as a means to this end, not as an end in itself. Of course Voldemort caused far more damage than Umbridge but that doesn't make him the more evil on this basis, it's just a natural consequence of the quest for power in the way he pursued it. I think Hitler was more like Voldemort in this regard, whilst Himmler was perhaps more like Umbridge.
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I would agree with that. I don't think there's much doubt that Hitler was sincerely attempting to save civilisation on the basis of his own warped worldview, and even the war itself was something necessary at that moment to avoid the bankruptcy of the state.
 
Deleted member 16771 said:
I would agree with that. I don't think there's much doubt that Hitler was sincerely attempting to save civilisation on the basis of his own warped worldview, and even the war itself was something necessary at that moment to avoid the bankruptcy of the state.
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I'm sure that's right. It was a 'Germany First' policy, taking the idea to an extreme. It's crazy to place all the responsibility for that onto one guy, because it looks like he was tapping into something that was brewing for the previous 100 years in German culture - and that force was so great it possessed him rather than the other way round. Japan seems to have gone the same way at the same time, but there their figurehead but sacred emperor meant there was no personification of state power like there was in Hitler.
 
Ren said:
Uuugh don't tell me that, I'm expecting a plumber this week :tearsofjoy:

I'll just bet on him being ISFP.
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giphy.gif

(you deserve that one)
 
John K said:
I think if we subtract the theology from this we are left with evil as the deliberate harming of others, or of the world around us, for its own sake only. I came across an interesting contrast between the Harry Potter characters Volemort and Umbridge recently - it claimed that Umbridge was more evil than Voldemort because she had no other motive in damaging people than the harm itself. Voldemort on the other hand was motivated by the desire for power and the wish to live forever and he only harmed others as a means to this end, not as an end in itself. Of course Voldemort caused far more damage than Umbridge but that doesn't make him the more evil on this basis, it's just a natural consequence of the quest for power in the way he pursued it. I think Hitler was more like Voldemort in this regard, whilst Himmler was perhaps more like Umbridge.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily relevant to the larger point, but I would say that Voldemort's motivations weren't as detached from pure cruelty as you might say. He could have pursued power--even up to the point of the racist anti-muggle order he wanted--without legitimizing the sheer level of horror inflicted upon the muggles over which he had any amount of power. In the books at least the Death Eaters were using muggles as furniture. You could argue that maybe he was using cruelty to bring the cruel to his side though.

So I guess one might say that you have to be a bit honest about what your true motivations are in any given circumstance, if we wanna tie this back.
 
In the Wings said:
Not necessarily relevant to the larger point, but I would say that Voldemort's motivations weren't as detached from pure cruelty as you might say. He could have pursued power--even up to the point of the racist anti-muggle order he wanted--without legitimizing the sheer level of horror inflicted upon the muggles over which he had any amount of power. In the books at least the Death Eaters were using muggles as furniture. You could argue that maybe he was using cruelty to bring the cruel to his side though.

So I guess one might say that you have to be a bit honest about what your true motivations are in any given circumstance, if we wanna tie this back.
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Of course - Voldemort was thoroughly bad. The point I was making was to explore and try to expose the nature of undiluted evil, and in his case there was some dilution, though he made use of people among his followers who were almost pure evil, such as Fenrir for example who bit children and turned them into werewolves like himself, just for the fun of it. It's interesting that Voldemort suffers from the same fate as real world tyrants in that he becomes the embodiment of what is a collective problem. We do the same in the real world with Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon, Genghis Khan, etc - but these guys simply became the focusing lens for the distress and the evil collectivism of their times and societies. The mass of people who put them into power and supported them are the real source of that evil and the way to challenge it is to challenge and confront the deformed collectives in my opinion.

But as you say, this is getting a bit off-topic, interesting though it is.
 
John K said:
I came across an interesting contrast between the Harry Potter characters Volemort and Umbridge recently - it claimed that Umbridge was more evil than Voldemort because she had no other motive in damaging people than the harm itself. Voldemort on the other hand was motivated by the desire for power and the wish to live forever and he only harmed others as a means to this end, not as an end in itself. Of course Voldemort caused far more damage than Umbridge but that doesn't make him the more evil on this basis, it's just a natural consequence of the quest for power in the way he pursued it. I think Hitler was more like Voldemort in this regard, whilst Himmler was perhaps more like Umbridge.
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When I see a Harry Potter reference, I do a little dance and toss a Like to that whitcher, but best post I've seen in a while :m032:

Although Heydrich might've been even more evil than that weirdo Himmler
 
Professor Snep said:
Although Heydrich might've been even more evil than that weirdo Himmler
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I think you are right, just looking him up. He's Fenrir to Himmler's Umbridge impersonation perhaps?
Professor Snep said:
When I see a Harry Potter reference, I do a little dance and toss a Like to that whitcher, but best post I've seen in a while :m032:
Click to expand...
It's a mine of useful character analogies - Hogwarts itself of course is the forum lol. And yes! My favourite character is Snape, by far the most complex of all of them. Have you seen the old television dramatisation of The Barchester Chronicles with Alan Rickman playing the 'odious' Slope? A delicious synchronicity of character names there - and he (over-)plays the role perfectly. We've just been re-watching it. :mclap:
 
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