Which Feeler type is the least feel-y

[Infjente]

In what way?

In English.

 

[John K]

Don't you think this is a bit condescending, John?

So while a lot of your post advances this process, I want to object to the way you actually decide to try to shut it down or discard it (the beginning and end).

It isn't meant to be condescending but to express a considerable degree of frustration, and even some anger, in the way the concepts that are expressed by the term 'feeling' seem to get mixed up together and confused. I put forward what this confusion looked like to me together with my concerns, and, being what I am I, generalised them and expressed them strongly. I feel this so strongly because I know from my own experience in trying to identify my type that the confusion makes it very hard indeed to see Fe clearly enough to identify with it properly when we are seeking. I'm sure much of what I wrote is known to many people, but I'm not trying to teach Granny to suck eggs - it was hard for me to get across what I wanted to say without the context.

BTW I'm not blaming anyone for what I perceive to be a problem - it's common, and I fall into it myself quite a lot.

I have no monopoly on truth and I did say early on in my comment that I may be looking at the Feeling functions incorrectly - but if so, then ..... people please put me right!! Far from trying to close down on this I was deliberately prodding a bit in order to see how people responded (other than being scolded ). I accept that you feel that my tone is inappropriate, but this is not something I feel I want to be 'nice' about - I'd rather provoke and pursue clarity in this case because it does annoy me considerably and I wanted to express that annoyance.

I've taken my cue for some of my thinking from this clarification early in the thread by Cleveland. It pushed me towards the idea that it is important for him to separate out the various sorts of feeling. I am suggesting that as well as looking for the least feely of the F types, he may as well want to look at the most competent of them in the use of Feeling judgement.

Feelings are fine. Just looking for less feely judgement and having to deal with messiness

 

[Deleted member 16771]

In English.

Hmm, could you clarify (unless this is a joke).

It isn't meant to be condescending but to express a considerable degree of frustration, and even some anger, in the way the concepts that are expressed by the term 'feeling' seem to get mixed up together and confused. I put forward what this confusion looked like to me together with my concerns, and, being what I am I, generalised them and expressed them strongly. I feel this so strongly because I know from my own experience in trying to identify my type that the confusion makes it very hard indeed to see Fe clearly enough to identify with it properly when we are seeking. I'm sure much of what I wrote is known to many people, but I'm not trying to teach Granny to suck eggs - it was hard for me to get across what I wanted to say without the context.

BTW I'm not blaming anyone for what I perceive to be a problem - it's common, and I fall into it myself quite a lot.

I have no monopoly on truth and I did say early on in my comment that I may be looking at the Feeling functions incorrectly - but if so, then ..... people please put me right!! Far from trying to close down on this I was deliberately prodding a bit in order to see how people responded (other than being scolded ). I accept that you feel that my tone is inappropriate, but this is not something I feel I want to be 'nice' about - I'd rather provoke and pursue clarity in this case because it does annoy me considerably and I wanted to express that annoyance.

I've taken my cue for some of my thinking from this clarification early in the thread by Cleveland. It pushed me towards the idea that it is important for him to separate out the various sorts of feeling. I am suggesting that as well as looking for the least feely of the F types, he may as well want to look at the most competent of them in the use of Feeling judgement.

Go fuck yourself, John, we're not friends anymore

No no, I love the strong tone, personally, because it dispenses with all the 'Fe clutter' we usually have to wade through, though I was concerned that what you said might be accepted uncritically because it made use of some of these 'Fe' tropes.

I see your point, of course, but I'm arguing that there's some value in the 'mixed-up and confusion' of the terms we're dealing with; in other words, that their imprecision provides a kind of penumbral space for new insights to form unmolested by too much rigour or logic (lol).

 

[John K]

Go fuck yourself, John, we're not friends anymore

No no, I love the strong tone, personally, because it dispenses with all the 'Fe clutter' we usually have to wade through, though I was concerned that what you said might be accepted uncritically because it made use of some of these 'Fe' tropes.

I see your point, of course, but I'm arguing that there's some value in the 'mixed-up and confusion' of the terms we're dealing with; in other words, that their imprecision provides a kind of penumbral space for new insights to form unmolested by too much rigour or logic (lol).

Lolol ....Oh I doubt we could stop being friends very easily Hos. It's refreshing to be able to talk bluntly sometimes to someone who is OK with that .

I agree of course about the value of mixing things up like that in discussion - it's just that with F they are so rarely not mixed up .
Looking at the flow of the thread since my post, I don't think I've derailed it much. (So much for JohnK power - thank goodness .... )

 

[Ren]

Also, let's assume he is INFJ for a moment. As he ages he is going to naturally embody his shadow functions to a greater degree.
So it makes sense that his Ni appears on the surface to fade as time has gone on. But really, he's just gotten better at pulling up all of the functions.

I'd say it's actually not that common for an Ni-dom to manifest very obvious Ni use in interviews. It's quite subtle.

Instead people will pick up "Ni sounding things" which is precisely the best way to confuse an Ne-dom saying such "Ni-sounding things" for an Ni-dom lol

 

[Ren]

I don't feel understood.

#lifeofanINFJ

 

[Wyote]

I'd say it's actually not that common for an Ni-dom to manifest very obvious Ni use in interviews. It's quite subtle.

Instead people will pick up "Ni sounding things" which is precisely the best way to confuse an Ne-dom saying such "Ni-sounding things" for an Ni-dom lol

Definitely. There's a lot more subtlety to the functions than people realize/bother to learn/comprehend.

 

[Ren]

penumbral space

 

[Deleted member 16771]

Shh!

 

[Ren]

Shh!

Too late, you gotta use it in your thesis!

 

[Deleted member 16771]

Too late, you gotta use it in your thesis!

Oh God... I'll get laughed out of my viva by hairy empiricists *recurring nightmare ensues*

 

[Ren]

Oh God... I'll get laughed out of my viva by hairy empiricists *recurring nightmare ensues*

Hairy empiricists LMAO

You're right, I pictured them as hairy too!

Please remain a theoretical historian, Hos, this is the way of purity

 

[Wyote]

Please remain a theoretical historian, Hos

penumbral space

Oh God... I'll get laughed out of my viva by hairy empiricists

That's when you double down by blasting this as you exit gloriously

 

[Ren]

There's something that's really bothering me about the way this thread is going, and it's the same with almost all threads that talk about feeling - they persist in getting emotion, 'niceness' and feeling judgement all mixed up and switch promiscuously between them quite unjustifiably. Maybe it's me that has got this wrong, but I feel that this sort of discussion simply adds to the ongoing distortion of understanding about what is feeling judgement.

I think all people are capable of experiencing and manifesting all the emotions. Everybody uses emotion as a key element of the way they relate to the world - many T dominants gush Fe and Fi in order to reinforce the power of their logic, though they may not be doing so very consciously. For example, in Transaction Analysis terms a discussion with them them may be manifestly Adult<->Adult, but there is often also the subtext Parent->Child that runs simultaneously as the T dom seeks the superior-knowledge high-ground in order to reinforce what they are saying emotionally. Hitchins' put-downs are a classic illustration of this and they aren't T but a very assertive F .... but this is a very negative example. A good T dom teacher will inspire a wonderful confidence in their students in exactly the same paternalistic way. They may use Child->Adult, and Child<->Child too when they are being playful with their ideas. Then there is the hedgehog-mode T who curls into a prickly ball in how they respond to others in a discussion, which is probably Child->Parent, again alongside the manifest Adult<->Adult. Only the Adult interactions are T here, the others are all (mostly unconscious) Fe or Fi. I'm not making any value judgements here - all types have their function stacks in different orders. The point I'm highlighting is that everyone's behaviour is as much based on emotion as logic.

The people with Feeling higher up the stack are more conscious of how to use emotion deliberately and proficiently in order to decide on something, influence someone, or take action - and less conscious of how to use Thinking that way. An example: if I tailgate you out on the road, it's because you are in my way, and I know that by driving close behind you I can make you speed up a bit or move out of the way - or at the very least punish you by making you feel guilty - and this is all quite deliberately chosen with that effect in mind. (I've used this example to illustrate that Fe can deliberately exploit a whole spectrum of emotions, from nice to neutral to nasty, in the way it judges and manipulates the world. I don't approve of tailgating at all and detest people who do it). I often use Fe in combination with Ti myself to get a good relationship going with a salesmen or other professionals in order to get a good deal or good attention - on say ... buying a car, or when I sold my dad's house. I always find it pays to use Fe fluently if I have to use a call centre because those guys get such a lot of grief from the public that they love you if you are nice to them and then they give you as good as service as they can. These are examples of where Fe is being used deliberately to gain advantage of some sort. In fact Feeling judgement may be anything but harmonious - in the UK at the moment both sides of the political Brexit argument are using F to create fear, distrust and disharmony as a means to a political end. Current US politics seems to be very similar in the way it presents to the people.

I think that the people who will best fit what @ClevelandINTP was originally looking for are not the Feeling types with the least intense emotions, but the ones who are most balanced in themselves and most expert in how they use their emotions as the basis for judging and influencing the world around them and the other people in it. In fact it's likely that the ones who will fit this best are people with very deep emotions indeed, but who have good mastery of them and how they relate them to the world. This is exactly analogous to saying that the thinkers best adapted to the world are the ones who have the greatest depth of thinking and good mastery of their thinking processes - a no-brainer I think/feel lol.

To my mind, the error that we are always at risk of making is to value depth of feeling in isolation to how well we can control our use of that feeling: to feel deeply without control is to be enslaved, and to be in disharmony with the world both inside and outside ourselves. To show how reasonable this is, just change the word 'feeling' for 'thinking' in that sentence and it becomes self evident - so it should be for feeling judgement.

Don't you think this is a bit condescending, John?

We all implicitly accept that we're being imprecise here while attempting to chase a useful abstraction.

This does not mean that we deny the complications or don't acknowledge the liberties taken, and as far as I can see the theories/abstractions are put forward with the express intention of being critiqued and refined.

By contrast, you've come out from on high here, judged our prevailing method unworthy with deft Fe, and then proceeded to dismantle the question and not answer it, or rather provide an unhelpful answer about emotional maturity or control or something.

I was under the impression that @ClevelandINTP asked this specific question very precisely - perhaps to inform the type system he's working on - and so it's not necessary to redefine it for him by guessing his intentions and imputing a whole bunch of motives you imagined.

Now, this is INFJs.com, so I'm going to sound terribly mean and combative because I haven't bothered to Fe this whole thing, but needless to say my respect for you and the way you approach things is undiminished, despite the barbs... ahem*


*Actually, I was thinking why I felt the need for those 'barbs' half way through writing this, and it might be worth exploring.

I think I became concerned that this thread would be derailed by your redefinition, because in my mind what we're doing is fundamentally about seeking effective abstractions (which is why the imprescision of the terms is being tolerated).

This was a concern because of the presentation of your contribution - John K (highly respected) comes in and dismantles the whole thing with magisterial authority disguised by a thin veneer of Fe. I worried that people would just accept what you're saying uncritically because of the rhetorical cache you hold and apply.

Maybe it's because I'm INTJ that I'm sensitive to all applications of power and authority, or maybe it's something else, but your post certainly triggered those 'warning - authority' alarm bells in my mind.

Just to chip in briefly on this extremely exhilarating heated échange:

Fundamentally I am very sympathetic to your views on the F function, John. And I would be certainly in agreement with you as well regarding the current direction of the debate if I was feeling that the conceptual vagueness we are all admitting to be working with was leading us nowhere. Honestly, this is a very real risk when people work and exchange ideas about a vague concept, and it is a phenomenon that has frustrated me more than once on this very forum. Hence why I very often strike the table with my fists to demand that we all start to agree on definitions, giving me in our dear @Infjente's eyes the suspicious airs of a taciturn, hairy Si-dom

However, I have to confess that in the case of this particular discussion, I have found the direction taken to be rather productive so far. I would agree with Hos that vagueness can have creative benefits and that they have been illustrated here. I don't know about the others but I have been suspending disbelief about a lot of positions expressed here about the F function which, on the surface, I may have come across as embracing. I find that it can be a very interesting philosophical strategy to embrace for a while a theory that one doesn't necessarily find convincing, just to see where it goes. Perhaps the matter is rather about making it clear that more often than not, disbelief is indeed merely being suspended

 

[Deleted member 16771]

That's when you double down by blasting this as you exit gloriously

Lmao

I don't about the others but I have been suspending disbelief about a lot of positions expressed here about the F function which, on the surface, I may have come across as embracing. I find that it can be a very interesting philosophical strategy to embrace for a while a theory that one doesn't necessarily find convincing, just to see where it goes. Perhaps the matter is rather about making it clear that more often than not, disbelief is indeed merely being suspended

What would we call such an approach? Maybe... 'positive skepticism'?

 

[Ren]

Lmao


What would we call such an approach? Maybe... 'positive skepticism'?

Constructive skepticism

 

[Ren]

My ex used to tell me things like "you believe so many things so naively!" because she didn't quite get my deep-seated raison d'être.... constructive skepticism !

 

[Deleted member 16771]

Constructive skepticism

Oh, it's just that John calls it 'positive skepticism', because that's normally his whole approach, except when he goes all INTP on us and demands logical accordance and empirical certainty... like now.

Teasing John feels so dangerous Hold my hand, Ren!

 

[Daustus]

You're braver than I. I'm waiting for our internet father to say "I'll turn this car around!"

 

[Deleted member 16771]

You're braver than I. I'm waiting for our internet father to say "I'll turn this car around!"

Lmao.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to get grounded for six months with the Antarctic Survey