#i mean its a pretty philosophical question but i dont think theres a morally wrong answer to it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ichayalovesyou · 3 years

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Please stop making up problems about fictional alien cultures ❤️ they arent humans, and bonding isnt marriage. Vulcans dont even have marriage so please stop judging it like that? They can also break the bond when they get older. They make arranged bondings because it is logical to make sure your child has a mate come pon farr. Seriously this stuff is just nonsense stop trying to earn woke points by over-examining a fictional, non-human culture. Its not arranged marriage. Its not child marriage. Its not marriage at all nor is it sexual. Stop clogging up the star trek tag trying to bitch about how you dont understand it. Problematic… theres no debate on Vulcan and Vulcans have never once complained about it in canon or otherwise because no one cares because it doesnt matter to them lol

In reference to this post.

I thought about deleting the post, because I will admit it is, very reactionary. I got a little more heated than I should have. I could’ve been a little more articulate. For that I apologize. But I haven’t changed my mind.

I really wasn’t gonna share this, anon. I disagree with you on a good chunk of what you’ve said, I still think it’s worth talking about. And I do think your anger with that particular post is justified.

I’m going to break down why I feel the way about Vulcan childhood bonding the way I do in a more responsible and coherent way, and explain why I disagree about why these topics shouldn’t be discussed.

I will never, ever stop talking about fictional races and cultures and how they affect and reflect upon the real world. Vulcans, among many other alien cultures, are amalgamations and abstractions of our own cultures. The Na’vi from Avatar help us examine colonialism, the extra terrestrials from Arrival help us examine how we perceive time and language. Vulcans, when it comes to this topic, are an examination of traditions and how some do more harm than good (like the homophobia Amok Time is allegorical for). Fiction has to be analyzed, it’s meant to be examined, learning from what we read is an important literary (and life) skill.

Star Trek especially! It’s purpose is turning genuine philosophical questions into drama and discussion topics for everyday people. Morality plays in space, it’s why the cast is so diverse for the sixties, it’s why there are racism and Cold War allegories all throughout it’s the Original Series. One of the reasons I love Star Trek, and Vulcans, is because they are flawed and can be examined from many angles. I’m not angry to be “woke”, I’m angry for the reasons Amok Time is meant to make you angry.

You’re right, bonding isn’t marriage. It’s more intense than that. They are mentally bonded in ways humans cannot be, and they are arranged in such a way that they will be married, and Vulcans DO get married. Sarek and Amanda are married, Tuvok and T’Pel are married, both Sarek and Tuvok refer to their partners as their wives. The betrothal is not just for clout, they will eventually have sex, it’s a guaranteed Pon Farr security blanket. Yes they can break it when they get older technically, but the only known socially acceptable way to get out of it is death via Kalifee, one way or the other. The entire point of Amok Time, is that all of that tradition is incredibly cruel and wrong. It causes Spock to “kill” his best friend, and T’Pring to condemn a stranger to death.

Nevermind questions of consent when it comes to children and when Vulcans mature as my short opinion on that is pretty aggravatedly stated in that post. At the very least it’s unfair to Spock, who cannot physically/mentally mature as a Vulcan or a Human. So if T’Pring can fully consent to betrothal, it’s certainly up in the air whether Spock can.

One of the reasons I love Vulcans so much is despite their beautiful philosphy that I really believe more Humans should strive for. They are at the same time as they are serene and logical, they are rigid and extremist in their beliefs and traditions that they’re illogical as well. The only thing logical about Spock and T’Pring’s arrangement is the assumption that if he had Pon Farr, and no Vulcan would want him (because, hey, Vulcans are insanely xenophobic, illogically) at least he’d have T’Pring in that emergency, assuming she’d be willing to capitulate to that once she was an adult. Big surprise, she didn’t, because 24 years had passed and they were both completely different people by that time, and it almost killed James Kirk.

I want to clarify that I’m not attacking arranged marriages as a cultural practice in real life. I understand it can be an extremely important cultural cornerstone and there are many examples of happy couples in marriages arranged by their parents, I’m not knocking that. I’m criticizing the way Vulcans specifically practice arranged marriage. Both because of their philosophy, and that the only respectable way out being murder. Which I can’t condone under most circumstances anyway.

There is very little logic in betrothal, other than reputation, which is a huge deal to Vulcans even though they preach meritocracy. And the aforementioned failsafe for Pon Farr, but there are cases (like Starfleet officers) where that justification is shaky. Whether the betrothed old enough to understand and accept their responsibilities not withstanding. It assumes the children involved’s sexual/gender orientations and that they both have the self-awareness to know what that will be, and that the parents know and have accepted it as well. That they will be the same people/love each other (or at least be willing to have sex with each other, which is not a given) by the time Pon Farr rolls around in the coming decades and all subsequent cycles.

All of that would be easily fixed and rearranged and such provided that the parents are reasonable. If the parents are unreasonable the two could alienate themselves from their families by refusing to get married to each other. Except there’s one problem, in Vulcan culture, as far as we know, the only way to get out of an arranged marriage like Spock and T’Pring’s is Kalifee, which results in the death of at least one of the betrothed, or the death of champion the other has chosen. In Spock and T’Pring’s situation, T’Pring willingly condemned a stranger to death, and Spock murdered his best friend. There is no utilitarian purpose to a crime of passion, Vulcans, in this circumstance, forego the simple, bloodless option instead letting people kill each other in the dirt over sex at the simplest and love at the most optimistic. There is nothing logical about that.

The point of Amok Time, the betrothal, the Kalifee, all of it, is that it does actually hurt Vulcans to practice this tradition. That it is flawed, that it is restrictive, Spock is at his most heavily queer-coded in this episode, he is not in love with this woman, and he kills the man he loves most to escape. T’Pring has blood on her hands too, all so that she could be free to make her own choices because she did not want Spock, bodily or romantically, and she’s completely Vulcan. We’re supposed to object to those practices, the same way we now advocate for same sex marriage and the eradication of child brides. They’re very old practices, but they are hurtful. Humans have them, Vulcans have them. Humans object to that cruelty for moral and logical reasons, why shouldn’t Vulcans be able to as well?

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kendrixtermina · 7 years

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Typing Misadventures - IN edition

So, typing and the difficulties therein.

Aside from person-specific ad-hominems, some that have been elaborated upon in attempts to explain them on this very website.

Sensors: Bad Sensor descriptions written by NPs, combining with the fact that Sensors rely a lot on developing a practical experential “feel” for things. A bad, vague and overly abstract description that doesn’t relate to their life is gonna be not very useful. (especially for SFPs for whom what they relate to is srz bzness) - Interestingly I’ve seen a lot of Sensors saying that they easily indentify particular types once they have encountered them IRL. (Speculation: With intuitives it probably depends more on wether they have their definitrions straight.)

Ne-Doms: Type-hop and doubt their type alot because they know they always could be mistyped and possibilities are the primary facet of reality for them. The “creative” nature of the auxillary, and their auxillary being a function that generates and handles belief systems, means they can always reinterpret the evidence by redoing their reasoning or reassigning meaning, also the lack of Si leads to less constancy in their thinking, they change opinion easily, which is normally an asset, but not so much for self-typing as every input generates new ideas. (The auxillaries also have this but to a much lesser degree - b/c)

—

But today, I want to talk about INs (I know, boring - but those are what I know the most about since I am one.)

You may have seen me caveat my posts with “Unless I am actually an xNFP or something” as of late Yeah. It went about like this:

Troll: Haha you’re mistyped!

Me: Why?

Troll: because X.

Me: I have an alternate, more fitting explanation for X and a lot of things which my current typing explains betters especially when you get into the nuance of mbti theory.

Troll: (*hamfistedly applies overreductionistic function definition*) “Anyone who ever quotes a source ever is a Te user”. Just like anyone who ever mentions memory is a SJ amirite?

Troll: *shifts the topic to my person and then accuses me of talking about myself*

Me: *blocks troll largely to curttail own tendency to waste time & energy with internet arguments*

So at my best, I believe in not dismissing inconvenient PoVs and double-checking, and the main point of replying them was to leave an alternate opinion for future readers hence no point in continuing after that had been done.

At my worst damn inf Fe makes it hard to ignore input even if I don’t believe it’s justified (except when it fails to pick them up - as inferior functions are wont to be its either sluggish or AHH with little inbetween. ) and that lil 8 fix of mine doesn’t want to “stand down quietly”.

So I ask a few reasonable, knowledgeable, non-troll person, one of which said “Hm, could be, you anecdote alot which X type also does”

I believed this was better accounted for by simple ol’ Si and w4-self revealing tendencies, but, how could I know for sure? I never denied having a pronounced 4wing and fix, but I thought that sufficiently explaining their perceived discrepancies insofar as I found them consistent with reality and indeed all data collected so far. Too much would just be filed away as “inf Te” as a blanket term, the way any sign that [fan favorite character] is ST rather than INFJ is “inferior Se” though that supposed “inferior” is 80% of what she does and all moments claimed for F or N are the sort of situations where anyone would display emotion or philosophizing and what intuition they display is distinctly Ne instead.

Like the proverbial man who dreamt of being a frog I couldn’t cast the doubt from my mind and went over reinterpreting my thought patterns throughout the day. How do I know I’m NOT X type? After all my idea of and criteria for type are based on the definitions I extracted from various mbti sources when first familiarzing myself with the topic… how do I know I understood it correctly? How can ANY human correctly understand a definition if they have to deduce/reconstruct/guess what the other meant with their own flawed mind?

(At this point the non-INs in the audience might be rolling their eyes)

I still thought my type made the most sense but the person, through trolling in that particular instance, was not alltogether clueless and had some good insights, and also, some ppl agreed with them (theres that Fe again) - I was pretty sure I was in the holographic-panomramic thinking style but I could be wrong, thats a fairly rarely used concept which I simply started using cause I thought it made sense. ENFPs can mistake themselves for introverts. I have been mistaken for extrovert b/c of my lack of filter… but I was pretty sure I was a very pronouncedintrovert and had Fe, and so I went over it over and over again.

They said I didn’t comprehend _ i had some theory as to why they thought the way they did (not just bias against xNFPs but assuming all Ti is like aux Ti. After all, an introverted function as a dominant builds a framework and may be reluctant to accept or need time to withdraw when said framework clashes with reality to the point of needing a full revamping, purportedly resulting in a certain stubbornness particularly if it’s a Ji function. )

but what if I really Didn’t comprehend? Then all my reasoning would be worthless! I dont think I have the skills of an INFP, but what if i misunderstood those? Was a lot of what I’d attributed to Ti just Ne? i thought I had rather typical Ti speech patterns (it was hard to unsee, like my brain used a highly predictable parsing alghorithm to make thoughts into words) but they disagreed and pointed to what they thought was Fi.

I thought that despite all the differences introduced by shared preferences and there were differences between I and the Fi doms I knew. The 9 and the 6 were much more lowkey, non-confrontational than I and way more perceptive in line with how socionics describes Fi as the “Ethics of Relations” and how Nardi calls it an “Inner state of listening/reacting”; I mostly listen to the contents of someone’s words; I’d spot a liar by contradiction or unbeliavable statements, or by deducing what beliefs they are operating from. Feelers supposedly use primarily tone of voice... but I have sure noticed tone of voice a few times, and this is a qualia. I can’t compare what “Fi” or “Ti” feel like without making assumptions of which one I am using.

Supposedly

The 4! INFPs should be the most similar to me, on the other hand, they tend to have a certain...absoluteness in their beliefs and statements in a way I wouldn’t be comfortable with. I’m more hesitant, more relativizing, adding qualifiers etc so bI don’t say anything incorrect.

I don’t mean to bash the INFPs here, they are usually just processing their specific feels and do not mean to imply things about others. (Tumblr INFP: “I, an INFP, experience X.”. Tumblr xxFJ: “Are you saying that other types don’t????? You can’t say that! How self absorbed are you?” Immature Tert Fe User:*distantly feels the same urge toward ,moral condemnation as FJ,but couldn’t care less if INFP offends anyone - settles for calling them a snowflake instead. * TJs and Ti doms: *roll their eyes, half-assedly consider correcting whoever they disagree with but ultimately just keep scrolling*) Of course Team Fe sometimes has a point if the INFP in question is young and/or irresponsible.

Example:

One INFP 4w5: “I be those shallow fake bitches look down on you just because you don’t wear as much makeup. I don’t think anyone who wears makeup can be trusted, unless it’s like,halloween makeup or something like that, they’re just putting up fake faces to be popular.”

Me (let’s say, presumed INTP 5w4): “I dunno... Like I agree that those girls are shallow bitches,if they had spines, they wouldn’ perform arbitrary fake behavior just to be popular.* But not everyone is the same - maybe some people might just wear makeup because they like how it looks. The real problem is people being judged by arbitrary conventions on principle. What does is matter whether someone wears makeup or not? Its a made-up convention with no real reason. It’s none of anyone’s business.”

* for the record I have since realized that there’s nothing bad about wanting to be popular as long as yopu dont harm anyone, and that for some people its genuinely what they want. I was, like, 13. Common (w)4 pitfall I guess.

As you see both I and this middle school friend of mine are expressing 4-ish povs, but I used to think the difference in our reasoning highlighted some differences.

Granted this is more 5w4 vs 4w5 than necessarily Ti vs Fi, Could just be the 5′s general disconnect toward action and desire to “know more first”.

There are 5 INFPs. after all. Mostly sx 5s and as such differentiable from the relatively intense, dramatic sx 4 as long as you’re certain enough that they’re sx. Thinking about how to describe them. More second-guessing and ‘drifting’ than the 4 ones but like them in their analytical nature. A different kind of contemplative. Still reasons distinctlylike an INFP - See, One of them was religious, for example, and I’m pretty sure an INTP would have had more posts about why they were religious or not, though it’s one of the types most likely to be a non-believer, the religious ones tend to have a theological bent and talk about the perfection and incomprehensibility of god, how god is totally logical etc. (Thomas Acquinas is a famous example) - their faith will be an ordered self-consistent system. A bit like that example of copernikus assuming the orbits must be perfectly circular because natture as he understood it would tend toward the most “perfect” forms. I’m not religious and I could likewise talk about that at lenght.

Arguments that convinced me: “This is how these beliefs came from, not an actual god” and “If were made out of single celled organism who die all the time as shed skin cells, how would the rest of them dieing at once be different?” “Even if your religion is true that means many, if not all others are not. So at least all some must be myths. How is your “true” religion different from them?”

Arguments made by famous Te-Fi users: “Occams Razor.” “We can’t disprove a giant sucker on the back of Pluto either, but its no reason to suppose one.”“Belief in god hampers human development and creates dependent, slavish mentality”

That 5!INFP’s attitude toward their belief reminded me more of another Fi dom I know (albeit an ISFP). “Yeah, I know the common objections, but look, it’s what I believe. Don’t come into my house and be a jerk to me about it.” or “[Assholish behavior] is not actually in line with my religion. My religion, and this aspect of it, are actually about love/peace/duty/etc”

If, while conversing, you hit a hard disagreement, that is, an axiom that’s not up for debate, your Fi-dom friend may change the topic/agree to disagree/ “It’s just the way I feel”

[This could apply to other moral or ideological questions religion is just an example; This is not supposed to be about religion it’s just here to illustrate a perceived difference. . I’m not implying all INFPs have the same approach to religion or even have to be religious.]

Another conversation I remember having with them actually on the very subject of Fi vs Fe. IDK how we got to that topic but I mentioned something I initially thought was an enneagram thing (my memory is vague on the details) but I mentioned something like lowkey feeling guilty for receiving praise that I believe was undeserved.

She deemed it a Fe thing and said that for her, as a Fi dom/ fe opposing type, a bit of praise she did not agree with might not cause any reaction at all unless she thought they had a point or otherwise had a reaction from her end, like deciding the criticism was unfair - why should she feel guilty b/c of what someone else says?

Granted that’s just an anecdote, but what am I to do? INFP 5s are not super common. Also I’m not making this decisionbased on any single of these examples but... not even from the “preponderance” so much as to how they can be best explained.

And of course, if I really did get everything wrong after looking into the topic for years, what guarantee is there that I typed any of those people correctly? None, as one of the trolls/claimants correctly pointed out.

After all what I want is the truth, it doesn’t matter what it is. Or at least that is what I strive for as much as human frailty allows. so what if I’m an INFP? INFPs are awesome. I even considered the type early on, I just thougnt INTP fit better especially once I found out about inferior functions. And I have always held that a person has no obligation to follow their “talents”. If I don’t have a “talent” for reason (which isn’t the same as mbti thinking anyways) all the reasons why I believe that it is a good way of life to aim for would still stand. Reason is a method to correct for human error and bias, after all, the error and bias we all have, no matter what Ji function we use.

Type insofar as it can even be said to be a real thing is a classfication of emergent qualities, not a hard measure you can get in an instrument.

As much as I’d want to figure this out, there comes a point where you just have to like step back and put it in context. it’s just a personality test/ little tool to facilitate communication in which “maybe this or that” is more helpful than nothing.

Striving for it despite not being handed talent at birth is all the more worthwhile - and if reason was only for certain kinds of people what’s the point of it? Regardless of what tropes people associate with “science” or “logic”, what they actually are by definition are simple basic methods.

Last but not least there was a moment

Soo, existential crisis. At least they can’t doubt that I’m a melancholic or an oldham ideosyncraticXD

Then, my doubt crumbled away to the “ mostly sure, dont think it could be anything else but im not omnicient” levels at which it was before.

What happened? Well, a rare event:

Well, I went outside and talked to people.

I visited my folks, saw new places, got into a few unscripted situations in other words.

I’ve seen one post detailing that INs may mistype because they analyze themselves as a whole, feature in less apparent traits and second-guess their reasoning worrying about bias, noticing what sticks out more than the norm etc. and so on and that may be it in part but I don’t think it’s only this relatively “noble”, too-much-of-a-good-thing mistake.

- It’s a matter about how we are all about ~extrapolating~ from data and using multiple data points and less about decisiveness and practicality. We brood away endlessly trying to come up with interpretations and conceptualizations that makes all the data points fit rather than just going with what they themselves largely seem to suggest.

One good description I once heard is that Intuitives think in networks while Sensors think in puzzle pieces - I went overboard trying to build ever more complex networks instead of going “Yeah, with all the puzzle pieces so far it’s probably this.”.

Sometimes the latter approach can be incomplete and miss game changing interconnections - but just as often, the former gets convoluted and therefore, both uselessly vague and too far removed from the actual data its meant to interpret.

Aaaand, well, almost every sentence I said was “Did you know that...?” or “I think so/ don’t think so because of [observation followed by possible deduction].

Sure, I could be biased in my observation or unconsciously “doing it on purpose to appear a certain way” even if I don’t think I am or care about that, , but some critical mass of “doing it on purpose” would itself be equivalent with 5 (or a 3)

I was a little afraid one time; I reacted by withdrawing and looking at the whole thing as an observatrion and it was a highly temporary thing. And as much as I complain about Fe users playing police, I may have been guilty of one moment of overreacting, unwanted/socially-chiding “help” myself there. (The person perhaps justly called me a know-it-all. They were wrong about one thing but I may have handled it all more constructively) I repeatedly expressed vague undifferentiated preferrences that were closer to analyzing what factors were at work rather than having clear like/dislike reasons readily available. .

I critiqued a TV show (myself and the local INTJ annoying all the non-NTs with our loud, animated critiquing ) and a big factor to being unabvle to enjoy it fully was the lack of High-Concept abstract sci fi content and mostly the lack of consistency - normally a lot of my enjoyment would come from extrapolatinmg and deducing what the world is like and how it, the themes and charactzers “work”, but here I coulnd do that because it was tacked onto a ‘verse it did not fit into. I observed how said INTJ and I reacted to us correcting each other on small things with like a brief thanks or apology & just moving on whilst similar things had gotten annoyed snarks out of our otherwise patient Feeler sister...

The nails in the coffin were those 2 tumblr posts, one about differences in how Fi and low Fe argue (the latter pile including 3 phrases I used verbatim in the last discussion with my SO just hours earlier) and a post by the afore mentioned “resonable poster” about, as she called it “oversharing in soc variants vs soc blinds” though the correct amount of sharing might well be in the eye of the beholder.

But that was the one objection of the troll I didn’t have a non-vague satisfactory reply to, what rly kept me wondering rather than “eh not gonna reinvent the wheel again”, something about “sp/sx woldn’t have long descriptions or emo rants” Apparently they do when they never have to dea with the person again (such as on the internets. )

IDK I did move the description so no one’s forced to read it but lots of peeps have one (This is like... a blogging site??) but the reasons for its existence had more to do with “completionist urges related to then-current obsession (typology)” and “So I like X, bite me.” sort of sentiment than whatever it was they presuposed.

Dear Causal-Deterministic peeps (ENTP, INFP, ISTP, ESFP): Instances of the same behavior can be caused by different causes! Look at this: 2 4 8.

What’s the pattern? - Could be “powers of 4″. Could also be “even numbers” or even “any increasing integer”.

Of course this whole mess is an example of where we H-P folks (INTP, ENFP, ISFP, ESTP) look at everything from multiple angels/Povs, (”Is it like this? Is it lika that? It COULD be seen this other way...”) rather than, well, decide which ones are most relevant here/ “Pick one”. At least the SPs have Se to “just grab one” or whatever it is they do.

Whereas we just stand there speculating XD The ENFPs sorta do it too but in a whole different way/ area of life?

Me: “Either he is nuts or I am nuts because we can’t both be telling the truth!”

ENFP: “Well I empasize with both of you so I don’t think either of you is nuts?”

Me: Sorry but this is a real dichotomy here for once. If he dun nothing wrong, then I would be wrong for accusing him thus, just as he says..

ENFP: Can we all agree to disagree and chil maybe? plz??

Might also be why there`s this overlap between ENFPs and Universalists? Though obviously not all ENFPs are universalists and vice versa.

So yeah. Kinda comical in hindsight. I started out all second guess-ey and entertaining both possibilities in parallel but in the end, well, I do think it’s INTP after all, at least, I’d say its the most probable by a considerable margin. Most definitely 5 tho. For all the occasionall 4 ness its by far the most overwhelming tendency in day to day life/thinking ugh cant I NOT spew nerd facts about everything in sight. What are other conversaton topics?

Bottom Line: By thinking about your own thinking you alter your thinking, and that way lie 2nd order chaotic systems, the Uncertainty Principle and Goedel’s Theorem...

So going outside both threw me out of that recursion and added new, raw data as a means to test the competing hypotheses. It forced me to see what I actually act like by and large in a natural setting rather than the many ways I could interpret or read the way I act like, which like, is not actually all that mysterious lol

#mbti #intp

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