This article is not 100% finished yet, but is close and I also find it helpful to run things by others before finalization. Lemmy know what you guys think and as always, feedback is very welcome!
By the way, EXCELLENT article! Man, if you guys keep the quality of descriptions of functions and types to the same level you have for Ne and NeTi, it'll be awesome, truly!
That's the plan! Well, lets see how it goes. Even if it takes a few revisions, I think it's important to have fully fleshed out descriptions that span the known but also less known aspects of the functions.
Thanks for this! I think you should tag mystery as well, he prolly has the most developed Si here.
I was disappointed when I came to mythology, seeing Treebeard's face, only to find no content, lol.
I relate A LOT to this. Congrats. I am genuinely confused about NeFi-Fi and NeFi-Si to be perfectly honest. I think Fi and Si are equally developed in me. It's impossible to list everything I agree with without repeating the article:
-preservation of the ancient (therefore truly irreplaceable) including the environment, all species of animal/plant life, heritage sites, libraries, monuments etc, experiencing visceral rage at their senseless destruction. (-On the other hand, I feel no sense of preserving it for actual living ie I place the needs for life and happiness and freedom above it but want it preserved for study/posterity.) -passive accumulation of enormous amounts of data about certain subjects -love of story/narrative -comfort in the familiar in the physical/sensory realm with my Ne adventurism experienced mostly in the realm of thought and ideas and openness to people and different cultures -Fear of chaotic/unknown Se-type newness lol, + bouts of paranoia from time to time (not always though) leading to stagnation in these areas -Nostaligia about many positive, cherished and somewhat lost past experiences. Alternatively, trauma re awful past experiences, PTSD-ish etc etc Oh yes, I swore off pets too when I lost my cat (not dog, lol)
With this above and many others, plus my permanent concentration scowls, FeSi (and Ne was noted as equally strong too) makes sense for my first read ie High ethics + High Si + High Ne, when you think about it.
On another note, I mentioned this on chat but Puffs--and I think there was another Ne lead too though I forget who exactly (Nadia ? teatime ?)--don't really relate to the symbol of the library to describe our inner experience of Si. I've written in scattered posts here before of my love for libraries and books, which I inherited from my dad, who was exactly this picture you paint in the article, in almost every paragraph. He may have been an SiFe-Ti or an SiTe-Fi.
However, the thing/experience I've come to map as Si in me feels deeply, and I mean deeply connected to groundedness, immoveable stability, roots reaching down to the foundations of the earth. I guess there are many Si symbols depending on which aspect of its archetype one feels affected by. An Ne lead relying on his Si for an unchanging anchor might relate to its groundedness/rootedness more than to its vast collection of knowledge.
Now I wanted to say something and I've mentioned it to you and Al on another occasion, about my following confusion, and this seems like a perfect place to do it, so here goes:
Si vs Fi vs Ne (Or Min vs Edin vs Puer)
I been wonder how much of my sense of the sacred around very large (and therefore ancient) trees, mountains and forests is Fi and how much it really is Si. I feel more and more like Si may be a bigger chunk of that than I imagined before when I automatically assigned that wholly to my inner Edin. I've always had an old lady/wise persona around ethics. When I was very small, like around 3-4, I remember getting pulled into and lost in images of the 'Way of the Cross' in church, wondering about that place in the pictures, "so far away", the streets, the clothes, the surroundings. It may've been Ne mystery or Si archetype, I don't know.
But just like I think Edin and Min are mixed in my pull towards ancient giant trees, mountains and forests, I think Puer and Min may be mixed in my love of the mysterious ancient. It's so far removed that it is as good as fantasy to me. Indeed I never enjoyed historical stories from eras so near they feel like the genuine past/history like since the middle ages onwards (too dry and factual) unless they involve the story of sacred things like great human tragedies (slavery, the holocaust etc....) which come to think of it, may yet be another area where Edin and Min come together to give me a sense of the sacred...
In any case, I am really enjoying the new articles. I meant to say the same about Edin too but I forgot.
I’m trying to take a break from posting stuff, but what the hell, I’ll give this one a stab.
Awesome Si profile--I relate a lot to most of it!
Because of this orientation towards the roots of things, all the more value is added to something by knowing its background. A great richness is felt by learning how it is that a city came to be what it is, or how the shops in town came to be famous.
Yes!
A few Si users may find themselves able to mention what they were doing four weeks ago on a Tuesday afternoon.
I relate to this: sometimes I can literally do this. But my memory of past events is better in the longer-term sense.
The Si user may be prone to ramble and get lost in a flux of information as they reiterate all that’s known about a topic without gauging the level of interest of their audience.
Hahaha, yes!
The Si user’s tendency to look to the past can cause them to struggle with moving forward both emotionally and spiritually. This can lead to decade-long grudges, bitterness or emotional hangups.
Yes, unfortunately. Especially when people cheat or bully others with impunity and get away scot-free… yet it seems like this very sort of Si bitterness is a lot of how/why feuds drag on for centuries. For me, an effective way of mollifying these sorts of long-standing resentment is by remembering that all historical events are interwoven, that everything ultimately has consequences both good and bad, and that bitterness begets bitter outcomes. Yet even more important is remembering that “it is what it is”—the past can’t be changed and is not real in the same way the present is real.
I do have a few miscellaneous thoughts & ideas: Temperance and path-dependence
Ostensibly I don’t completely relate to the section about temperance, as I often get drawn into the “chaos of spontaneity.” If it turns out I’m an NeTi, this is no surprise. However, when I try to think more deeply about the idea of temperance & caution based on accumulated experience, I actually do relate to it more than it would outwardly seem. But either way, it seems like there are plenty of examples of high Si users who are pretty wild-crazy and immoderate, as I’ve been at times in the past. I suspect this can be related lightweight inertia and path dependence. What I mean by path dependence here is that if an Si-lead grows accustomed to excess for one reason or another, that might become their default state and there might actually be resistant against changing or moving away from a life of excess. This can be accompanied by a fatalism rooted in past experience: feeling like you’re stuck in the same narrative you have been your whole life and are unable to break free from it.
Si and sensation
Perhaps this would belong in the cognitive metabolism section, but I think it would be cool if there were more about the connection of Si to senses, since it is a sensing function. You frequently use the word visceral in describing Si, and it’s a good word that captures how I’d understand Si’s sensing process. My only suggestion would be to explain its visceral quality in a little bit more detail. Si may not literally perceive the outward environment, but I believe it does literally perceive the inward environment (i.e. the inner body or the viscera). As Si recalls strings of trivia based on the memories of Ne’s outward perception, it also remembers the somatic impressions that are associated with those particular sets of trivia. That’s sort of my impression of how nostalgia works. If I were to see someone playing the original Mario Brothers, the particular combination of colors, textures and music would likely evoke a sensory experience along the lines of “this is what it felt like to be me when I was 7 or 8 years old.” I might remember other sensory/emotional experiences I had at around that time. Similarly, even if I can’t remember any specific details of what a painting I once saw looks like, I might still retain a somatic imprint of what it felt like to see the painting: i.e. the impression it left on me.
Nostalgia and sensory memory
There’s part of me that also feels like maybe nostalgia is too specific of a word to encapsulate the Si’s relationship to past sensory experiences. I really like the terms “sensory memory” or “feeling-memory”—I feel like they signify something a little bit broader than nostalgia. I think at times in my life I’ve felt reactive against nostalgia, like coddling nostalgias means confining myself to stagnation and accepting that whatever I feel in the present is only a weak derivative of what I felt in the past. Like nostalgia, what I’d call sensory memory involves feeling that the sensory reality of present has a powerful resonance with feelings & senses of the past (along the lines of what was mentioned in the section about narrativism). But whereas nostalgia seems to imply valuing the present sensory reality primarily for its quality as an echo of an (often idealized) past, I think sensory memory can involve valuing the sensory present as the continuation of a living history that began in the past.
Sensory empathy
Also, whereas nostalgia generally implies fond memories, I feel like sensory memory can just as easily involve traumatic ones.
In another thread there was a discussion about Fe, Fi and empathetic responses. An example given was, if you watched someone tear their fingernail off, would you physically feel their pain. I absolutely feel intense physical discomfort in that sort of situation. This sort of sensory response can be rather excruciating, and that’s one reason I can’t stand movies with senseless gratuitous violence. However, I suspect my experience of physical discomfort in the fingernail example comes more from Si than from Fe. After all, the experience of watching such an event is evoking stored memories of similar sensory experiences I’ve had before. Ne sees the outward event, and immediately connects it to Si, which experiences it viscerally. Even if I haven’t had such an experience myself, my mind still creates an approximation of how I'd imagine it to feel.
I guess I’d call this sort of experience “sensory empathy.” It’s usually accompanied by a feeling of emotional empathy, at least to some degree. Yet I feel like there’s a bit of a qualitative difference between the somatic experience I get from seeing physical pain and the one I get from internalizing the emotional trauma I perceive in someone else. In the fingernail situation, my response would be much more sensory and probably not overly emotional. But if I were hearing a detailed account of someone losing a loved one, how I’d feel would be much more emotionally upset and not sensory in the shivery-skin crawly kind of way I’d feel with the fingernail. Anyway, I suspect that the one sort of experience is more rooted in Si, whereas the other is likely more Fe.
Old things, narrativism and material culture: process vs. product
An old lamp is not just an old lamp but a symbol of an object that permeated hundreds of houses back in the 1920s. It’s a token of a time period, but more specifically it is “the very lamp” that so-and-so touched and used. Via this literal object, there’s a direct contact with a specific narrative now gone, acting as a sort of time traveling experience.
I’m not sure if I quite have my ideas on this bundled coherently together, but I’ll give it a try. This might be my own particular priority or interpretation, but I see Si narrativism as having as much to do with the cultural processes that produce and give meaning to the objects as with the literal histories of the objects themselves.
For instance, I have an antique coffee-grinder that I consider a prized possession. Although I don’t really know its history, it really does evoke/symbolize an older time to me. Yet its symbolism is much more powerful when I actually use it than when I simply leave it to sit on the shelf as a museum piece. Using it is not only a way of engaging with its historical significance, but also a way of reflecting on the energy, resources and human labor it takes to grow, harvest, transport and market the coffee beans. The fact that I rarely use it indicates that as a modern person, I live a fast-paced life in which exotic commodities like coffee are prepared in a matter of seconds and not always consumed mindfully. So, just as an example, pretend my hand coffee-grinder were brand-new and had no history behind it, but it was something I used all the time. It still would be a slower, more deliberate way of living, and in that sense it would still evoke an older time. So I'd say a lot of its significance is based not only on its particular history but also on its position within the flow of life in our culture.
I think this is one of the reasons why handmade, local products and local foods can have such strong significance. Even if they aren’t historical, they’re narrative: I likely know the person who made them, can readily learn about the process of making them, perhaps know the places where the materials were from. The process of making such goods is not only local but also personal. In that way, even modern trends like the local food movement hearken back to a time when there was less alienation between work, workers, owners, products and consumers. I would see such local economic endeavors as a way of trying to continue or reclaim the values of local production, local goods, and products derived more directly from the Earth. Rather than being motivated solely by nostalgia, they seek to re-imagine and re-create very old traditions that were disrupted by industrialization.
Fidelity of memory
Just one last random thought. One thing I’ve long noticed about memory is that it the details & impressions seem to get distorted over time. In fact, I'm pretty sure the more often I remember something, the more abstracted the memory becomes from the original quality of the experience. This makes sense in terms of Ne’s caricaturing methodology. Every time a memory gets “animated” to life by Ne, it loses a little bit of its original nuance and texture. Sort of like the grooves on a record getting worn out over time.
I’m trying to take a break from posting stuff, but what the hell, I’ll give this one a stab.
Awesome Si profile--I relate a lot to most of it!
Because of this orientation towards the roots of things, all the more value is added to something by knowing its background. A great richness is felt by learning how it is that a city came to be what it is, or how the shops in town came to be famous.
Yes!
A few Si users may find themselves able to mention what they were doing four weeks ago on a Tuesday afternoon.
I relate to this: sometimes I can literally do this. But my memory of past events is better in the longer-term sense.
The Si user may be prone to ramble and get lost in a flux of information as they reiterate all that’s known about a topic without gauging the level of interest of their audience.
Hahaha, yes!
The Si user’s tendency to look to the past can cause them to struggle with moving forward both emotionally and spiritually. This can lead to decade-long grudges, bitterness or emotional hangups.
Yes, unfortunately. Especially when people cheat or bully others with impunity and get away scot-free… yet it seems like this very sort of Si bitterness is a lot of how/why feuds drag on for centuries. For me, an effective way of mollifying these sorts of long-standing resentment is by remembering that all historical events are interwoven, that everything ultimately has consequences both good and bad, and that bitterness begets bitter outcomes. Yet even more important is remembering that “it is what it is”—the past can’t be changed and is not real in the same way the present is real.
I do have a few miscellaneous thoughts & ideas: Temperance and path-dependence
Ostensibly I don’t completely relate to the section about temperance, as I often get drawn into the “chaos of spontaneity.” If it turns out I’m an NeTi, this is no surprise. However, when I try to think more deeply about the idea of temperance & caution based on accumulated experience, I actually do relate to it more than it would outwardly seem. But either way, it seems like there are plenty of examples of high Si users who are pretty wild-crazy and immoderate, as I’ve been at times in the past. I suspect this can be related lightweight inertia and path dependence. What I mean by path dependence here is that if an Si-lead grows accustomed to excess for one reason or another, that might become their default state and there might actually be resistant against changing or moving away from a life of excess. This can be accompanied by a fatalism rooted in past experience: feeling like you’re stuck in the same narrative you have been your whole life and are unable to break free from it.
Si and sensation
Perhaps this would belong in the cognitive metabolism section, but I think it would be cool if there were more about the connection of Si to senses, since it is a sensing function. You frequently use the word visceral in describing Si, and it’s a good word that captures how I’d understand Si’s sensing process. My only suggestion would be to explain its visceral quality in a little bit more detail. Si may not literally perceive the outward environment, but I believe it does literally perceive the inward environment (i.e. the inner body or the viscera). As Si recalls strings of trivia based on the memories of Ne’s outward perception, it also remembers the somatic impressions that are associated with those particular sets of trivia. That’s sort of my impression of how nostalgia works. If I were to see someone playing the original Mario Brothers, the particular combination of colors, textures and music would likely evoke a sensory experience along the lines of “this is what it felt like to be me when I was 7 or 8 years old.” I might remember other sensory/emotional experiences I had at around that time. Similarly, even if I can’t remember any specific details of what a painting I once saw looks like, I might still retain a somatic imprint of what it felt like to see the painting: i.e. the impression it left on me.
Nostalgia and sensory memory
There’s part of me that also feels like maybe nostalgia is too specific of a word to encapsulate the Si’s relationship to past sensory experiences. I really like the terms “sensory memory” or “feeling-memory”—I feel like they signify something a little bit broader than nostalgia. I think at times in my life I’ve felt reactive against nostalgia, like coddling nostalgias means confining myself to stagnation and accepting that whatever I feel in the present is only a weak derivative of what I felt in the past. Like nostalgia, what I’d call sensory memory involves feeling that the sensory reality of present has a powerful resonance with feelings & senses of the past (along the lines of what was mentioned in the section about narrativism). But whereas nostalgia seems to imply valuing the present sensory reality primarily for its quality as an echo of an (often idealized) past, I think sensory memory can involve valuing the sensory present as the continuation of a living history that began in the past.
Sensory empathy
Also, whereas nostalgia generally implies fond memories, I feel like sensory memory can just as easily involve traumatic ones.
In another thread there was a discussion about Fe, Fi and empathetic responses. An example given was, if you watched someone tear their fingernail off, would you physically feel their pain. I absolutely feel intense physical discomfort in that sort of situation. This sort of sensory response can be rather excruciating, and that’s one reason I can’t stand movies with senseless gratuitous violence. However, I suspect my experience of physical discomfort in the fingernail example comes more from Si than from Fe. After all, the experience of watching such an event is evoking stored memories of similar sensory experiences I’ve had before. Ne sees the outward event, and immediately connects it to Si, which experiences it viscerally. Even if I haven’t had such an experience myself, my mind still creates an approximation of how I'd imagine it to feel.
I guess I’d call this sort of experience “sensory empathy.” It’s usually accompanied by a feeling of emotional empathy, at least to some degree. Yet I feel like there’s a bit of a qualitative difference between the somatic experience I get from seeing physical pain and the one I get from internalizing the emotional trauma I perceive in someone else. In the fingernail situation, my response would be much more sensory and probably not overly emotional. But if I were hearing a detailed account of someone losing a loved one, how I’d feel would be much more emotionally upset and not sensory in the shivery-skin crawly kind of way I’d feel with the fingernail. Anyway, I suspect that the one sort of experience is more rooted in Si, whereas the other is likely more Fe.
Old things, narrativism and material culture: process vs. product
An old lamp is not just an old lamp but a symbol of an object that permeated hundreds of houses back in the 1920s. It’s a token of a time period, but more specifically it is “the very lamp” that so-and-so touched and used. Via this literal object, there’s a direct contact with a specific narrative now gone, acting as a sort of time traveling experience.
I’m not sure if I quite have my ideas on this bundled coherently together, but I’ll give it a try. This might be my own particular priority or interpretation, but I see Si narrativism as having as much to do with the cultural processes that produce and give meaning to the objects as with the literal histories of the objects themselves.
For instance, I have an antique coffee-grinder that I consider a prized possession. Although I don’t really know its history, it really does evoke/symbolize an older time to me. Yet its symbolism is much more powerful when I actually use it than when I simply leave it to sit on the shelf as a museum piece. Using it is not only a way of engaging with its historical significance, but also a way of reflecting on the energy, resources and human labor it takes to grow, harvest, transport and market the coffee beans. The fact that I rarely use it indicates that as a modern person, I live a fast-paced life in which exotic commodities like coffee are prepared in a matter of seconds and not always consumed mindfully. So, just as an example, pretend my hand coffee-grinder were brand-new and had no history behind it, but it was something I used all the time. It still would be a slower, more deliberate way of living, and in that sense it would still evoke an older time. So I'd say a lot of its significance is based not only on its particular history but also on its position within the flow of life in our culture.
I think this is one of the reasons why handmade, local products and local foods can have such strong significance. Even if they aren’t historical, they’re narrative: I likely know the person who made them, can readily learn about the process of making them, perhaps know the places where the materials were from. The process of making such goods is not only local but also personal. In that way, even modern trends like the local food movement hearken back to a time when there was less alienation between work, workers, owners, products and consumers. I would see such local economic endeavors as a way of trying to continue or reclaim the values of local production, local goods, and products derived more directly from the Earth. Rather than being motivated solely by nostalgia, they seek to re-imagine and re-create very old traditions that were disrupted by industrialization.
Fidelity of memory
Just one last random thought. One thing I’ve long noticed about memory is that it the details & impressions seem to get distorted over time. In fact, I'm pretty sure the more often I remember something, the more abstracted the memory becomes from the original quality of the experience. This makes sense in terms of Ne’s caricaturing methodology. Every time a memory gets “animated” to life by Ne, it loses a little bit of its original nuance and texture. Sort of like the grooves on a record getting worn out over time.
Those are some great thoughts! I like what you said about Fe/Fi v Si sensory experiences.
Also, what you say at the end about memories, that's exactly how Julia Shaw describes memory access in "The Memory Illusion" - we actually recreate the details of an event every time we recall it, that is, we don't store and access the same details, but every time we bring it to mind, we somehow rewrite those details based on some previous pattern. (Great book btw, highly recommend it, but it's an Si's worst nightmare! ).
Post by laurinicole on Mar 2, 2018 23:39:33 GMT -5
I also really enjoyed this Si profile Auburn and was impressed by how well it captured my husband and a good friend, and also surprised at how much I found myself relating to the descriptions.
On a backpacking trip they may call out: “See that? that’s poison oak, don’t touch that. And this one over there, you see the white stripes? That means it’s ok to eat.” Little factoids of this nature will follow them around at all times, and those who live with an heavy Si user will note their voluminous body of knowledge. This can at times be exhausting to others, as they may overshare with an enthusiasm for the particulars of a thing that is not mutually appreciated to the same degree.
While I don’t see myself as a heavy Si user, I like to identify flowers and other plants and have been known to share this info with others in an enthusiastic way, and looking back, may have been a bit boring to others! Knowing them gives me a sense of connection to the natural world and it’s also anchoring to me, and when I’m sharing that, I feel like I’m bestowing the same anchoring gift on others.
The section about collections and antiquity I very much relate to and prefer the old to the new as it connects me to another story in time, even if I don’t know that story. Kahawa pointed out that my attachment to libraries might be Si, and I agree and so relate to Aqua when she says she loves libraries and books. I love paper books - preserving, cataloging and lending them. Ahhh… Also, I connected with what Hrafn said about old things, particularly his coffee grinder example and the way that interacting with it evokes the past and is a symbol that represents something about culture and values. I once had a (short) season where I washed all of our clothes by hand because I wanted to understand the energy and time it would take to do that and so relate to the past and like hrafn said “seek to re-imagine and re-create very old traditions that were disrupted by industrialization.”
Also Hrafn , this idea of sensory empathy is something I’d never thought of. I’m now investigating my internal experience because I suspect I experience this type of empathy as well, and think it could be a helpful distinction to make:
In another thread there was a discussion about Fe, Fi and empathetic responses. An example given was, if you watched someone tear their fingernail off, would you physically feel their pain. I absolutely feel intense physical discomfort in that sort of situation. This sort of sensory response can be rather excruciating, and that’s one reason I can’t stand movies with senseless gratuitous violence. However, I suspect my experience of physical discomfort in the fingernail example comes more from Si than from Fe. After all, the experience of watching such an event is evoking stored memories of similar sensory experiences I’ve had before. Ne sees the outward event, and immediately connects it to Si, which experiences it viscerally. Even if I haven’t had such an experience myself, my mind still creates an approximation of how I'd imagine it to feel.
I guess I’d call this sort of experience “sensory empathy.” It’s usually accompanied by a feeling of emotional empathy, at least to some degree. Yet I feel like there’s a bit of a qualitative difference between the somatic experience I get from seeing physical pain and the one I get from internalizing the emotional trauma I perceive in someone else.
However, sometimes I actively try to avoid re-feeling what I’ve felt in the past because the feelings that I had then are then presently felt on so many levels...perhaps also on this level of sensory empathy. (Perhaps this is more specific to the FiNe experience...idk) It can be a bit much, particularly if at present I’m already experiencing a lot of other current feelings.
Last Edit: Mar 2, 2018 23:42:20 GMT -5 by laurinicole
laurinicole - I'm just getting back to this thread, but thank you so much for your perspective. It's really giving me further insights and also further confirming what I've observed thus far.
Hrafn - Very happy you decided to circle back! I was really hoping for your input and wasn't disappointed. ;p btw, i think you contribute greatly to the community here and i do feel like we have some great back-and-forth exchange and genuine interactions, not just one way dialogues. But that's just my take on, for what it's worth. :3
Thank you Auburn! I've enjoyed our exchanges as well!
btw, i think you contribute greatly to the community here and i do feel like we have some great back-and-forth exchange and genuine interactions, not just one way dialogues. But that's just my take on, for what it's worth. :3
I agree with this, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise! It's more just I haven't really used the internet in exactly this way before--actively participating in a forum (I can be a bit of a luddite, in case you didn't get that picture already). So it's more just a matter of reflecting on and figuring out what I'm personally most comfortable with when it comes to engaging with an online community.
The other thing I didn't mention earlier is that my Ne procrastination monkey LOVES CT a little too much!
laurinicole - I'm just getting back to this thread, but thank you so much for your perspective. It's really giving me further insights and also further confirming what I've observed thus far.
Sure! I'm glad it was useful to you (and hopefully others too).