SiFe: Wonderment, Nostalgia & Storytelling

The subject of nostalgia is a very interesting one, and this has gotten me thinking about the complex nature of how SiFe’s relate to it. So my comments here focus especially on the idea of nostalgia as a range of emotions and the role it may play in an SiFe’s life. Partly, I want to show that it’s not simply uniform attitude toward the past as a whole, but a dynamic & moving range of relationships with certain aspects of the past. Nostalgia is a highly nuanced gradient and includes both positive and negative emotional states. Although nostalgia itself is non-rational, nostalgic memories can be probed to help guide rational decision-making. Reflecting on it, here’s what seem like some of the most important points. The first two of these strike me as pretty well-known and obvious:

1.) Feelings of nostalgia can be directed toward events in the individual’s life or toward more collective, cultural memories that resonate with the individual’s worldview.

2.) Nostalgia is most strongly evoked by sensory experiences that resonate with past memories—especially if the sensory memory is one the SiFe rarely experiences in day-to-day life. Of all the senses, smell seems to be the most powerful in evoking nostalgias.

3.) Nostalgic attachment is more to the impression or feeling that an experience left (which of course changes over time) than to the particular details of the experience itself. Sensory details are often the means by which the feeling is evoked. However, the feeling of nostalgia itself alters the impressionistic qualities of a particular sensory experience, often making an overly faithful attempt at repetition feel derivative and stagnant. This can cause some SiFe's agitation or restlessness toward repeating certain experiences.

4.) Nostalgia seems to attach most strongly to past experiences associated with feelings of hope and to a lesser extent, calmness, satisfaction, discovery, wonderment, enthusiasm, etc.

5.) Memories that evoke nostalgia tend to be aspects of the past that the SiFe no longer experiences in the present, but is still able to relate to in their life.

6.) If the SiFe feels alienated from the subjective perspective they had at the time the memory occurred, they may have little nostalgic feeling for it, even if the experience was quite positive at the time. Instead, they may experience a more negative emotion such as regret, embarrassment or repulsion.

7.) If the experience is one that is actively being re-created, the SiFe will likely feel little nostalgia toward past impressions of it, as long as they are more satisfied with their present arrangements than with the past. For instance, if they are satisfied with their culinary experience in the present, they may feel little nostalgic attachment to bland childhood comfort foods (especially if their tastes have changed).

8.) Most individual nostalgias are cyclic: they naturally exhaust themselves after a while as their emotional poignancy fades. However, they can re-emerge when life contexts change or when spurred by a forgotten sensory memory.

9.) Over time, nostalgia seems to have a powerful distorting effect on the details of memory (maybe due to Ne’s involvement?), which is one of the reasons it’s usually not reliable for guiding decisions in the present.

10.) However, nostalgic memories almost always contain scattered truths. If the SiFe “zooms in” more specifically on nostalgic memories and honestly sifts though their contents, they can use them to infer lessons that they can apply to their present situation.

11.) Various nostalgias flow and ebb throughout a SiFe’s experience, but by themselves they are not “haunting.” Intense preoccupation with a particular nostalgia can often indicate that they have not fully come to terms with the experience.

If I get to it, perhaps I’ll eventually elaborate some of these a bit more. These are subjective and I have no idea how broadly applicable they are. I'd guess they could be more relevant to the “silly-serious” and Ti subtypes than to the “frozen snapshot” or “eternal parent.”

Ha, I also can’t stand wallowing in depressing news, especially if it’s something I feel like I have no control or influence over. I’m lucky that my family isn’t really that way, but my partner’s family (especially her dad) are always getting into dinner-table conversations about gloomy world events. I think my tolerance for it depends a lot on the tone—even a faint glimmer of hope can go a long way.

I have a comment on subject of lessons.

It seems to me like there are two different kinds of lessons:
1.) symbolic lessons, e.g. anecdotes, directions—convey information
2.) experiential lessons, e.g. past experiences —convey knowledge

In general, I would say that experiential lessons are far more useful in day-to-day life than symbolic lessons.
Symbolic lessons are very similar to methods. Trying to gain actual knowledge using methods is extremely difficult. By knowledge, of course, I mean having a “feel” or an impression for the real-life quality or experience of something.

To use an analogy, the difference between using information and knowledge is like cooking from a recipe versus looking in the fridge and thinking up a combination of ingredients to combine. If I want to cook a particular dish and don’t know how to make it, of course I’ll use a recipe. But for general, day-to-day life, it’s far easier and more engaging to mix and match ingredients I have on hand. Of course, I have actual knowledge of the ingredients because I’ve tasted them all before, so it’s not hard to figure out which ingredients go together or to imagine how a particular combination might taste.

If someone were to give me a long string verbal instructions (e.g. “turn left on Main St., then right on 2nd Ave. ….”), I would probably have a very hard time following them because my brain would have to translate a long, linear sequence of symbols into spatial imagery. If I were using a map to find my way, it would be far easier because it's an icon rather than a symbol, so less translation is required. Similarly, I've found it almost impossible to learn plant identification using a book. Yet if someone points out an actual plant to me in the forest, I will only have to see it once or twice before I begin noticing it all over the place. I’m guessing this must be specific to high-Pi or Si types.

I guess my point is that I would definitely agree that SiFe’s rely heavily on lessons, but I think that it can be very difficult to translate symbolic lessons into practical knowledge, unless they have a baseline of experience they can relate to. This is probably why most youth (at least males) tend to make lots of reckless decisions.

Ha ha, to be honest I don’t think I’ve ever seen this “lunch lady land,” but it sounds vaguely familiar, something from the ‘90s? Unfortunately I can’t claim to be much of a dancer at all.

That’s really interesting about the directions--I also usually do better with compass directions (North, etc.) than with right and left. But when it comes to measures of distance (3 miles), I’m usually pretty comfortable with them, I guess because they’re standardized: they mean the same thing everywhere and I am very familiar with what they mean. I think the hardest thing about following verbal directions is the “rights,” “lefts,” all the verbal twists & turns, plus the street names with no associational meanings. If I’m writing down directions someone gives me, I’ll usually draw an informal map and then imagine “walking” through it. Occasionally then I'll get an overconfident feeling that I "know" how to get there, leave the written directions behind, and get a bit lost anyway.

I have a sense that Ni-Se would indeed be better at making the leap from information to knowledge—e.g. that they could more likely see a plant in a book and then find it in the forest. Unfortunately, though, I know if I can articulate why I have that impression. I guess it seems like Se is better at knowing which details are the important ones to pick out, and maybe Ni has a better sense of the overall pattern of the way in which symbols are constructed to represent natural phenomena. In general, I suspect that Beta & Gamma types are generally better at following texts toward the conclusion the author intended. Si-Ne types seem like they are more likely to get hung up on arbitrary/literal details (Si influence) and/or make all sorts of random connections that lead away from a single, coherent interpretation (Ne influence). Of course, I don’t know CT theory that well, so to some extent I’m just BS-ing.

Since this thread was originally about particular Si nostalgias, I wanted to mention an activity that for me epitomizes nostalgia and storytelling in a lot of ways: hitch-hiking. The truth about hitch-hiking is that a lot of the time you’re at least a bit miserable. You’re standing by the side of the road in the rain, lugging a bag that’s way too heavy because you overpacked, perhaps stressing out because you were stupid enough to use such an unpredictable means of traveling on such a tight time schedule. Once you get a ride, you may awkwardly trying to make small-talk with someone who’s blowing cigarette smoke in your face and spouting off conspiracy theories, or you may spend 20 minutes trying to push the wet snout of a black lab away from your face. Very occasionally, there’s the anxiety of trying to gauge whether the driver who picked you up is potentially dangerous or merely crazy. Yet despite the moment-to-moment discomfort, something always makes me want to hitch-hike whenever I have the opportunity. I think it’s the palpable feeling of freedom & adventure combined with a sort of emotional roller-coaster. You feel a pang of hope every time a car approaches, and when one actually pulls over you get either a little thrill or a massive feeling of relief, depending on how long you’ve been waiting. You quite literally trade stories with the people who give you rides. Some of the stories you hear are pretty ho-hum, but every now and then you hear something remarkable or spectacular. You meet some wonderful people and lots of very interesting ones--including many you likely wouldn't talk with much in other contexts. Some of the most unpleasant experiences make for some of the most interesting memories/stories later on.

Hitch-hiking also feels industrious, adaptable, and like a small way of challenging people to reach across the barriers of distrust and atomization. You’re really not trying to rebel or anything like that; you’re merely refusing to let cultural norms deter you from an activity you feel is ethically sound. Hitch-hiking is a bit nostalgic because I used to use it as a regular means of transportation during much of my 20s, when I lived a rather transient lifestyle. Now I’m a bit more settled down, so it’s only occasionally that I have any real excuse to justify doing it.