[vArticle] Stages of Si Consciousness

Hey! Welcome back!

What you said about the tortoise screensaver just made my day ^^

And yea, identifying with ego & conscious is no problem, since ego encompasses conscious too (but not the other way around)

And to answer your other post, leading with a function doesn't mean you need to have it as ego. An FeSi-Fe (that would be an Fe ego fixed FeSi) will be directive/pushy or parental in a kind of mothering way that can come across as intrusive - but it's because they care that much.

Inversely, an FeSi-Si (which seems to be what you're describing) has conscious Fe, but Si as ego. So they're not so much pushy or parental as they are homey and earthy yet still very ethically inclined toward social rightness in a more behind-the-scenes way.

Oh! I haven't shown you I finally got a vid of my FeSi sister who I mentioned to you before



I wonder if you see a resemblance to your own videos?

Hmmm...I listened to the video again and realized something: the "ethic" I felt conflicted mine may actually just be the flip side of the one I articulated in the video I sent you! My most off-putting quality in a person is not entitlement per se but "contempt" for people a person deems socially below themselves based on some arbitrary social standard: E,g, they are less intelligent, less rich, less beautiful etc etc. I guess it's kind of like entitlement but whereas she is put off by this entitlement making people expect unearned benefits, I am put off by how it makes people unfairly deny others basic respect and dignity (which is what I feel to my core that everyone is entitled to apart from the most extreme exceptions).

It's funny that this is what made me resist this last year but I now see it as perhaps not very different from my own fundamental values (expressed as what I find most off-putting). It's the same thing she says about all children having equal education. She's put off by the unjust artificial aristocracy, basically, and so am I! My core principle is this fundamental irreducible dignity of every person I meet. And I easily value the basic dignity of persons above their other external (to me) qualities and go about naively expecting the world to share this world view. When it doesn't pan out, it becomes a mini crisis for me, lol.

Contempt, showing disgust to and about another person for no good reason, reasons like the most egregious crimes, is a direct denial/violation of this core of mine and this is how I basically decide I dislike someone. I can't forget this even if I keep being friendly. Some people may see that as hypocritical but for me, it's just filed away to be used for future decision-making wherever this individual is involved especially if it keeps happening again and again to the point where I become convinced that it is their fundamental disposition and Im not unfairly boxing them into a negative judgment.

This basic value of respecting the people I meet, all of them, may be a reason I never identified with Fe Si or Fe dom descriptions because it is "assigned" to Fi or Ti as individualism. The value is the reason I hate imposing my will on others or having another's imposed on me: Basically, I feel very violated because I interpret it as an expression of contempt for my personhood as opposed to just taking it as rudeness or thoughtlessness. It feels like a direct hit on my dignity. I am HYPER aware of boundaries.

Clarifying a misunderstanding:


In the video I sent you, I had said something about recently learning from experience what it felt like to have that imposition and rethinking something I had done to a loved one: You interpreted it as a basic or life long tendency that I was then realizing was off from experience. Actually, I was then reeling from very recent examples of unfairness in my life and so may have exaggerated or misarticulated that. It was a very specific incident where I did that for a single loved one with life long intellectual and other life struggles whom I was afraid was getting himself into a situation where he'd be at the mercy of manipulative agents and we couldn't then intervene. And when he showed his contempt for my push I immediately backed away. It also wasn't the first time I was learning by experience what being bullied by others felt like, being imposed upon, the experience was so recent and raw it obscured by historical perspective. But in general, I have been the champion of individual choices against social expectations in my circles my whole life precisely because I had an instinct for this basic worth of people which formed the core of all my sense of right and wrong.  So all through, from the play ground to my house, to friends and neighbors, I have intervened always to protect this freedom from overbearing authority figures and oppressive personalities as well as to defy arbitrary categories of exclusion (social expectations) etc.

This is why the descriptions felt off. Like what I was most opposed to was supposed to be MY number one quality, just seemed off.

My understanding of Fe's approach to individuality:


In explaining Fe values, I think its key to explain that Fes can be as invested in what looks like "individuality" as the introverted judging functions though it operates through a different mechanism in the mind.

In me, it is a "truth" about people that I take for-granted, so that I don't have to approach a person on an individual basis and "judge it for myself" or "judge it on the spot" (like I think Fi does) to determine their worth to me. This judgment happens long before I meet them, in my belief about the category of "people" in my head and is then applied automatically and consistently when I meet people. I am thinking Fi doesn't decide apriori based on a belief what "this person in front of me" is worth but rather through a direct intuition of the essence of "this person" and not an abstract category of "persons" in the mind. My Fe doesn't intuit individual worth directly, it knows beforehand that this category (people) is rightly treated this way based on the truth of their nature. At that moment, it's judgment is not about the direct intuition of the worth of "this person" (that's already settled in the core conviction) but a judgment of what category "this creature before me" belongs to or what is the nature of "this thing before me"? If it is human, then its value follows from the understanding of "human" in my mind and what is the right way to deal with "human".

This means individuality can sharply define a person with Fe as much as any other. It just won't be "true individuality" in the same sense because it is an individuality objectively assigned to all appropriate things whereas Fi makes this judgment on a much more personal and subjective level case by case.

It is also not a conscious choice, this value, at least not at the beginning. When I was very small, I hated seeing oppression and instinctively knew it was "bad" but this has gotten more sophisticated and nuanced over time while thinking through lots of complexities I encounter in life. But I cannot recall ever choosing or getting "convinced" to have this basic value, it just was. I believe it was as part of me as my other biological instincts, I didn't ever decide that this would be my value "because it was true", rather it was the compass *not to be confused with the Ji symbols) that I used to judge other value systems growing up, itself being simple present and unquestioned.