'LOL thanks.  :P  But you realize, the insight wasn't that some people are inevitably and unjustifiably hurtful, which I've basically understood since childhood.  Rather it's that being you is OK...|||So I've been alive 27 years and I only just wrapped my head around plain dickishness.  I mean, I could imagine being a Nietzschean lyrical monster, or unassailably ideologically self-righteous, or...|||I can't edit the above again, but I'd like to revise my answer.  It's all true in it's fashion, if ghoulishly distorted, but I think it's off center, doesn't get at the real problem.  Lemme try...|||A memory. Perhaps not the deepest, but so far it's the deepest I've seen clearly, and it seems to explain a lot.  I had nightmares like it when I was little, but I only just fully recovered it, got...|||So some time ago, as a part of my spiritual process of working-through-stuff, I gained access to a kind of fluid, taste-and-feeling experience-of-my-body, through which old issues and new...|||The other day on campus, a group of fresh-faced young persons offered me a cupcake with a plastic Happy Birthday decoration and used it to segue into a polished pro-life spiel.  I responded mostly...|||I actually clicked on this thread specifically to look for an opportunity to say something sarcastic, but WTF.  Who says that.  Honestly.  I would suggest though that if they say things like this...|||- I think I have a more complete perspective on what's been going on with me these past few weeks.  It's as though I'm assimilating and integrating the raw materials of a genuine mind -- but due to...|||Actually I'm beginning to suspect that some of the distinction here has to do with whether or not N is in your ego block -- if it is, then perhaps power (in a positive / capable / less cynical...|||Oh whoops!  That was actually what I was going for myself, but now that you mention it maybe I see how it could come across entirely backwards.  (Perhaps I misunderstood a Ti > Fe nonissue as a Fe...|||So uh, y'all realize that @theorycraft's comment was a joke, right?  The idea being that since  - INTPs frequently have difficulty if not with christianity exactly then with the kinds of...|||I don't think I fully understand the question.  Where do hearts exist but on sleeves?  I appreciate that others presumably go about this sort of thing differently, but I hardly know how I feel until...|||Once more.  (It's only in contrast to everyone else's that my answer took shape.  How unsurprising, in retrospect.  :P)  To me power is not so much capacity as it is a co-option and choking-off of...|||You sure?  There are quite a lot of them you know.  Anarchist communism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia|||Hah, I appreciate the invitation but I think I may have exhausted my personal knowledge of INFJ intertype relations.*  :P  Honestly I didn't realize until after I'd written it what precisely I was...|||Perhaps rather, that meaning doesn't reside in the definitions of words but begins in what surprises and interests us about our relations to our surroundings, is momentarily given shape in the things...|||To me power means whatever it has to mean to grant me a coherent / meaningful / useful perspective on whatever it is I happen to be thinking about, for whatever reasons I happen to be thinking...|||Rereading the thread, I think a lot of folks are misunderstanding the role that being connected to the universe plays in spiritual work, and that we're taking positions on whether or not it's true...|||Good work, I just went and covered the remaining bases.  ISFJ thinks you're magnetic and charming but can't quite process how prickly you are so alternates between being drawn towards the bug...|||I think it's more that people sufficiently self-realized to be considered enlightened rarely have or would have sought any swag to begin with, but as a partial counterexample:  ...|||Why are we all university professors?  Also I kinda wish that tenderness were more subtle, the test author's conception of it seems to be a bit think-y -- do you reject your feelings out of hand...|||Teybo, in your reply you seem to be  - attributing certain aspects of the way people talk about functions to the internet to function talk in the abstract; - disassociating dimension talk in...|||I'll concede that most folks who talk about functions online (and I absolutely include myself in this) aren't using a terribly sophisticated framework for the way they influence / factor into /...|||Despite the fact that this thread is about a subject that has nothing to do with me discussed in very abstract and general terms, I am not fooled, for being a straight white cisgendered...|||Teju Cole's twitter is one of the most startlingly beautiful things on the planet.  I state the obvious not because you're slow but because I am. I write in order to misunderstand less.|||Seems pretty clearly ISFJ to me.  Definitely an introvert who relies principally on Si and Ti, but Ne shows up principally manifesting through / implicit in stuff he already has all manner of Si with...|||Impasse.  I've been working through the issues surrounding my alienation from the essential identity, which eventually involves identifying and dissolving self-representations of various kinds, one...|||God it's good to be alive.  ( Juggernaut I have no idea what I'm looking at but that's beautiful and amazing and wonderful and I love it, nicely done.)|||ipseity: Truth stands on its own.  It doesn't need you to fight for it.      me: But what am I if not a warrior for truth? ipseity: A witness.  A spokesperson.  Perhaps also a poet.      me:...|||I spent the afternoon catching up on electoral politics, and in the process something happened.  A subtle occlusion on the right side of my chest, where my Strength should be, as though there's...|||Dear Future Self: you'll recall that this was the year that you finally became Buddhist (or something).  Suddenly / abruptly / accidentally differentiating Fe, cultivating mindfulness /...|||Aha.  Then to answer your original question, I blame the authoritarian tendencies in modern public life that create the need for such PR in the first place.  I think I see what you're saying, and...|||It sounds like implicit in this question is an assumption that groups with an idea have (or should have) a single authoritative version of that idea with which every member agrees, and if anyone...|||http://i.istockimg.com/file_thumbview_approve/4228209/2/stock-illustration-4228209-worn-anarchy-flag.jpg|||Those in power have every reason to believe that imagination is evil, and the extent to which you agree is a pretty good indication of the extent to which you, yourself, identify with power.  (Please...|||https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BLhzsk_CEAAjyXV.png:large|||@Octavarium I see what you're saying, but honestly I think most everyone will wind up with their own subtly different definition of the functions according to their own experience / understanding;...|||@Octavarium, fair enough -- though mine is basically the opposite perspective, so to me ISFJ means SiFeTiNe and little else.  I've honestly considered retyping back to INTP and putting in my...|||@Octavarium, I think I see where you're coming from, but I think your analysis is conflating three slightly different things, and that your own relationship to this issue / question / conflict could...|||From the violence fairy.  She visits at night with brass knuckles and an icepick and leaves your teeth under your pillow.  Seriously though, I realize that my use of the word violence to describe...|||Depends on what you're concentrating on and how genuinely interested you are in it.  But defining self-discipline as threatening to beat yourself up in order to get yourself to do such and such an...|||I'd rather have the skills of concentration, mindfulness, and inquiry than self-discipline.  Best part of it is, you don't even need self-discipline to cultivate them, if all goes well.  You just...|||I like this breakdown and think there's something to it (in particular I have a lot of bathtub eureka moments when in gear) but -- I think to note this and end here is to leave the work only half...|||So I almost entirely agree, but one small point --    I'm an ISFJ who may as well have been born in a math department library, so intellectual pursuits have always been the focus of my life --...|||It's funny, 'cuz I definitely relate -- but then it turned out I was less TiNeSiFe than SiFeTiNe and just short-circuited Fe early on with a judgement against my Fe ('cuz I thought it was a dumb...|||My personality is the perfect personality which has no flaws or weaknesses so I don't understand why I'd want to change it.  (Actually I'd like to stay mostly me, except to be able to morph into an...|||DISPARAGE CURSIVE?!?  WHY YOU SCOUNDREL!!! YOU REPROBATE CUR!!! HOW THOROUGHLY SCANDALOUS!!!  Yeah my handwriting's pretty terrible honestly.  I have to print all caps on the blackboard to make it...|||Actually yeah, lemme revise my hypothesis.  You've presumably known more INFJs so I'd be interested in your thoughts, but from my perspective I'm guessing it's mostly  1) a kind of...|||I think this is an odd effect of Fe/Ti reasoning.  When I make deliberate and reasoned use of Fe, I start relating to my vocabulary in a completely different fashion, and all kinds of huge words pop...|||HI KILGORE  HI  HI KILGORE HOW ARE YOU  HOW ARE YOU FEELING TODAY  HI'