#egocentricism

[ometochtli2rabbit]

Relentless Indigenous Woman

[mbti-notes]

Hi. INTP writer here. I care about creating diverse personalities for my many characters. When I discovered MBTI theory I was both shocked and pleased to see them spread across these various categories. I almost covered the 16 types in more or less depth and MBTI descriptions and explanations confirmed what I intuitively guessed and re-made. The only type which seems to elude me 100% is the ISFP... I now understand how they work, but still no ISFP character appears under my pen. (1/3)

[con’t: The thing is, when I write from a well-crafted character’s viewpoint, I get totally depersonalized. I started thinking as I never thought before, making connections I never made ‘by myself’, understanding reactions that were puzzling to me when being my INTP-self. Same for emotions. I’ve a hard time connecting to my own emotions in the moment; yet I feel my characters’ feelings while writing, choking on tears, feeling their psychological pain. It’s both disturbing and satisfying in a way  Yet I’m concerned about how depersonalized I can get. I realized I’ve a tendency to lose sight of myself in front of difficult people I’m busy trying to understand to the point of not getting they are crossing my boundaries since I’m not ‘there’ anymore to enforce them. It makes me ambivalent to determine if it’s a gift or a curse, or both, or a curse masquerading as a gift. It makes me wonder if I’m finding myself when writing, or drifting further away from myself in self-erasure.]

What you are describing is the potential danger of using the inferior function before one is developmentally ready for it. There’s some safety in using inferior Fe in creative pursuits because it’s not “real”, it’s not really you. But as soon as the emotions get too real, you “depersonalize”, because dominant T doesn’t really want to know what it’s like to use F for real as it could easily lead to inferior grip and dominant annihilation, as already explained in the Type Development Guide. The general principle of type development is balance; extremes tend to come when you aren’t aware of improper function use and you unwittingly take things too far, sometimes with negative consequences such as disastrous inferior grip behavior (e.g. not setting proper emotional boundaries). 

One of the most important lessons of type development involves understanding that every coin has two sides, every human trait has advantages and disadvantages. Growing a deep understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of each of your functions helps you know when using them is appropriate or inappropriate such that you can optimize your function use. Type development is best pursued in accordance with the order of the functional stack; it can be harmful to get ahead of oneself or to lie to oneself about one’s true state of development, which Ns are generally inclined to do because they often struggle to form a realistic conception of their own capabilities. Due to inferior Fe, Ti doms easily fool themselves into believing that they are good at understanding people when they’re not. Due to being IN, INTPs often don’t realize that mere intellectual play is not at all the same as practical knowledge. The proof is in the pudding: If you really understood people well (i.e. objective Fe use), you’d know how to handle people of every stripe, and you wouldn’t have the problem you described.

When a person hasn’t grasped the above lesson, they tend to remain at low levels of ego development. An egocentric person is only able to recognize their own advantages and, through observing differences, other people’s disadvantages, which means that they are completely blind to their own disadvantages and cannot see any advantages in anyone who is not like them. This has very negative implications: 1) when you can’t recognize your own shortcomings, you can’t address them properly and then close off the most important avenue for realizing your potential, and 2) when you can’t recognize other people’s advantages, you won’t be able to respect and validate them and then fail to connect with them, thereby closing off the other important avenue for learning about yourself.

[mbti-notes]

How you doing? There is a lot of talk about empathy v. sympathy. And a lot of debates on Infps and Infjs being empathetic or sympathetic. Sympathy is seen as something -ve so obviously no one wants that. But I also read somewhere that it is not really possible to feel empathy if you have not been in a similar situation, and sympathy is not as -ve as it is portrayed to be. What do you think? Is empathy better? Is there any benefit of distinction? Does it have anything to do with mbti type?

If I’m being blunt, I find this debate boring and pointless. Barring neurological dysfunction, we are all capable of empathy and sympathy. If you really want to get into the topic, it would be quite a trip. When you study the history of ideas, you may quickly notice that psychologists and philosophers are fond of coining new terms, “self-esteem” and “empathy” are two good examples. They do this in order to be more precise in what they are trying to study or research, perhaps wanting to make clearer distinctions in order to avoid other words/connotations that might contaminate the meaning they’re trying to get at. However, when the terms eventually enter mainstream consciousness and start getting used by the general public, the meanings often become muddled. One reason for this is because the original distinction that was being made gets lost once people start using the words incorrectly, until the meanings simply change over time. Another reason this happens is because the original distinction was unnecessary or a false one because there was already a word that covered similar ground, so the two words get used interchangeably, thus muddling the meaning of both.

Look up definitions of empathy and they are all over the place: some meanings try to separate it completely from sympathy, some include the concept of sympathy, some make empathy a prerequisite for sympathy or vice versa. In other words, the difference between empathy and sympathy is quite unclear, which renders the distinction rather futile if nobody really knows exactly what you mean and everybody has their own vague notion of what you mean. I dislike both words for this reason but I tend to default to empathy because of my background in psychology and it seems more all-encompassing than sympathy, but I disagree with the notion that sympathy is somehow negative or not as good. As I said in the last post on this topic, the capacity for understanding what someone else feels is related to degree of egocentrism (ego development) as well as moral development. The more egocentric you are, the less accurate your perception of other people’s psychological states. The more moral you are, the more you care about other people’s psychological states. Whether it is Fe or Fi is somewhat beside the point because having the right tool is rather useless if you don’t know how to use it properly.

[spookyfantasyauthor]

"you always make everything about you! You only care about yourself! You are self-centered" LMAO you want me to center my life around you instead? Funny, now go play with your toys

[seolf]

So great is our monopoly on species-superiority that we are willing to take it to its logical conclusion. Nothing can come after us —we will ensure it. Extinction proves the superiority of the species. Baudrillard calls this 'feral humanism.'”

Thacker, E. (2018). Infinite Resignation. p. 102. via TUMBLR USER forbidden-sorcery’s POST.

[ninofeden]

Do you ever go to the supermarket only to find that they’ve sold out of what you wanted, and feel like the entire neighbourhood is conspiring against your dinner plans?

[adamworu]

One thing that can be noticed about Shinji in the original Neon Genesis Evangelion series is his sense of egocentricism. Egocentricism is not to be confused with being egotistical, which means that one holds a very conceited view of oneself. Shinji does not see himself in a good light. To better understand this, let us break down what ego and centricism means.

Ego generally refers to one’s self-esteem and what one’s perception of things is (hence why someone talks about a boosted ego) . Centricism is of course assuming that something is centered around one thing. Putting these together means that one’s perception is seen applied to everything else around them, which does seem apparent for Shinji. To an egocentric person because they believe in something, everyone else must automatically believe in it as well. Shinji believes that because of his self-loathing, everyone must hate him as well. He confuses his perception with that of others.

[bostonreview]

Has the State of the Union address gotten more egocentric?

To compare early 19th-century SOTU reports to 21st-century SOTU media carnivals is a bit like comparing annual fiscal reports from corporate CEOs to episodes of American Idol. Here's why.