Se/Ne
I get asked the difference between Se and Ne all the time. I don’t know how many more ways to explain it, since I ASSUME most of you have read through the many examples I have provided in the tags.
Sensing is paying attention to the sensory environment and being present in the moment; intuition is being detached from the sensory environment and mentally “somewhere else.” The degree to which you do one or the other is defined by how your brain works, which is what we call cognitive functions. Se is present, Ne is not. Se does things, Ne thinks about them. Se takes the sensory method (holding someone’s hand to comfort them), Ne takes the intuitive method (psycho-analyzing their problems instead). Se sees an opportunity to do something and does it. Ne dreams about how it might be in a more idealized state. Se looks at things realistically. Ne looks at things idealistically. Se takes people at face value. Ne reads into them.
There’s two possibilities with the seeming inability online by people not being able to tell the difference.
One is that they’re a Ne who are chronically over-thinking everything and can see themselves in every description and are assuming they are good at sensing when everything in their life ought to be telling them how objectively bad at it they are (especially since inferior Si can almost never come up with concrete examples of their own behavior and motives to link to cognitive functions; so if you have a ginormous gaping hole in your past in which you can pluck nothing out of it, assume you’re a low sensing / high intuitive type).
Two is that they are a sensor who doesn’t like the idea of having intuition last, so they’re desperately grasping at straws trying to bring it higher into their stack rather than objectively realizing that all the rabbit trail tangents and hypotheticals proposed by high Ne users drive them insane, because they are primarily people of ACTION who want to get things done and/or have strong experiences. They would listen to a highly abstract conversation, and tolerate it for awhile, and then want to go do something or change the subject to something real that involves being in the zone.
For those who want functions higher in their stack, or functions they do not have -- you don’t want them. What you have is good. You can work on developing your own lower functions, but they will still be lower. That’s life. Life is about balances. You get a lot of this, not a lot of that. But you are objectively better at THIS than other people who have it lower in their stack. There’s no “this type is better” because each type has an inferior function that sucks. So what if a Se-dom’s inferior function is Ni? Doesn’t make you stupid. Doesn’t mean you don’t have good ideas. What it does mean is you won’t “waste time” in hypotheticals when you can, you know, just DO THINGS.
What if your inferior function is Si? Doesn’t make you stupid. Doesn’t make you irrational or unrealistic. Doesn’t mean you don’t have a desire to ground yourself in reality. What it does is you won’t “waste time” in the past when you could be moving forward.
ESXPs can have dreams. They can take an interest in deep things. Still ESXPs. ENXPs can be concrete. They can want to do things in the real world. Still ENXPs. It’s not about what you do, it’s about why you do it, and how you see it first. If your automatic response is to see and interact with the object as it is, you are Se. If your automatic response is to find the object interesting but dull because everything gets better in your head, so you push the object away to ponder or talk about an abstract take on the object (seeing what it might represent or symbolize to you and others) in order to make it more interesting to yourself or give it greater intuitive weight, then you are Ne.
- ENFP Mod
