Anon wrote: Hi! 18 y/o ENTP here! I’ve always wondered about the role that culture plays in personality development. In my case, I came and know people from cultures where security is highly emphasized (the East Asian and southeast Asian kind, to be more precise) , and it seems like people have suppressed their natural tendencies very well to fit in in order to maintain survival needs , to fulfill their desire for status and well, “face”. I am personally not very adept at these and I eventually convinced myself that these people probably made a lot of unnecessary sacrifices just to live a life that is socially acceptable. Yet knowing that I am just terrible at meeting expectations, i suspect that my ability to adapt to my environment is just pathetically low hence my opinions are not justified. Security is important, no way I can refute against that.
Can oneself change their orientations just to meet the demands of their environment? I am aware that it is not often the case, but I feel like the way such theory may apply differently in more collectivistic cultures, at least from what I’ve observed. There’s indeed a lot of people who deviate from their original self, and they think it is constructive even though their way of thinking is just elitist and doesn’t take account for nuance. It almost seems like the end goal of self-improvement is to fit some idealized community image while tooting their own outstanding qualities (which is ironic, we all know they just wanted to play safe) and save for retirement. Or maybe, i wouldn’t be thinking of this if only I could’ve done what my parents , institutions and corporations expected of me. Things would’ve been less complicated if I tried to suck it up and become that doctor or lawyer that everyone respects. Life would’ve been so much easier when you are in line with society instead of sticking out like a sore thumb. And that is the kind of thing i wish would stop happening to me even though I don’t see the point of doing what everyone does (since that invites more competition and workplace toxicity which i cannot cope, obviously)
Should I stop caring so much about fitting expectations by attaining absolute job security as the end goal, or my self-improvement has to align with a value that is universally important but difficult to achieve? If i go with the first one, it almost seems like I am trying to escape from putting in effort to work with the second option, but going with the second one could leave out other interesting options to live a life that could be equally fulfilling.
There are several problems/errors in your thinking because you're conflating many concepts that need to be understood separately:
(1) Oversimplistic View of People
The key point isn't about personality but about values. It doesn't matter the personality type, values play a major role in guiding one's future direction in life. It sounds like you haven't done enough to clarify what your values are, which means you are likely to struggle with making good decisions and finding good direction. What happens when you lack strength and conviction in your own values? The void within is easily filled by external forces.
The void is YOUR problem and it is YOUR responsibility to address it. By blaming external factors like parents or society for pressuring you, you are deflecting responsibility. What this does is set up an attitude of "me vs world". Eventually, the inner conflict morphs into an outer conflict, and you start treating your parents and society as "enemy". It's then easy to irrationally believe that your existence, freedom, individuality, etc, is under constant threat.
When you approach life with a "me vs world" attitude, you are always on defense and come across as combative right out of the gate. This doesn't encourage people to listen to you and understand where you're coming from. While it is true that not everyone is capable of reasonable discussion, you're not going to find out who is or isn't as long as you don't give people the benefit of the doubt.
You seem tempted to adopt an "individualist" mindset to justify going against cultural expectations, but there are significant disadvantages to it. When you focus too much on the individual, it's easy to fall into the trap of blaming individuals for larger social forces that are beyond their control. Culture doesn't just appear out of nowhere.
For instance, East and Southeast Asian countries are populated with people who have been directly impacted by some very extreme and traumatic historical events. It is an appropriate and reasonable response to value security because of it. You are lucky to be born in a generation where security is possible, which means you are among the most likely to take it for granted.
Life is difficult for most people. The majority of us, not born to great wealth, have to make difficult calculations, concessions, and trade-offs in order to obtain what we need from society. Society intersects with personality insofar as different personalities value different things and will thus make different decisions about what aspects of culture to accept or reject.
Having conviction in your values requires you to apply them fairly and consistently. If you hope for people to be accepting of the difficult choices you have to make, then you should be the first to accept the choices they have made. While I recognize your attempt to see the other side of the issue, you haven't reached a full understanding, so you aren't capable of genuine acceptance yet. You still speak about their decision to "conform" with disdain, as though it is a lesser choice that makes them lesser people. Be warned that having a shallow view of people contributes to feelings of alienation.
Acceptance is much easier when you're mature enough to realize that: 1) people are complicated and you shouldn't rush to judge when you don't understand their full experience, 2) what other people do is none of your business, and 3) other people's opinions should only inform yours when they are valid opinions, and validity isn't always easy to determine.
At the end of the day, while you should consider outside opinions, the values you hold have to be chosen by you. The reason you are easily triggered by outside opinions/expectations is because they are exposing the truth of your void within. When you have a deeper psychological issue that remains hidden or you refuse to address it, you end up becoming hypersensitive to any mention of it. If you don't want to be hypersensitive, then the answer is to stop blaming and face the problem head on within yourself.
You seem to want to contrast yourself with your culture by claiming to care more about individual choice, but you can't claim to be an individual when you don't know your own values. As long as your values are unclear, you are in a poor position to advocate for yourself. How can you persuade others to be sympathetic to your perspective or convince them that you are capable of making good decisions when you can't articulate why your values are important and worthy of upholding through your life decisions?
No parent wants to see their kid miserable. Can parents, especially Asian parents, be pushy, bossy, and overbearing? Sure. However, if you meet their pushiness with adolescent rebellion, you won't get far. Culture aside, any normal parent wants to see that you have a good head on your shoulders before they trust you to make big decisions for yourself. If you're able to approach them as a capable adult who takes life seriously, you might find them much more amenable to discussion.
An important aspect of learning how to use Fe properly is to realize that you have a big influence over how social interactions proceed, so learn to wield that influence wisely. But this isn't possible as long as you always see yourself as a victim of outside forces.
(2) Oversimplistic View of Society
What your parents expect of you may or may not overlap with societal expectations, however, one should not simply assume they are the same. From a Jungian perspective, parents often act as a stand-in for understanding society. However, how can two individuals adequately represent an entire society made up of thousands or millions of people? They can't. This would be an illogical leap. At best, your parents represent only a few aspects of society as a whole.
Of course, you don't only see society through your parents. You also have peers, friends, school, or work experiences. However, keep in mind that people tend to segregate themselves based on factors such as class, race, ethnicity, religion, educational attainment, common interests, etc. It is very likely that the people you've been exposed to outside of family are very similar to your parents with regard to the above factors. Therefore, it is still only a small sliver of society you are seeing.
Of course, you also learn about society through media. However, media companies are mainly interested in making money rather than providing a realistic, nuanced, and comprehensive view of society. What makes money for them? Lowest common denominator stuff; images that appeal to the simplest and often basest aspects of human nature. It is not only a small sliver of society being presented here, but a heavily distorted view of it as well.
All of this is to say that, with the little life experience you possess at 18, what you think you know about culture and society is extremely limited. You feel constrained by this thing called "society" and don't realize that what you're actually being constrained by is your own oversimplistic or distorted idea of what society is.
You are clashing with your parents and you've extended that clash to society, to the point of believing that the world is antagonistic toward you. This sort of thinking is emblematic of the adolescent drive toward independence. But society is an abstract concept; it is not a conscious entity that is capable of expecting things from you in the same way a parent does.
When you have a "me vs world" attitude, it's easy to trap yourself in the position of victim, rather than see yourself as an agent of change. If you were to confront every real person in your life who expected something unreasonable from you and resolved those differences as constructively as possible, it's likely that the antagonism you feel from "society" would disappear.
In other words, this problem is to be resolved in the realm of the practical, in your actual relationships. Thinking about the problem through sweeping overgeneralizations about "society" at large doesn't help because it just makes you feel lonely, cynical, and, eventually, depressed.
(3) Oversimplistic View of Culture
As part of your overgeneralizing, you seem to be conflating culture and society; they aren't the same thing. Society refers to a large group of people that are held together by some kind of commonality. Culture refers to a specific set of beliefs, values, norms, and practices that a group of people share and honor. Culture is more related to ethics, in terms of prescribing what is/isn't acceptable behavior.
A society can contain several different cultures and subcultures when there is a higher level of commonality to link them together, such as nationality. Perhaps you haven't realized that society is big enough to house a variety of cultures. Maybe you have to look harder for your kind of people or create a community better suited for yourself.
Calling cultures "collectivist" or "individualist" is actually one of my pet peeves because of how it leads people to stereotype or make insulting assumptions. It is important to note that this terminology was coined by western intellectuals, some of whom had obvious prejudices against any "eastern" peoples living east of Germany. Also, contemporary research has not been able to find compelling evidence for the distinction except when using the most extreme cultures for comparison. In other words, these are outdated concepts. There are newer and more useful concepts available.
Yes, it is a fact that some cultures place more pressure and perhaps even try to coerce members into conformity. However, calling this kind of culture "collectivist" is misleading. It doesn't account for how people really feel, deep down, about the pressure. Go to a "collectivist" culture and you'll find plenty of people who are critical of it or even openly rebel against it. Go to any "individualist" culture and you'll find plenty of people who spend a lifetime conforming to mainstream standards. What does this tell you?
We are all individuals. As an individual, you have a choice to make about the degree to which you subscribe to and participate in your culture. And I use the word "degree" very intentionally because you seem to have trapped yourself in a false dichotomy.
Thinking in polarized either/or terms is a sign of intellectual immaturity at best and intellectual dishonesty at worst. It hampers good decision-making and can even lead to helplessness because you lose access to the full range of possibilities available to you. The choice does not come down to either: individual or group; respectable or shameful; security or poverty; etc. Most people actually live life with more nuance than that. You accuse others of lacking nuance but you are the same.
You're living through a rocky time of transition between adolescence and adulthood. The brain doesn't reach full maturity until around 25. Eighteen-year-olds still suffer from certain childish thought patterns. Children have a very small and narrow understanding of the world, only concerned about whether the world brings them pain or pleasure. However, as you grow up, you should start to realize more and more that: 1) the way the world works is much more complicated than simple dichotomies, and 2) your subjective experience is not necessarily representative of the larger objective world.
(4) Oversimplistic View of Economy
In 2024, there's no such thing as "absolute job security". And it's not the case that every job can be easily sorted into either "stable" or "unstable".
As an example, I live in an area that has traditionally been great for computer science and engineering. Many members of my immediate and extended family are engineers and I was pressured to become one. For the longest time and even now, both of these careers were touted by all parents and teachers as foolproof, always secure. But that is not the case today. The economy has changed and these jobs have been disappearing or moving to more favorable places. Today, every job opening has hundreds of applicants and even those with advanced degrees find themselves unemployed.
What this should teach you is that the work society considers to be valuable changes over time in accordance with economic shifts and needs, but the culture doesn't necessarily keep up with those changes. Once upon a time, business people were looked down upon as dirty, greedy, and selfish. But now look at all the people in Asia clamoring to get a business degree.
To be aware of economic changes, let alone try to predict them, requires expertise and imagination most people don't possess. That is why all they can do is stick to what is known or what has worked in the most recent past. Unless you live in North Korea, nobody knows for sure which direction the economy is going to go. It's not something within your control. However, you can learn enough about it to make some good guesses and take smart risks. You can take time to research the full range of career possibilities open to you and make an informed decision.
The more useful question to ask is: Are you able to find or create work that the economy values enough for you to build a fulfilling life? It is largely irrelevant what the culture thinks about it because they are always behind the curve. What matters most is whether you can contribute/create something valuable given the socioeconomic conditions you live under.
Opinions are just words; they need not mean anything unless you ascribe meaning to them. Everyone has an opinion but not all opinions are equally valid. If you want to make good decisions in life, you shouldn't be easily swayed by every opinion thrown at you, rather, you should only be swayed by opinions that are backed by solid expertise and evidence - this is what Ti development should help you with. In the end, the results will speak for themselves.
However, if you can't get over the adolescent mindset of reflexively rebelling against "expectations", you will always be overreacting to every opinion that comes your way (which is a recipe for getting stuck in tertiary loop). Even if you end up choosing a so-called "secure" career, the underlying inability to carefully analyze and evaluate the quality of the opinions you encounter (i.e. underdeveloped Ti) will nevertheless result in an unstable life.
