The world of appearance. What the fuck is it? What are all those shining surfaces sitting there so prettily? Why don’t they get up and do something useful. Like tell us what they really are.
Appearance is a doozy to explain because it just is what it is. It is what it appears to be. If a woman appears sexy, then she is sexy. If a man looks strong and virile, then he probably is strong and virile. See the problem. Nowhere to go with it. Nothing to penetrate or see through. In short, what a bummer for an INFJ or INTJ type. Now they have nothing to do except to appraise things as they appear to be.
But, sometimes things aren’t as they appear to be. Sometimes something is rotten in the state of Denmark (Hamlet quote). Sometimes there is more than meets the eye. Sometimes things are not what they seem.
Yes, all true. But, I ain’t talking about any of that crazy shit. And neither is extraverted sensation. Because, you know, sometimes, and quite often actually, things are exactly what they seem to be.
But, this is the very dilemma and problem that introverted intuitives have, how to stop at surfaces and just let things be as they are.
First, a little preview of how an extraverted sensor type sees and experiences this function and then we’ll get into the Ni retort.
Bring in the outline from the previous article for the section on Appearance for the extraverted sensation function:
Appearance (World of)
a. Beauty. In natural world this is related to mating behaviors. Female is usually desirable because of beauty.
b. Acceptance of things as they are
c. Evaluation of things from a strictly surface point of view
OK, beauty is the first item off the outline. Beautiful. No problem. Let’s talk about beauty.
What is beauty?
Well, there will be different answers to this depending on who one is. But, to extraverted sensation, beauty is that quality that is usually present in females that are considered as being the most desirable mates. Yes, it can be present in the male of the species too. But, let’s be honest, beauty is a female trait, more or less, especially in the human species, where the female of the species is more or less the one capable of and expected to be beautiful. That is, if she wants to get laid by the fittest males of the population.
Can’t do much about this quality. For the most part, you are either born with it or you don’t have it. There are varying levels of beauty at the strictly physical level such that some women are rated on this quality of beauty from a scale of 1 to 10. Yes, ladies, that is how the vast majority of the male population thinks. Sorry, I didn’t make these rules. But, most people do abide by them in one way or another. Even if they consider themselves to be above such things as physical appearance. Well maybe they are, but it is awfully hard to fight our biology. It is hardwired into us over many millennia for the express purpose of making sure that the fittest members of the species mate with the other fittest members of the human species so that the human species may be strong and beautiful.
So, this is a relatively simple behavior and concept to understand and there is not really much to say about it besides that’s the way it is. It’s reality. If you think it isn’t then the rest of this article is hardly likely to make sense and you may fly off into whatever heaven of idealism you want to. Your choice.
But, at the earth level, all around us every day, in and out of the human species, there are creatures and organisms evaluating each other based on this factor of physical beauty. How shallow, I know.
But, it turns out that this behavior is not really shallow and is actually quite important. It is important because it ensures that the least amount of ugly and unfit people get produced day in and day out. And that is important for the simple reason that who the fuck wants to be staring at a race of ugly mongoloids day after day. Quite considerate of nature if you ask me.
Beauty is such a touchy subject in today’s Western world. The concern with it is all around us all the time and yet it has become quite uncouth and primitive to bring this concept into the foreground of people’s awareness because you are likely to offend the people that don’t meet the traditional standards of physical beauty, and since there is little they can do about it, please don’t talk about it.
Well, I’m going to talk about it. In the name of science. How you like those apples?
You like them. You’re curious. Everyone is into beauty, whether they care to admit it or not. Everyone likes beautiful things. And most of all, everyone likes a beautiful woman. There is simply no getting around this. And the most beautiful females have won the race from the very get-go. It’s not fair is it? They didn’t have to do anything to become beautiful. They just got lucky.
Well, this may or not be true. We don’t know much about where we came from or what we were doing before we showed up here and we don’t know what we will be doing when we are dead either. Maybe these beautiful women have been working hard in the afterlife (or the forelife) to ensure that they were born physically beautiful. How do you know? Maybe it was that important to them. And it certainly seems an important focus to many women since their primary biological modus operandi is to find the fittest male and have a bunch of strong and beautiful babies with them.
Yes, I know, I know, things are different now. Now women are liberated and they can work in man’s jobs and they have the option of not having to participate in the whole biological race to have babies before the clock runs out on them. I know all this shit.
Nonetheless, we aint there yet. And so the whole world of extraverted sensation beckons and looms large but we have simply talked ourselves out of this whole issue. We would prefer not to discuss it. But, that’s different from it not existing.
Because it exists like a motherfucker. As a matter of fact, that is the primary modus operandi of extraverted sensation – existing. Se is all about existence. And it is hard to fight that reality. Things exist. They just do. Whether you like it or not. Whether you rationalize the living hell out of the existence of those things. Whether you get into a funk about the existence of these things. Nature doesn’t care. And only humans can afford to take this attitude anyway. In other words, this attitude we have decided to take is a rather late development in the history of nature. And if you looked at it from an animal’s point-of-view, it would probably look quite absurd, this anti-naturalism of ours.
You might not want to be susceptible to the sight of a beautiful woman. It might all seem so low-level and unsophisticated. A woman might not want to go weak in the knees at the sight of a virile man of strength as he goes about bullying and condescending to the rest of the less fortunate male population. Showing off his strength like a peacock. Well, the general rule nowadays is that he can do it, he just better be clever and ironic about it. Then it’s OK, because he has mixed in a little modern day intelligence and wit. You can be a brute as long as you aren’t too obvious about it. Basically, women love assholes. They are excited by them.
O, what a farce is human nature. I’m getting depressed just thinking about it.
Well, so much for the refined members of the civilized cities of North America. Because all about us there are these extraverted sensors and it is still business as usual. And guess what, we love them.
INFJs and INTJs love them. They can protest all they motherfucking want. I could care less. You can only cover up the truth so much. But, the truth is easy to see if one wants to see it.
If one wants to see it.
You see?
Sight, vision, perception. All things of the Se/Ni axis. To see things for what they are. To see reality. Whether that reality is apparent. Or whether that reality is hidden behind layers and layers and strata after strata of dirt. In reality, they are one and the same. Two sides of the same coin.
So, next time we will be looking into this a little closer. Maybe there is more to this world of appearance than is immediately evident. And maybe INFJs and INTJs know a thing or two about this. Yes, I think they do. You’ll just have to tune in next time to see.
And as you may know by now, I am strongly motivated by money. It really focuses me in a way like no other thing can. It makes me want to perform miracles and dig under mountains for answers to these age-old questions. It makes me grow into a modern day Hercules of a man.
Feed me my little Titans. So that I may unearth what has hitherto been unearthable.
Fund this mage in the maze of ages.
Previous Articles in Series:
Extraverted Sensation in INFJ and INTJ: Part 1
Extraverted Sensation in INFJ and INTJ: Part 2
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Extraverted Sensation in INFJ and INTJ: Part 4
I’m not into jerks. I’m actually insanely attracted to nice guys. But… like the thing you said about attractive men. Yea I mean… who doesn’t like an attractive man or woman? Have you seen some men? Their built to perfection. I don’t agree that a man can’t be beautiful. Maybe its because you are a man, but as a woman.. I can find a man extremely attractive.
I can find a man beautiful or attractive (and have many a time). But, the point is that beauty has classically been considered to be a feminine quality. And I agree with this. So, that is what I was getting at.
This content is kinda raw. ;p But i am fine with that. Thank you for doing these infj articles.
Yeah, it’s raw, but you know you like it like that you INFJ you.
How true these are.
I’m an INFJ and I’ve always been attracted to assholes. Simply because they’re the inverse of who I am. And I find them very exciting. But then again, many girls flock toward jackasses. But I like guys who are slightly domineering and idiosyncratic and driven. The more unconventional and non-conforming they are, the more I am beguiled.
Is it because I tend to view things from multiple perspectives and lose my own in the process? I don’t know. But someone who believes in what they believe in, unfalteringly so, I know I’ve always admired and am charmed by.
But when we start to get close, I always grow afraid and distance myself away. It’s happened quite a few times. I hate it but it’s also a safety net. Is this the result of an inferior Se? Dominant Ni? Or simply the common fear of emotional intimacy despite it being what I crave?
I think many INFJs are attracted to the prospect of danger and violence, and also someone with a strong will, but at the same time are scared of these things as well. INFJs are pretty complicated and tortured in the emotional intimacy department. They have a strong capability for emotional intimacy and also a strong desire to shut off this department altogether. I guess one could say that they feel so strongly that they desire not to feel at all sometimes.
Why do you think they are attracted to the prospect of danger and violence ?
To get outside of the hermit stuck mode ?
INFJs want someone to kick their ass out of their world of eternal considerations. Then, they will be happy and go right back into it for another long spell.
INFJs are fascinated with people that have strong wills and kick ass and get things done. Why? Because they are the other end of the pole to that. Opposites attract.
I find beauty to be something deeper than just good looks, it’s what things are filled with that makes something beautiful or not, I don’t equal good looks with beauty, and I’ve studied this quite extensively, being a university studied designer and into studying looks (in an artistic or curious manner) since early on. Beauty is far bigger than good looks, a “good looking” person can still not be very beautiful, beauty is a deep quality, a moving quality or qualities, it’s not just merely base. So I also disagree that it’s largely equated with the feminine, what a load of codswallop, it’s an individual matter.
I was talking about the conventional quality of beauty. Qualities such as a woman’s childbearing hips etc. Extraverted sensation doesn’t care about the deeper qualities of beauty, merely the physical signs of such. Evaluating things strictly from surface appearance.
Dear Blake,
How are you in the cruellest month?
This morning brought high tides of luminous air, and as I type these words it unfurls its cerulean planes, moist with the year’s freshest light.
Like a nonchalant tchotchke merchant.
Pretty, innit? Come look, it sighs.
Outtasight, I decline.
‘It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart’
Fuck nature though. Or not. There is neither fucking nor being fucked, but thinking makes it so.
I got into this outstanding graduate program I’d been trying to get myself to apply to for nearly 3 years (felt I wasn’t worth their while; decided to read every single paper and book published in the field first; and all that other hilarious shit. The shame is here even as I’m writing this, in my left shoulder, like a slab of anthracite; for fuck’s sakes, I can’t even eat a peach on the beach without casually plunging into a hermeneutics of life’s myriad pathetic facets and a full trial on the purity of my own heart, but it’s better now, thanks to you). I’ll be going to England in September to study Post-Soviet politics and society, and work, and write, and stray. And maybe get thrown into prison somewhere down the line. But that’s for another day.
I did it on a willingness not to know and a fuck you.
My question is this, though. Se.
I don’t know if this is due to my body being 24 years old (and female! a most curious thing, to be sure) and the sociobiological implications thereof, but there’s this will to power and youth. This taste that I can’t deny. I let beauty get away with anything and everything. Its truth is in its terror, its terror in its truth. And its cruelty is pure.
Which is all I ever seem to take into account.
I could trap myself in immaculate numbness of academia and then throw it all away for a dude with swallow wing eyes. The things they betray. And I have, too.
Then for weeks I squirmed on the floors of filthy seas. And again wanted to be icy anal dominator Robert Fripp and not feel a thing.
Oh to be the sex toy of both Apollo and Dionysus. Have you read ‘Death In Venice’?
I love to play basketball. Man, I do. I’ve no idea how but I make a decent point guard. Albeit a disembodied one. Let’s just say my ENTJ mom chose the fittest of the pack. What a laugh.
It’s like being in an entirely different domain (but also not so different, you know?). The eloquence of uninterpreted action takes my breath away. Why don’t I have the decency to go fuck myself up in a mute cloister somewhere? It’s this lust for source codes that makes me crave the wilderness. The mess that existence is.
And I go to see games and sometimes I get this strange, strange sensation. Like I’m real.
That perishable beauty is paradoxically marked by eternity and it creates such tension that I can’t even.
Sports is Dasein-driven. Symbolic sets fighting each other for discoursive dominance? What’s there to not be into?
Like a public pervert in those untold streets, I get off on transcendence. But I also get off on jocks and brutes, in much the same way. And I also kind of hate myself for it, you know?
Would a true poet find themselves in such a situation?
A true poet is exempt. I’m not. It’s like I’ve got just this one drop of maudit blood that’s egging me on.
I want to see things from a distance, and yet I want things to fuck me till I die.
People can do that to you, but reality as a whole is the best lay.
Sometimes violence creates new shit. It’s a mechanism of semiotic hygiene.
Physical strength is just as sacrilegious as the divine impudence of the poet.
Athletic pursuits fuel aletheic ones.
What I wanna say is that I’ve been invited to join my school’s team and I want to be on it. That means training three times a week and competing.
Also means not quitting cause I’m not Allen Iverson.
And I’ve restrained myself for such a long time, for so many reasons. And I want this.
What if I could pull it off?
Would regular Se activity in a controlled environment be detrimental long-term (assuming I don’t switch modes)? I mean, technically, and from your point of view?
What if I’m able to withstand the Ni-Se (and Te) tension for extended periods of time? Will I lose my mind? I’m not gonna live for very long anyway. I just know it somehow. I know it’s gonna backfire, but how worthwhile will the damage be?
I want to know what’s beyond all this. Beyond even what I can imagine.
Oh, I know the answers. But I also need you to tell me. Please. Just this once.
Being in extreme Se situations unleashes me. It makes me write more. It makes me shine more, something I used to never allow myself to do.
There is an extreme sadness in me, and uncertainty regarding the ultimate value of life. What’s so precious about it? Life’s only bearable when morality is there to tell you what’s what.
I can’t get myself to want personal health or peace, I can’t live with other people for too long, however sweet my intentions are. ‘The hearty warmth of it all makes my skin crawl’. And it’s not like I get to choose. I know it’s better if I don’t get too close to others. I’m resigned.
And I’m not a real writer. I write cause there’s no other way of getting this filth out of my psyche. My writing is quite literally shit.
Also, there’s Mars in Libra. With Scorpio Moon. Oh yes 😀 I didn’t do all that well.
Sun in Virgo, and Ascendant turned out to be Gemini, or rather Gemini-Cancer cusp. I know you’re not big on cusps though. I dunno. I’m funny and excessively polite with people (individual preferences taken into account though), but also a jerk somehow. No one gets to see that I’m actually Christopher Walken in his final scene in The Deer Hunter. Jesus, I’m getting sadder by the sentence here.
It is the Scorpionic energy that I need to breathe (coupled with Geminian energy, but that’s a whole different story). I need the possibility of transformation to unleash myself. The freedom to tear it all down. And then I can do things for others.
Every little goddamn day in this little unfashionable star system.
I can’t feel my own presence. But when I act in the world I see myself projected onto its planes.
You are so right.
Oh Blake, I know I’m a stupid child even though I’m turning 25 this September. Kierkegaard’s dead and Rilke’s dead and no one can tell me anything new these days. And cosmic smirk is the only thing that helps.
Please allow me to apologize for this wall of text. ‘I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw’
And I don’t even know how to finish except to say that I know it’s always gonna be rough. And that’s fine. It is thanks primarily to your work that I was able to ditch a decade-old neurosis. ‘And how can I match the hymns already sung in your honor?’ I can’t. You have the greatest gifts already, your heart and your mind. Doesn’t mean I’m not gonna donate 😀
Go get ’em, yeah?