Translating Abstract Understanding Into Reality

[Tea]

This is maybe a bit divergent, but Animal, I think you have provided me with some clues about function consciousness. Here it sounds like you very much have a Pi map, but you do not trust it to be complete, so you rely instead on Pe strategies because they work.
"I lack Pi. So when I try to make my case, people point out bits of the ‘map’ that they think I’m missing-  while I know that it’s NOT missing, but I’m unable to ‘orient them’ to a place where they could understand my pov...  I’m just not convinced I have the wherewithal to determine whether that is the ‘whole picture.’"
I think I may be like this with Te. Yeah, I could maybe use it, but Ne works.  I have a lot more confidence in my Pe than in my Je.  Also I feel the need to keep scouting, though I have more than enough information to "go." (This feels like deja vu suddenly. Have we discussed relying on our conscious functions because we feel confident in them? And how that can lead to neglect of unconscious ones because we trust them less?)

[Rua]

@Tea
I posted that thought on the Discord a couple weeks ago [perhaps it has been said before by others in similar ways], there was a thought I expressed that having the more conscious functions gives you more methods of problem-solving that are comfortable, likely inhibiting a branching out into the last unconscious function(s) (of course this was based partly on personal experience). Another user expressed a contrary thought right afterwards, that the more functions you have conscious that there could be a positive inertia in that as well [sorry if I'm butchering your thoughts here XD]. I couldn't disagree with that statement, as I truly don't know, and especially as both our statements were subjective, and I have been attempting to think more in that second mode of thought. I have a good deal more to add that's relevant to the thread but I am still putting it together.
Edit: Well, I wanted to add more than this, but I've had this ready since yesterday, actually before Animal mentioned climate change which is quite funny since that was the primary subject I was using to illustrate a point. Anyways here's the text:
Hmm, sometimes when I think of the difference between Alpha vs Gamma (though perhaps this is not the appropriate level of analysis) I think of a quote from Stanley Kubrick. Speaking in the context of the nuclear threat to humanity Kubrick says [all quotes transcribed by this writer from an audio interview of Kubrick], "The problem to begin with is that, people do not react to abstractions, ya know they only react to uh, direct experience. Very few people are even interested in abstractions and even fewer people can become emotionally involved or emotionally react to an abstract thing."
When Kubrick was doing very thorough research into the systems of deterrence/ fail-safe strategies for nuclear annihilation in preparation for Dr. Strangelove he discovered that there was no real system in place because every line of reasoning/ proposed solution eventually led to a paradox. In his view, only luck was in place to stop nuclear annihilation, as potentially disconnected, individual human beings had control over this awesome power in a way that was not properly checked.
"Um, the only reality that a-a nuclear weapons have are a few movie shots of uh mushroom clouds and a few documentaries that occasionally show in art-houses about the effects of Hiroshima. But that the atomic bomb is uh, is as much of an abstraction as uh you could possibly have. I mean, it's as abstract as the fact that uh you know that someday you'll die. It's something that you know but you really [interviewer interjects unintelligibly] do a very good job, no, and you do an excellent job of uh denying it psychologically[...] because of the very effective denial and the lack of any evidence there's almost no interest in the problem[...] in the minds of most people it's less interesting even than uh, city government. Ya know [laughs briefly]. And the longer the time goes on without the thing happening this illusion is created that somehow it's like money in a bank or you're building up security; in fact I think you're just becoming more accustomed to it and uh more, more liable to think that at some point that you've been taking these wonderful precautions and that uh the chances have minimized and so forth, and then finally you look and you're confronted with a situation that you couldn't anticipate. For instance, um... even now I think that it surprises me that the Russia and United States could do a lot to uh, almost completely eliminate the possibility of accidental nuclear war without any real uh loss of security, both of them could allow um observers in key places to instantly authenticate whether or not a nuclear war was in progress; it seemed to be uh in process of happening and that if there were some nuclear accidents then, or a screwball, you know uh, nuclear psychotic, the mad major, or the uh, missile that gets away; you could instantly authenticate that this might be true." I'll stop here but it's all excellent stuff.
The present day comparison to the nuclear threat of mass death that I have in mind is climate change (though of course nuclear annihilation is still on the table!). Warnings of sea level rise have been the primary harping point for journalism that covers the subject (much to the detriment of a full understanding of climate change itself), but given the ubiquity of this specific coverage and its near-universal consensus many homeowners must know that the sea level is rising rapidly, and that their beautiful, expensive homes they intend to settle down in once they're ready for retirement will, in a matter of decades, be swallowed by the sea. And yet the homeowners act as if they do not know, and invest millions into an imminently doomed enterprise. Sea level rise is a very instructive example because it is physically and literally happening on a moment to moment basis (the direct opposite of an abstraction, yet it functions as an abstraction within most humans' schemas [Kubrick was getting at the same idea when he labeled the atomic bomb as much of an abstraction as you could possibly have]). Yet the human eye can't see this sea level rise in real-time, and one cannot feel its direct effects; it is treated like a simple construction of the mind which can be ignored at no real peril. Reality could not be further from what the mind constructs so readily. It seems this fact is most often recognized when the ground is already giving way beneath your feet.

[Hrafn]

I agree with this @rondo... Another thing I feel makes people unable to respond seriously to the threat of climate change (and respond to it as an abstraction) is that modern, industrialized people are alienated from the natural world in so many ways. Part of why climate change feels abstract (and continues to be a matter of debate) is because, e.g. people get their food from grocery stores rather than harvesting it directly from the land & sea. Along the same lines, western (J-heavy) epistemologies tend to conceptualize the human world as being somehow fundamentally different from the rest of nature.
On the other hand, I understand where animal is coming from--one can observe that weather patterns & vegetation have changed over a few decades, yet we rely on modern science (which is somewhat more abstract & globalized than individual observation) to understand why these changes have happened and what they signify. I don't have a very clear sense of how this might relate to Alpha-Gamma differences, but I suspect Pi is involved in visualizing how individual, small-scale observations cascade together to form broader-scale, longer-term patterns. Perhaps this relates to how people connect abstraction with direct experience?
One other thing that occurred to me about the topic of climate change is that--at least for me--it's an example of an area where I have very strong political views, but am motivated much more by pragmatic concerns than by ideology. I would love nothing more than to find out that climate change were all a big hoax--I find it very depressing. So perhaps this relates to animal's characterization of Alphas & Gammas being more motivated by "what reality is" than by idealization. On the other hand, I've also known plenty of Betas & Deltas who have seemed to be engaged with the issue for similar reasons. Actually, I always used to feel like I knew fewer Gamma climate change activists than Alphas, Betas & Deltas, although lately I'm not so sure that's true.

[Animal]

@hrafn @rondo
I don't really see it as an "abstraction" - I am very interested in talking about religion and politics and history that dates back to humans who may have existed 10k years ago, based on evidence in monolithic structures..
I just don't see the point in me running my mouth about something when nine out of ten people I meet every day will have more tools with which to dissect that issue and make sense of it. I dropped science class when I was 15 because I was terrible at it and I needed that extra time for my music career. I have my expertise and interests and others have theirs.
This doesn't mean that I dismiss it as an unimportant issue. It's just, if everyone focuses on everything, nothing will get done. I don't have enough brain power, time or energy to learn everything in the world. So on things that far outside my scope I just read the discussions with interest and see where it goes, rather than having a strong opinion. That doesn't mean that I blow it off as a non essential issue in the world. I just understand my own limits as a mortal being.

[Tea]

I'm really beginning to see the merit in the approach Animal takes. Otherwise you become too diffusive to become effective. I know a few gammas who are fervent about climate change, but overall the whole gamma hands-tied thing makes them frustrated when the problem is out of their scope. And in a real sense, it's out of the scope of the plebs. We can bust our asses, but nothing will changes unless they change at a fundamental level you nor I can move. Gammas tend to know where to invest their efforts. It's best we vote/live the best we can but our little niches and explode that territory.
Rondo, that's how I see it as well - strategies for problem solving. I wish I were able to sustain more than just P functions 🙁

[Rua]

Mmm. I don't know precisely when or why the pressing, all-encompassing import of climate change dawned on me, but once I understood the true and universal scale of suffering that concept brings with it it's almost as though the issue stopped being something I could take-or-leave and started being a sort of moral imperative (which is not to say I'm suddenly and unceasingly bludgeoning my friends and relatives with my newfound knowledge XD); it's an inescapable understanding that the future is bleak and that the present is in dire need of course correction. People will probably find a way to survive, but if this massive influx of future suffering can be averted in the present, and I know this, I cannot avert my eyes or act apart from it. That would be akin to absolving myself of responsibility towards those who will pay for my generation's inaction with so much death and suffering. And yes, the biggest individual/ corporate/ governmental offenders are beyond the direct reach of us plebs, but giving up on affecting meaningful change on something so vital seems like the worst of all worlds to me. I do not allow this terrible knowledge to drive me to despair, even though in some ironic way depression is probably an appropriate mood if one looks at the issue in isolation.
I do have semi-specific visions of what the sustainable future can look like, and that world looks very different from the world of today, but I am hopeful (perhaps only because I must be [I find this reason enough]) that humanity can move in the right direction. The knowledge that so much human-wrought suffering for life feels both inevitable and avoidable... this is a difficult kind of thing to stare down, but you don't always get to choose your wrestling partners. Any improvement in suffering is better than none.
Edit: Would like to bring back to more of a CT-focus but sleep is calling.

[Tea]

The solution is getting in touch with people's hearts. If we can only learn how to do that... To tap into their greatness.

[Juan E. Sandoval]

I think Gammas are fully capable of seeing abstractions as 'real' and acting powerfully on them, or orienting their life towards them. And this is because Ni can see abstractions as "imminent" in some ways. So it's not just a hypothesis or idea, it's a reality-yet-to-hit. That's what makes it important.
I think the kind of counter-point that Alpha (but just Ne/Si, I think) offers is that it may tend to treat miscellaneous competing reality-schemes/"potentialities" with a similar level of real-ness as what is most probable. (hence naivete) Since Ne is not anticipatory, but speculative, then all possible futures and abstractions have some merit and truth existing in superposition.
For Gammas (and Betas) if the abstract hypothetical isn't probabalistically weighted towards, it's mostly irrelevant. And in this sense they can be more disinterested in the apparently-baseless "abstract." For example, I talk to my SeTi brother about faster-than-light travel and the digitization of the brain, and while those excite my Ne, they're not imminent enough for him to care about them yet. And to be fair, for all we know they won't ever happen, so why should he bother with them until there's a reason to believe it really "will" enter reality?
This is what I think makes Ne users more fantastical. Even if it never "enters" reality, it can be valuable and exciting and a rabbit-hole worth diving into.
edit: I think Si (being Pi) can produce a similar effect as Ni when their Ne is integrated, ...in the sense of it seeing continuity between the past and a likely future, due to trend tracking. But it may still be more plural in its trendlines and concerned about all of them! D:
 

[Nexet]

I feel the same about all of the abstract things in reality now that I’ve caught a glimpse of how deep the rabbit hole really goes. For a time up until now, I was fervently in pursuit of the uniting but never actually touching with what I would describe as “death”. I felt I needed to see the bottom of the barrel without losing all I had gained physically and psychologically up until now.
 
I did that and I learned that everything you can imagine will come to be at some point in human existence if we get enough people excited about it through culture, art, and familiarization. No need to get all wound up about it now if you aren’t actively working to bring it to life, you stress out that way - bad for your well being. Also don’t try to force against your psychology lol you’re the way you are for a reason it’s optimal for your situation... trust nature.
 
Oh and on that subject, about Ni mongering (yes, I now think of it this way), I now am aware of the balance needed in order to flourish as person. You can get so insanely deep and not know your way back to the way you’ve known things. I appreciate the simple life so much more now and leave that other dimensional shit elsewhere because I’m supposed to be here in this modality. If I wasn’t I wouldn’t be....
 
 
 

[Rua]

I think Si (being Pi) can produce a similar effect as Ni when their Ne is integrated, …in the sense of it seeing continuity between the past and a likely future, due to trend tracking. But it may still be more plural in its trendlines and concerned about all of them!

I am definitely not concerned with all of them; I don't want to be (if your last sentence is true then that concern for "all of them" is below my conscious awareness). What I see happening is that the Ne picks up the information-object-relationships then my Si will prune (or encourage! change the soil composition, etc.) those relationships from experience and practicality, much like a gardener works his garden. In fact the best advice I received in this regard was from the archetypal Ni-dom, C.G. Jung himself, from Memories, Dreams, Reflections. I don't feel like searching for the exact quote but the gist of it was that he had observed very intelligent individuals that wasted all their potential and never accomplished anything worthy of that intellect because they spent so much time on thoughts that were never going to lead anywhere productive, and he had also observed individuals of average intelligence achieve brilliant things through the ordering and focus of their mental landscape. If my thought-relationships feel as though they are getting out of hand, I start pruning XD.
Edit: I also think that Ti plays a big part for me in determining the validity of those thought-relationships; I won't heavily pursue those ones that I see are lacking internal, bottom-up validity unless I can still intuit in that thought a promising new development that could come to fruition later, and that it needs to be combined with something else to make sense. I'll then attempt to log that thought in my memory with some simple body-mind gesture like tapping the head and saying the words at the same time, or some similar maneuver. But I will also say that I think that my Ti-Si use contributes towards me being very picky and obstinate when something falls outside of my domain XD.

[Tea]

I'm not saying gammas don't care about the environment (one of my gamma friends has been on an environmental crusade since high school), I'm saying they tend - more than other quadras, IMO - to be decisive about where to expend their energies. That's also a product of Je, but as a whole I think gammas are typically the most decisive. I just wanted to clarify that in case I was fuzzy or it was read wrong. Te + Ni really knows how to maximize impact, IMO.
(And that's why I leave complex purchasing decisions up to my husband. He helps me figure out what I really want, first of all... hehe)

[Author]

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