Yielding - Obstinacy

YIELDING

YIELDING types are distinguished by:

1. The placement of Te and Fi in inert positions - the serious functions responsible for increasing specialization and endemicity in all manifestations of life. For serious rationals, the inert position of Te and Fi means defending the value of these functions, that is, favoring everything local, whereas for merry irrationals it means denying their value, that is, combating everything local. Thus, despite their diametrically opposed approaches, the attention of both is focused on the local properties of the surrounding reality, while its global properties fall outside their field of attention.

Concentrating attention on the local leads to a simplified and more unambiguous image of the world; categories of good and evil arise (good is what is good for me and our small community; evil is what is bad for us); external points of view are simply dismissed as incorrect; problems seem to require simple solutions; all behavior and all reactions become more transparent and “childlike” - aggression is not concealed (since all those involved are assumed to be either friends or enemies); good deeds require obligatory gratitude, whereas evil requires retribution and the subsequent re-education of “evil” individuals.

2. The combination of logic with extraversion, and ethics with introversion. This literally means that, for yielding types, the external world, known empirically, is objective reality, and it is the same for all observers. By contrast, subjective features of perception are hidden within individuals, and it is impossible to influence them directly. Taken together, this produces a picture of the world in which:

• Literally everything is exactly as we see it;
• To solve any problem, one must do something in the external world and wait for people’s subjective perception to change of its own accord as a result;
• The subjective perception of a situation depends on your actions in the external world (a consequence of which is, for example, the feeling of guilt as such).

Overall, the worldview of yielding types can be called NAIVE. As in children’s fairy tales or the texts of sacred books accepted uncritically, the world appears simple and comprehensible in the minds of yielding types. It contains clearly defined categories of truth and falsehood, good and evil, and the notion of an eternal war between good and evil in which you personally must take the right side. Artistic works created by yielding types and for yielding types are characterized by stereotyping: their heroes look heroic, and their villains look villainous: a brave man has a military bearing and a resolute chin; an old pirate has one leg and one eye and never parts with his parrot, and so on.

3. The combination of intuition with positivism, and sensing with negativism. This literally means that the attention of yielding types revolves around unlikely manifestations of the surrounding reality (unlikely because of their local nature). Intuitive positivists naively believe in the unlikely; sensing negativists immediately and naively dismiss whatever seems unlikely to them (although assessing the probability of anything requires seeing the whole picture, and what seems unlikely from a local perspective on things does, in fact, often occur in the global world because of numerous external influences).

OBSTINACY

OBSTINATE types are characterized by:

1. The placement of Ti and Fe in inert positions - the merry functions responsible for the globalization and universalization of manifestations of life. Whereas merry rationals act in society as agents of the universalizing principle, striving to restructure the whole of society according to uniform patterns, serious irrationals are the principal opponents of universalization: outwardly and nominally following the rules of global structures, they in fact undermine their existence from within through constant covert sabotage in pursuit of deeply personal interests. However, the attention of both is focused specifically on the global properties of the surrounding reality, while local properties become less and less important and fall outside their field of attention.

Concentrating attention on the global leads to a more complex and increasingly ambiguous image of the world. The concepts of true and false, good and evil become blurred and increasingly relative; behavior becomes more complex, its true content receding ever further beneath the surface so as to remain inaccessible to a casual outside observer; aggression takes sophisticated, covert forms and is repeatedly rehearsed in the imagination before being acted out; good deeds likewise take increasingly indirect forms that are not apparent at first glance, and, accordingly, gratitude in return moves away from the direct “you do something for me, and I do something for you” toward the complex “I did something good for you today, and even if you never find out about it, or only find out much later, help someone else tomorrow as well.”

2. The combination of logic with introversion, and ethics with extraversion. This literally means that, for obstinate types, only the observer’s internal organization is objective, whereas the observer’s perception of the external world is always subjective and depends on the numerous external influences exerted on the observer by the environment and other observers. Thus, the picture of the world held by obstinate types is characterized by the following assumptions:

• Everything may very well be entirely different from how we see it (taken to its limit, this gives rise to something like the concept of a “matrix”);
• To solve any problem, one must find a way to influence people’s perception of reality, and once it changes, objective problems will resolve themselves naturally;
• The external world depends on the observer’s subjective position (the strong anthropic principle).

Overall, the worldview of obstinate types is characterized by SOPHISTICATION. Here, everything becomes relative and unstable, and at times it is unclear who is before you - a wolf in sheep’s clothing or a sheep compelled to don a wolf’s skin in order to do good deeds. Artistic works by obstinate types are characterized by a divergence between form and content and often resemble spy stories in which who is who remains unclear until the final episode, or even provokes debate after the reader has closed the final page.

3. The combination of intuition with negativism, and sensing with positivism. This literally means that the attention of obstinate types revolves around highly probable manifestations of the surrounding reality (highly probable because of their global nature). Sensing positivists believe in what is highly probable; intuitive negativists immediately dismiss unlikely events. Both, in fact, are precisely what intellectual sophistication means - the ability to identify what is more probable in global terms and what is not.

REAL LIFE

In real life, a community organized according to the principles of yielding types resembles an artel - a group of workers, warriors, or researchers united by ties of friendship and kinship. Such a society combines, on the one hand, the unconditional value of internal attachments and internal condemnation of any attempts to regard fellow group members as potential traitors to the common cause, and, on the other hand, a utilitarian attitude toward the external world, which is perceived exclusively as a place from which to extract resources and which is to be developed to meet the group’s needs, but in no way as a field of influence from which people should be won over to one’s side. An artel is easily recognized by its style of communication, in which intentions are not concealed but stated openly and directly - both among fellow group members and in communication with agents of the external world.

A society organized according to the principles of obstinate types, by contrast, resembles a theater. Indeed, theater actors are required to combine within themselves two opposites of the “obstinate” pole: the introverted-logical ability to suppress their genuine (original, naive) emotional experiences and the extraverted-ethical ability to convincingly convey to an audience emotions already transformed into the required form. Thus, an actor’s true face remains unknown to an outside observer; instead, the audience sees only a mask, behind which anything may be concealed (in general, the mask is the principal, fundamental symbol of “obstinate” types). A theater-society differs from an artel-society in that all its activity is aimed at indoctrinating the external world and winning people over from it to its own side through the use of complex psychological techniques. At the same time, there is far less trust within a society of “obstinate” types: everyone is fully aware that their comrades and colleagues are highly skilled at concealing their motives and intentions, and consequently candor here becomes far rarer and subtler (but therefore also more highly valued by those capable of recognizing it).