Mar 27, 2007

Extraverted Intuition in Society

Introduction
Society is a differentiated entity. It contains love, war, caring, aggression, invention, traditionalism, and all other traits found in humans. These traits tend to collect in pockets. If you go into the academic world, you'll find a higher concentration of traits such as strict rational thinking and a lower concentration of traits such as comradery and tenderness than in the population at large. If you enter the world of night clubs, you will find a high concentration of sexuality and a low concentration of rational thinking. Society has places where every human characteristic we have in us finds its full expression. (Stable communities with pockets of certain traits form the sociopsychological realms I talked about yesterday). This applies to information aspects as well.

So, where do we find pockets of extraverted intuition in society?

Concentrations of extraverted intuition are to be found wherever something big is just beginning and the outcome is unknown. "Big" is a subjective concept; it can apply to both an important new theory that might change the way the world views things and to a new acquaintance that might lead to something important later on. At any rate, we are talking about the beginning of things that will cause changes in the outside world, as opposed to internal or invisible, qualitative changes. A new business will be created; a new couple will form; popular conceptions will be overturned. We see pockets of extraverted intuition wherever these things are about to happen. More specifically, this means more people of extraverted intuition types paying close attention to and trying to participate in new developments.

Ironically, as soon as what was expected to happen actually materializes, or the outcome becomes known, the extraverted intuition energy and attention dissipates and heads elsewhere (essentially, extraverted intuition types stop paying attention). If what has been created is a visible, tangible asset that can be owned or taken away, extraverted sensing congregates. If the result is a technology or reliable means of production, extraverted logic gathers. If the outcome is a fun, exciting, or emotionally moving activity, extraverted ethics comes to the forefront.

The race of extraverted intuition against introverted logic in socionics.
I've already discussed the integral type of socionics. So far, extraverted intuition is in the lead. Important connections and insights have been made, but the theory is raw, unfinished, and sometimes contradictory. Many people think something "big" might be done with socionics, but no one knows for sure. As long as this outcome remains unclear, and new insights and connections are being added to socionics faster than existing connections have been formalized and fully integrated into the theory, extraverted intuition is winning. As soon as the introverted logic "termites" crunch through and digest all the existing material and even reach the most recent insights, introverted logic will win out. In the article I linked to above, I discussed the possibility of the integral type of socionics shifting to LII or LSI as socionics reaches the limits of its expansion and applicability.

If introverted logic ever happened to become the primary focus of socionics, it would take a long and convoluted evolution before extraverted intuition became dominant again, if ever. This is because the extraverted intuition types would have mostly left the field or stopped investing energy in it. Something very important would have to change in the external situation to create fundamentally new opportunities for the field to the degree that the surge of extraverted intuition interest would overpower introverted logic traditions.

The same thing that happens on an organizational level happens on the individual level as well. For instance, as soon as I stop writing down new insights (or mental connections) and begin restructuring and reworking old ones, the extraverted intuition emphasis disappears and is usually replaced by extraverted logic (creating material that "works better" for the user) or introverted logic (improving logical consistency and clarity).

As we can see, we are unwitting tools in the hands of larger-scale processes. Each of us is unconsciously drawn into performing certain tasks of group significance that go far beyond our own physical survival, based on our socionic type and other personal traits.

Back to pockets of extraverted intuition in society...
Obviously, every field and activity imaginable will have at least some minor concentration of extraverted intuition somewhere in it, as there is potential for at least some significant change or potentially interesting outcomes in every community or system at certain moments in its development. For example, if we take the field of oil drilling, at the dawn of the oil era extraverted intuition was likely focused on imagining how much oil there was and whether it could be used for anything. As it became clear that oil was a useful resource, extraverted intuition focused on making contacts between businessmen interested in developing the oil industry that might lead to future partnerships and breakthroughs. As oil drilling became a common practice, extraverted intuition shifted to trying to guess where else there might be oil around the world. Today, extraverted intuition is preoccupied with what will happen when the oil runs out and what alternative energy sources might be developed.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

What would a SiTe / TeSi or just a Si society look like?

Anonymous said...

very nice. How does this specifically pertain to NeFi? How will the NeFi person contribute to renewable resources? By the way, don't interpret that question as nasty snide rhetoric. But it was awfully close. :]

Do you think type works on a scale of intelligence? I sometimes think the only thing that seperates individuals of the same type is how well they've developed their mind.

Your site needs a female INFp in the celebrities section.

another question: Do you think there is an even distribution of types in the population? I think perhaps there is, but debate of the topic on the internet is always closed by intuitor's(the average msgboard user) arrogance. I've met lots of stupid intuitive people, but stangely not a single one uses the internet.

-heathp

Anonymous said...

I think the ENFp is the only type that is capable of brining socionics to the masses. It may be a dumbed down version for ease of use, but still, works with the masses. They seem to be the only type capable of giving a human, feeling element to new science/ideas.

-heathp

Anonymous said...

Excellent post.

-synchronous

Ричард said...

>> What would a SiTe / TeSi or just a Si society look like?

That's a totally different topic. I'm not describing a society with dominant extraverted intuition here, but rather the role that extraverted intuition plays in all of society's endeavors.

Ричард said...

>> How will the NeFi person contribute to renewable resources?

Simply by being interested in the topic, recognizing its long-term importance and trying to get others to see its importance as well (in addition to Ne types who are actually working on the problems themselves).

>> I sometimes think the only thing that seperates individuals of the same type is how well they've developed their mind.

I think that's a critical factor, but not the only one. It's hard to talk about these things that imply that some people are smarter ("better") than others. Making it sound like some people "work harder" to "develop their minds" instead of attributing intelligence to genetic factors is probably mostly inaccurate. Maybe we can discuss this topic more at a later date.

>> Your site needs a female INFp in the celebrities section.

Definitely!:)

>> Do you think there is an even distribution of types in the population?

Read my detailed article on the subject at http://www.socionics.us/philosophy/type_distribution.shtml

Anonymous said...

perhaps what seperates people of some Socion Type on performances scales like 'intelligence' as it is colloquailly referred to,
is how well people work with there aptitudes
(that definition would serve socionics...but)
if it is more.. it has probably to do with how well people are in sticking with and strategically applying how they process,
to a given situation
-F

Anonymous said...

*some to same