# NF cultures



## Anunnaki Spirit (Mar 23, 2018)

I am wondering if anyone knows any examples of NF cultures past or present historically like nations or past eras where NFs had a significant impact. If not anything historical what about fictional examples would still be interesting.


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## Monadnock (May 27, 2017)

Russia. Fyodor Dostoevsky defended Holy Russia (Eastern Orthodoxy) from radical Bolsheviks before they came to power and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn defended the same idea from their Communist descendants a century later. Both are obvious NFs, both are usually typed as INFJ.


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## Highway Nights (Nov 26, 2014)

Pacific Northwest, Sweden


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## Llyralen (Sep 4, 2017)

The values of the culture and maybe increased population? Hollywood. 

I’d think only small pockets of artists or writers. I think of the summer Percy Shelly, Mary Shelly and Byron and one other got together just to write. 

But I think there must be a genetic bias of some sort towards SJs.

By the way, you can see by the population maps on 16personalities where certain areas have and or Fs in greater numbers. Italy for instance is more N. Utah in the USA is more F. However, it’s still all SJ dominated, it’s just slight increases. I recommend those maps.


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## Marvin the Dendroid (Sep 10, 2015)

Monadnock said:


> Russia. Fyodor Dostoevsky defended Holy Russia (Eastern Orthodoxy) from radical Bolsheviks before they came to power and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn defended the same idea from their Communist descendants a century later. Both are obvious NFs, both are usually typed as INFJ.


While those are prominent NFs and there have been many in Russia, they are the beautiful few in an ocean of ugly STPs and STJs. They shine all the brighter because of the darkness they lived in. NFs have contributed a lot to Russian literature, the arts, music etc. But most of the country and the culture is very anti-NF.

В России жить - не мёд пить. (It ain't all honey.)



Rebelgoatalliance said:


> Sweden


More NF than the U.S., aye. Mostly SFJ however. Very 9.

* * *

Bhutan maybe. The Indus culture maybe.


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## Monadnock (May 27, 2017)

Marvin the Dendroid said:


> While those are prominent NFs and there have been many in Russia, they are the beautiful few in an ocean of ugly STPs and STJs. They shine all the brighter because of the darkness they lived in. NFs have contributed a lot to Russian literature, the arts, music etc. But most of the country and the culture is very anti-NF.
> 
> В России жить - не мёд пить. (It ain't all honey.)


Did you consult with any "ugly, dark" XSTXs before you wrote this? It'd be illustrative if they knew what you thought of them. But any ways, "anti-NF"? How? Give me examples.


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## Marvin the Dendroid (Sep 10, 2015)

Monadnock said:


> Did you consult with any "ugly, dark" XSTXs before you wrote this? It'd be illustrative if they knew what you thought of them. But any ways, "anti-NF"? How? Give me examples.


I did. I've lived there, speak the language fluently and virtually every single one of my favourite authors, poets, singer-songwriters etc. is Russian. This is me singing a silly song I co-wrote.

Mostly, you'd need to live there to really get it. Deal with the "police", the "politicians", the petty bureaucrats scamming you out of your last penny, your landlord, that downstairs neighbour loudly shagging goats at 3am. But you can study the life of any major Russian author/poet/musician and you will quickly realise that the country kept throwing shit at them until they drowned. They exiled Dostoevsky. They killed Tsvetaeva. They killed Akhmatova's family. They imprisoned and expelled Solzhenitsyn. Stalin personally saw to it that Mandelstam's light went out. Heck, even Dovlatov wasn't allowed to write and stay. A genius like Okudzhava had to learn to build a hundred layers into his songs so his censors wouldn't realise what he was actually saying - and even then, most of his good stuff was forbidden.

In some cases, the suffering they forced upon these beauties sharpened them even more. I don't much care for Akhmatova before Stalin began torturing her, mostly because she's too light-hearted. Once he began killing and torturing everyone who ever mattered to her however, her voice acquired an entirely new depth - one so profound, I still can't listen to Kozakov's recital of her _Requiem_ without tears.

To understand why Russia is anti-NF, you would really need to understand Akhmatova when she says...

Затем, что и в смерти *блаженной *боюсь
Забыть громыхание чёрных марусь!

(It doesn't translate, sadly.)

However another line from her _Requiem_ does translate more readily, conveying something very fundamental about the soul of Russia:

Это было, когда улыбался
Только мёртвый, спокойствию рад.

...when only the dead smile, grateful for the rest.


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## Aridela (Mar 14, 2015)

Marvin the Dendroid said:


> I did. I've lived there, speak the language fluently and virtually every single one of my favourite authors, poets, singer-songwriters etc. is Russian. This is me singing a silly song I co-wrote.
> 
> Mostly, you'd need to live there to really get it. Deal with the "police", the "politicians", the petty bureaucrats scamming you out of your last penny, your landlord, that downstairs neighbour loudly shagging goats at 3am. But you can study the life of any major Russian author/poet/musician and you will quickly realise that the country kept throwing shit at them until they drowned. They exiled Dostoevsky. They killed Tsvetaeva. They killed Akhmatova's family. They imprisoned and expelled Solzhenitsyn. Stalin personally saw to it that Mandelstam's light went out. Heck, even Dovlatov wasn't allowed to write and stay. A genius like Okudzhava had to learn to build a hundred layers into his songs so his censors wouldn't realise what he was actually saying - and even then, most of his good stuff was forbidden.
> 
> ...


Nice song. 

I have to agree. My grandmother came from a rather prominent line of communists with ties to Soviet Union era Russia, and that's the impression I have of Russians and their culture. I did get more of an SP vibe but that could be due to the crowd my family was associated with - they could really throw a party. I suppose my childhood was rather colourful.


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## Marvin the Dendroid (Sep 10, 2015)

Aridela said:


> Nice song.
> 
> I have to agree. My grandmother came from a rather prominent line of communists with ties to Soviet Union era Russia, and that's the impression I have of Russians and their culture. I did get more of an SP vibe but that could be due to the crowd my family was associated with - they could really throw a party. I suppose my childhood was rather colourful.


I like to say that Russia produces a few of the absolutely best people on Earth, and many of the absolutely worst. It's an emotional and moral Salusa Secundus of a sort. The SP vibes are deafening once you actually live there, and it's no coincidence that mafia is traditionally huge in Italy and Russia - the cultures have tons in common. Loud, boisterous, lethally loyal to a few with absolute disregard for everyone else.

Andrey Zvyagintsev is a brilliant INFJ making gorgeous movies about the appalling crap going on all the time. Painfully real.


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## Aridela (Mar 14, 2015)

Marvin the Dendroid said:


> It's an emotional and moral Salusa Secundus of a sort


Anyone who makes a Dune reference is my comrade; НАЗдОРОВЬЕ :toast:.


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## Highway Nights (Nov 26, 2014)

Marvin the Dendroid said:


> But most of the country and the culture is very anti-NF.


Russia is essentially the ISTP type distilled into country form has been my impression


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## Monadnock (May 27, 2017)

@Marvin the Dendroid while I respect your learning and experience (Lord knows I wish I could speak Russian better), there's a problem here: all of what you mention is the Soviet Communist era and its terrors and crimes, which was a severe abnormality that catastrophically damaged Russia (and was not even perpetrated mostly by ethnic Russians). the Russian Orthodox Church, the very heart and soul of the nation from the time of Prince Vladimir in 988 onward, has always been very good to NFs, which is why the two examples I listed were both defenders of that institution. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying you should zoom your view out a bit more to centuries past for a more nuanced picture. Do you really think Valaam Monastery, for example, promotes a "dark ugly XSTX culture"? No.


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## Marvin the Dendroid (Sep 10, 2015)

Monadnock said:


> @*Marvin the Dendroid* while I respect your learning and experience (Lord knows I wish I could speak Russian better), there's a problem here: all of what you mention is the Soviet Communist era and its terrors and crimes, which was a severe abnormality that catastrophically damaged Russia (and was not even perpetrated mostly by ethnic Russians). the Russian Orthodox Church, the very heart and soul of the nation from the time of Prince Vladimir in 988 onward, has always been very good to NFs, which is why the two examples I listed were both defenders of that institution. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying you should zoom your view out a bit more to centuries past for a more nuanced picture. Do you really think Valaam Monastery, for example, promotes a "dark ugly XSTX culture"? No.


I don't think it was much different in the past. IMHO the most fundamental parts of Russian culture were largely hammered out during the days of the Golden Horde. Russia emerged from Mongol rule culturally distinct, and has straddled the boundary between Asian conformism and European individualism ever since. The Czars repressed, exiled and executed innumerable great souls - you would, in fact, struggle to find a great Russian artist who _wasn't_ repressed by his country. 

Dostoevsky was sentenced to death and only pardoned while standing before the firing squad, he was sent to a labour camp and his works were censored. The way Russia treated him wasn't an exception, it was the rule. It always has been, and still is. Kiril Serebrennikov was only freed from house arrest this April after two years of heavy persecution for his failure to kiss Putin's arse.

It doesn't matter which period of Russian history you study - they have always repressed and persecuted outstanding NFs. You could say that Tarkovsky's Andrey Rublev _is_ the story of struggling gifted NFs in Russia. Zvyagintsev does the same - The Return is another tale of dog-eat-dog type STPs mercilessly forcing their brutal reality on more sensitive souls.

As for Eastern Orthodoxy and spirituality in Russia, I both agree and disagree with you. Yes, the mysticism speaks to NFs and channels much of us. Russian literature and music owes much of its greatness to it. But like the dervishes and sufis of Islam, the Orthodox contemplatives are an *important minority* - not any kind of majority. The Russian Orthodox Church has always sided with power in Russia, actively supporting the Czars - and now Putin - in their efforts to repress and brutalise the people. 

If you tried living in Russia as a deeply spiritual NF, you would find powerful mysticism and some companionship, but mostly you would find power structures and relentless opportunism in the church. Today, the church is allied with Putin and a kind of mafia organisation in its own right. The rift between Moscow and Constantinople is almost exclusively a power struggle, and a great illustration of what the ROC really stands for.

Read Dostoevsky. Read Chekov, Lermontov, Pushkin, Nekrasov, Tolstoy, Tyutchev, Turgenev and the other 19th century greats of the Russian Golden Age, and you will find in their works the same repression and brutality you would find on the street if you lived there - whether in the 15th century, in the 19th or today. Akhmatova again, comparing herself to the wives of the 17th century streltsy: *буду я, как стрелецкие жёнки / под кремлёвским башнями выть*. (Like the wives of the streltsy / beneath the Kremlin towers I shall wail.)

I don't deny the powerful INFx spirituality in Russian culture, but it mostly manifests itself in the arts - and IMHO mostly because a few incredibly brave and powerful souls choose to risk their lives to face the darkness with light. Solzhenitsyn was only able to write what he did because he went through the Gulag. Dostoevsky likewise drew on his near-execution, his exile, the labour camp, all the pain Russia forced him through. They were all marginalised, ridiculed, repressed and most of them only gained popularity in Russia towards the end of their lives, or posthumously.

I have been to Valaam. I used to live in St. Petersburg. Some of the spirituality/mysticism is real - if you can close your eyes to the power hierarchy and mafia structures within the church. It is definitely real in the arts, which is why most of my favourite artists/writers etc. are Russian. But your day-to-day life in Russia, whether on Valaam or in Moscow, definitely isn't. Never has been. It has always been a bloody struggle where the strong take till the weak break - and IMHO some of the mysticism exists to help them cope with it. IMHO things like this emerge and thrive in Russia as some kind of a coping mechanism. Which doesn't mean that the mysticism they experience isn't real to them.

There is NF-friendly mysticism/spirituality in Russia, some in the ROC even. But it isn't anywhere near the norm, and _all_ structures with any power, the church very much included, are thoroughly corrupt. Valaam itself thrives to some extent on Putin's money - and Putin is through and through a sociopath. Exactly the kind of leader Russia has _always_ had, with a tiny few mostly short-lived exceptions.

See, I *hate* all of that. I had _great_ friends in Russia, and it was painful to see them struggle every day with extremely basic things, like having running water in their apartments or seeing a doctor, because a bunch of selfish idiots own the country. Because, as soon as there is any power anywhere, some disgusting piece of filth will grab that position and use it for private gain, mindlessly walking over however many bodies it takes. Whether it's a police officer, a mayor, a governor or the president - if there is any power involved, evil pieces of shit will grab it.

My only consolation is that maybe it takes a Salusa Secundus like that to polish the best of their diamonds and truly make them shine. Not that you can justify anything with that, just ... I do love the Stalin-terrorised Akhmatova, but don't find anything particularly moving in the easy writing of her upper class youth. The same goes for all of them... Their art is a victory over suffering.


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## Ode to Trees (Aug 25, 2011)

@Marvin the Dendroid

Затем, что и в смерти *блаженной *боюсь
Забыть громыхание чёрных марусь!

Is it tough to translate because of марусь ? I remember that we called a police van "marica" It comes from Black Maria - borrowed from English - it was a black police coach.


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## Marvin the Dendroid (Sep 10, 2015)

Ode to Trees said:


> @*Marvin the Dendroid*
> 
> Затем, что и в смерти *блаженной *боюсь
> Забыть громыхание чёрных марусь!
> ...


Yes. I doubt many English-speakers today would recognise the term Black Maria, and you have to in any case be intimately familiar with the _Yezhovshchina, _or the Great Purge, and to some extent the living conditions in the USSR of the 1930s, to fully understand the image Akhmatova summons here - of lying awake in your _kommunalka_ at night, fearfully listening for the rattling of the Black Marias in the night, dreading the sound lest they stop outside your _podyezd_ ... not knowing whether they would come for you, or one of your neighbours, never knowing where they went and what happened to those who were led away in the night.

There is an entire world of suffering in that one line - of fear, suspicion, dread, uncertainty and, ultimately, death. I don't think there is any meaningful way of conveying that in English - and even if there were, how would you turn it around in English like Akhmatova does, describing her dread of *forgetting* that sound even in the bliss of death? So much is only hinted at, such as the intensity of her desire that these monstrosities *never* be forgotten (in the 21st century, they already have of course).

I also don't think there is a way to say смерть блаженная in English, no combination of English words would do the fervour of her hope justice.


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## Ode to Trees (Aug 25, 2011)

Yeah, I get it. They would not get it. I did not have problem understanding it once I read it in Serbian. It translates well. Smrt bla_ž_ena - tough to translate. I know that fear, dread, and uncertainly - will they come or not. At night, I had to sleep with a shotgun because I was the only one who knew how to shoot. I would rather be killed and defend myself and my mother and sister then be in their hands. I knew what they would do to us. I heard of concentration camps, of people getting tortured, women raped. I heard neighbors screaming for help at night. My father was in house prison on one side. My mother on the other side but not on her side. Sometimes they would come at daytime threatening to us. We would say smrt blagoslovljena as well - one cannot translate to blessed death to get the same meaning. Also, we read a lot about Soviet past perhaps because Tito had problem with Soviets and in 1948 there was a treat that they occupy us as well. I watched movies.


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## Marvin the Dendroid (Sep 10, 2015)

Ode to Trees said:


> Yeah, I get it. They would not get it. I did not have problem understanding it once I read it in Serbian. It translates well. Smrt bla_ž_ena - tough to translate. I know that fear, dread, and uncertainly - will they come or not. At night, I had to sleep with a shotgun because I was the only one who knew how to shoot. I would rather be killed and defend myself and my mother and sister then be in their hands. I knew what they would do to us. I heard of concentration camps, of people getting tortured, women raped. I heard neighbors screaming for help at night. My father was in house prison on one side. My mother on the other side but not on her side. Sometimes they would come at daytime threatening to us. We would say smrt blagoslovljena as well - one cannot translate to blessed death to get the same meaning. Also, we read a lot about Soviet past perhaps because Tito had problem with Soviets and in 1948 there was a treat that they occupy us as well. I watched movies.


Truly sorry you had to go through that - so glad you made it! I've been busy familiarising myself with Bulgarian NF poets and authors, will need to study the rest of the Balkans at some point.


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## Llyralen (Sep 4, 2017)

Ode to Trees said:


> Yeah, I get it. They would not get it. I did not have problem understanding it once I read it in Serbian. It translates well. Smrt bla_ž_ena - tough to translate. I know that fear, dread, and uncertainly - will they come or not. At night, I had to sleep with a shotgun because I was the only one who knew how to shoot. I would rather be killed and defend myself and my mother and sister then be in their hands. I knew what they would do to us. I heard of concentration camps, of people getting tortured, women raped. I heard neighbors screaming for help at night. My father was in house prison on one side. My mother on the other side but not on her side. Sometimes they would come at daytime threatening to us. We would say smrt blagoslovljena as well - one cannot translate to blessed death to get the same meaning. Also, we read a lot about Soviet past perhaps because Tito had problem with Soviets and in 1948 there was a treat that they occupy us as well. I watched movies.


Thank you for talking about this.


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## Llyralen (Sep 4, 2017)

These are the maps I mentioned. You can also look at states in the United States. 
https://www.16personalities.com/country-profiles/global/world

My husband and I were talking about cult leaders last night and I had had a discussion with an INFJ earlier about the pressure of feeling like you’re supposed to be like other people— which is a pressure that with my MBTI stack, or for whatever reason, I don’t internalize. But I got thinking about that idea of people around you being alike. I have a few friends who lived through the Cokesville bomb threat. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cokeville_Elementary_School_hostage_crisis

The guy wanted to blow up these high scoring white kids to supposedly create a new utopia in another dimension. I think that’s an extreme of the thought of getting away from people who are different from you or building a society where everyone thinks like you. 

I heard Brian Cox say that we should celebrate every time someone disagrees with us because it means we are living in freedom. True. 

I don’t think it’s any kind of answer to have everyone around you be like you. I don’t think it can happen either. We are all unique. Humans at this time of history are predominantly SJ and that’s okay. I’m not sure that a predominantly NF society would necessarily be better. It hasn’t ever happened in any case. 

I enjoy getting together groups of friends who are often predominantly NFs, a few NTs. I’m not sure if every NF would even find what they need there if they aren’t in the right mind-space. Often we disagree with each other, fairly amicably in that group. I’m not sure that I would want everyone to always agree with me— sounds unhealthy. 

I guess I’m a realist. I figure we’ve got what we’ve got to work with in the general population and it’s not bad. I think ISXJs do most of the work on this planet. The question is how can I make a difference towards making things better for people? I guess what I’m saying is, I think the big problem is when you don’t feel like you have a voice... and how do you get a voice if you don’t feel like you have one? Especially somewhere that is a free democracy, but there is always a way to be influential. Just make that difference more towards Gandhi and less towards Hitler. I just feel like people can work with what’s around them to improve things and build bridges. Sometimes (as we’ve heard here) conditions are a lot worse than others... but I think we can hopefully move forward. Luckily people, SJs included, often listen to people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King. 

Bridges between very different people is probably one of the most satisfying and beautiful things I can think of.


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## Llyralen (Sep 4, 2017)

https://www.16personalities.com/articles/personality-geography-of-the-united-states

New Mexico is the most intuitive state according to this. Utah is the most feeling state. Sounds right to me on both counts. There is a map for each MBTI in this. For extrovert the big cities skew the results for the state.


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