# NT: Anti-intellectual parents



## Penemue (Feb 23, 2010)

Ah. I have a similar problem but with less intolerence recieved. I go to my mother with an idea for X and she nods and smiles like she understands perfectly, and then says "So basically it's Y?" Annoying, but it gives me reason to talk it through in a variety of ways to make sure i fully understand it and can convey the idea to other people if i try out every way to explain it first.
If he insists on being an anti-intellectual berk, then simply find someone who understands. You may find he understands if you explain in a different way and speak in a calm manner, i don't know about you but i tend to gabble really fast if i have a shiny new idea to play with...

"If you can't explain something simply, you don't know enough about it. 
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother. " Einstein


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

Raised by my grandmother since I was seven.

She's an ISFJ.

I'm an INTJ.

... Yeah. I don't even want to talk about it.


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## Penemue (Feb 23, 2010)

Abraxas said:


> Raised by my grandmother since I was seven.
> 
> She's an ISFJ.
> 
> ...


Ouch, sorry. I don't know my grans type (probably also ISFx) and i used to go mad spending the weekend at hers.


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## Donkey D Kong (Feb 14, 2011)

My mom is very anti-intellectual and gets offended way too easily. My dad is probably an ESTP, but he loves intellectual debates.


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## shameless (Apr 21, 2014)

Oldlady said:


> Specifically my father.
> 
> The other day I was thinking about the relationship between church and state. Religion is really a primitive form of government. It has laws and enforcement (punishment/ reward in the afterlife). Countries have laws and enforcement. What happens when the laws of one conflict with another?
> 
> ...


My parents weren't either. My mom could at least roll with the ball park of intellects because she had the T. But the intuition part just was not ever their. Her thinking part dominated her senses. Anyways her realty was the only realty she needed. My mother relied heavily on routine. I think that its about security. She was a very clever person. She can repeat back and sound like she understands, I can't think of how many times I was ridiculed for being out of her box. 

My mom would have never told be just to be tho like your dad. But she condemned me a lot for unconventional thinking. 

I think my mom was always able to hold a conversation and somewhat conceive it, she just wasn't able to reason any logic to it because to her any thing that is not concrete in theory of her realty, is radical.

Your dad sounds maybe less evolved then my mom as he sounds almost like a Peter Griffin or Homer Simpson in intellect. My mom at least was able to present her self as credible. 

I can't understand people that do just stop and not care to consider or further think.


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## Hidden from Sight (Jan 3, 2014)

I suspect my mother is an INTJ. After all, she is the only person in my close family I can hold an intelligent conversation with besides my INTP grandfather, who I rarely see. I won't even bother describing my ISTJ father, since NT - SJ interactions have been well detailed above. His favorite quote is "clam the fuck down and be normal."


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## Elistra (Apr 6, 2013)

Some people are just stupid, and prefer to remain so. Whenever someone smart comes along and tries to talk to a stupid person over anything other than the usual "lowest common denominator" concerns, pleasures, and experiences, it only serves to highlight and underscore how ignorant, unevolved, and generally defective the stupid person is. No one likes to be made to feel inferior (even when they are), so the stupid person will typically respond with aggression in such circumstances.


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## VIIZZY (Mar 22, 2014)

Oldlady said:


> Specifically my father.
> 
> The other day I was thinking about the relationship between church and state. Religion is really a primitive form of government. It has laws and enforcement (punishment/ reward in the afterlife). Countries have laws and enforcement. What happens when the laws of one conflict with another?


Apparently Sweden has conflicting laws thanks to religion; there are laws in place that protect heritage rites and practices however certain rites/practices it protects go against the common law. For instance heritage killings are legal according to one but illegal according to the other; typically common law overrides the other one and the killings are penalized in line with murder. Just think you might find that interesting. 

Your dad is a bit frightening, I can understand getting offended depending on how you worded it but to accuse you of being mentally ill for having an opinion or for thinking of something like that is over the top.


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## kazerpowa (Apr 26, 2014)

My mother is an INTJ and my father is an ENTJ.

My father was interesting, but his desire for control conflicted with my independency. I don't talk to my dad anymore (we don't see each other since 2012)

My mother is OK, we used to fight but now it's just OK, I guess. She leaves me alone, so I have a lot of independency. I can basically do what I want. The only downpoint is that she's not interested in listening to my music or what I do (computer things), but that's just OK.


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## Scelerat (Oct 21, 2012)

Nueman said:


> Science used to be about skepticism and asking the questions like why and how. Now it is driven by political agendas.


It's only a function of how scientific research is funded. If it's funded by a government or other political organizations, it's a bad idea to go against your meal-ticket. If it's funded by corporations, it may not be the type of science we need to advance as a species, since there is a profit motive. 

One of the reasons is that we've gone from a point where 1 guy in a poorly lit cottage could make scientific advancements that are still held in high regard today, to a point where you need multi-million dollar funding. 

It's hard to find a way of funding it (and other requirements) without setting up a system with principal-agent issues and a chance of corruption.

I also think a major issue is that we've come to be a culture of people who are "equal" in the "identical" sense, and not "equal" in terms of rights and duties toward our fellow humans. When I speak to my grandmother, she's very clear about how it was fully accepted that Y person back in the day was smarter than everyone else in town, and thus one should listen when that person spoke. 

Now you have to accept that we've grown into a world where everyone can add their .2c regardless of their merit. I do it myself on occasion, but I also tend to not get involved in topics where I have little knowledge, or have done a limited amount of thinking.


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## herinb (Aug 24, 2013)

My dad's an ESTJ and my mom's an ENTJ. They are both extremely rational, but my mom is more passion-driven, and my dad is more cold-reasoning (smartest mother fucker I know, and he's not an NT), and I'm about in the middle. But, for being such smart people, they were emotionally complete idiots when I was growing up.


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## absyrd (Jun 1, 2013)

Only read the first page so I don't know if this was cleared up but your dad has no goddamn right to put you on drugs without your consent.


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## Kingdom Crusader (Jan 4, 2012)

My dad strongly insists that I need to beat my 5-year-old son to fix his behavioral problems, even though one of the other customers at Wal-Mart threatened to call the cops on my dad for hitting my son, while he was crying and throwing up all over the place.

He's never heard of ADHD, which I think my son will most likely be diagnosed with when I finally get to take him to a child psychiatrist soon here.

It's funny that my dad still holds onto the belief that beating the crap out of your child is the only way to go, despite the fact that I'm the only one out of all my siblings who doesn't have a list of felonies on my record.

If I can't even speak of things like the concept of someone possibly having ADHD, you can probably imagine how many things I can't talk about with him. So we hardly speak to each other at all.

I think I can feel the OP's pain.


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## Scelerat (Oct 21, 2012)

absyrd2 said:


> Only read the first page so I don't know if this was cleared up but your dad has no goddamn right to put you on drugs without your consent.


If he's under his dad has that right.Whether it is right to do is a different question.


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## herinb (Aug 24, 2013)

Scelerat said:


> If he's under his dad has that right.Whether it is right to do is a different question.


 In NM, the age of consent for psychotropic meds is 14, but varies a lot state-to-state in the US. 

http://www.ndaa.org/pdf/Minor Consent to Medical Treatment (2).pdf


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## Scelerat (Oct 21, 2012)

herinb said:


> In NM, the age of consent for psychotropic meds is 14, but varies a lot state-to-state in the US.
> 
> http://www.ndaa.org/pdf/Minor%20Consent%20to%20Medical%20Treatment%20(2).pdf


Hence why I wrote "under", state and national laws vary a lot.


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## herinb (Aug 24, 2013)

Scelerat said:


> Hence why I wrote "under", state and national laws vary a lot.


Which was not very clear, so I thought I'd be more specific. Her profile says she's from the US, so she can find her state's statutes in the PDF link.


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## Scelerat (Oct 21, 2012)

herinb said:


> Which was not very clear, so I thought I'd be more specific. Her profile says she's from the US, so she can find her state's statutes in the PDF link.


In all fairness, my profile said I was a black man for 3 months before I noticed the setting, but I get your point. Good job.


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## tangosthenes (Oct 29, 2011)

Asian_Chick said:


> My dad strongly insists that I need to beat my 5-year-old son to fix his behavioral problems, even though one of the other customers at Wal-Mart threatened to call the cops on my dad for hitting my son, while he was crying and throwing up all over the place.
> 
> He's never heard of ADHD, which I think my son will most likely be diagnosed with when I finally get to take him to a child psychiatrist soon here.
> 
> ...


The kids that can turn out the best are the ones with fucked up parents, so they can see exactly who not to be. Maybe, or I might just be bullshitting.


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## owlhead (Aug 12, 2012)

Our parents are mostly stuck in the past. They fear change. They fear new. They fear different. 
Be easy on them. 
Talk about such subjects with your friends instead.


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## Psychophant (Nov 29, 2013)

Xahhakatar said:


> ISFJ (mom): Why did you make an F on your paper?
> INTP (me): I didn't cite my sources.
> ISFJ: You said that you knew you had to.
> INTP: Yeah, but it was stupid. It was a paper on a stupid experiment that every student does in every biology lab. Why would I go through the trouble of checking out a book (that I would have to pay for) from the library and using information from it when all of the information I needed came from the experiment that I did in class? The same experiment that students have been forced to do for probably ten or twenty years when they could be going off and discovering new things. I'll take my papers seriously when they're about actual new discoveries.
> ...


You often lack the know-how to discover new things without learning about past discoveries, and you'll have a tough time making those discoveries without some practical knowledge to keep from starving. Steve Jobs didn't graduate college (he did attend for few years though), but he had some practical skills, and maybe more importantly, a very bright partner who could fill in the gaps in his technical knowledge. If you want to be Steve, have a great idea and find a good partner in crime.

@1yesman9 Yes, but it's not always super clear-cut. You have the luxury of (relatively) good education, access to the internet, and I'm guessing a household of at least decent socioeconomic status. There are plenty of people who are curious about the world who simply haven't been given a lot of spare time to start pondering. Sure, there are also people who simply don't care, but it's not always so easy to tell the difference.


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## Tetsuo Shima (Nov 24, 2014)

Yeah, ok, I get it. I fail at life.


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## _Timshel (Sep 1, 2014)

foodcourtfrenzy said:


> :laughing: I've had these conversations before
> 
> (after prolonged silence)
> "So...what are you thinking about?"
> ...


I asked my coworker the other day, "What are you thinking about most of the time?" She responded, "Hm, nothing." I always thought that was impossible, but you guys have done the impossible! :laughing:


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## nichya (Jul 12, 2014)

Xahhakatar said:


> ISFJ: Well, I have a degree, and I can drive, and I'm successful at all of the practical things in life.



This :tongue:


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## Helweh18 (Jul 30, 2013)

Oldlady said:


> Specifically my father.
> 
> The other day I was thinking about the relationship between church and state. Religion is really a primitive form of government. It has laws and enforcement (punishment/ reward in the afterlife). Countries have laws and enforcement. What happens when the laws of one conflict with another?
> 
> ...




I saw this post under the "Current events" section and it reminded me of your question to your dad.




Zamyatin said:


> a1b2c3d4 said:
> 
> 
> > I doubt the Republicans will win any sort of legal challenge. The courts have been stretching the Constitution well past it's original intent for decades and they aren't about to stop now.
> ...


It looks like you are not the only one that has made this connection. You don't need medication, just talk to people that are like minded and ignore people that are not willing to listen to your thoughts and ideas.


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## Praesepe (Dec 4, 2011)

dude10000 said:


> The book to read here is Thomas Sowell's _Intellectuals and Society_.
> 
> NTs more often than not are the ones dreaming up bureaucratic hopenchange dreamworlds. They're just too good at being loyal students, repeating everything learned from teacher in school. Some just are unwilling to even entertain the hypothesis that human knowledge is severely fragmented, diffuse, and limited, which is why decentralized structures, like markets and traditions, are important.


Okay. I am not going to place to much credence on your quote, but you're so off it's crazy. What you described in the first sentence sounds more like NF-behavior. Actually all of the paragraph. NTs are much more likely toward realizing the obstacles that would impede progress. Traditions are decentralized? In what way? And how does the market and traditions coincide with this decentralization? Wouldn't one necessarily cancel out the other? (By the by, Thomas Sowell is typed as ENTP, sometimes INTJ, but NT nonetheless :wink:.)



dude10000 said:


> Intellectuals also don't have the imagination to see the implications of attempting to realize their visions. The 1900s, where philosopher-kings finally got a chance to rule, are a testament to this. At least the national socialists earn points for creativity in trying to breed a race of superhumans. The Khmer Reds are a distant runner up-- depopulate the cities to force man to live in harmony with nature. What could go wrong?
> 
> But what the communists lacked in imagination they made up for in lethality. Obey the Universal Comprehensive Plans -- no exceptions, comrade! -- or go to an "education" camp. See-- if one disagrees with an intuition, it is always because we haven't been educated enough. As it turns out, there was no way a squirrelly bureaucrat in Moscow could determine what kind of healthcare was important to a random worker in Vladivostok, let alone what to eat under the Foodicare Plan, without a market pricing mechanism. Intuition? No wonder millions of people starved to death while waiting in queues.
> 
> We're destined for more and more of this sort of stupidity.


You went off the deep-end and decided to take this topic about the general distaste some display toward new ideas, and turned it into some anti-communist, neocon political claptrap. The blind adherence to laws, creeds and tradition, without regard for principle behind it, is not something NTs are known for.


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## ElizabethKay07 (Dec 15, 2014)

The type for both are based on speculation and 17 years of living with them - they've not taken an official test
Mother - ISFJ/ISTJ (bipolar as f***)
Father - ESFJ/ENFJ (he is her "little b****" and will roll over and play dead - despite the fact that they are divorced and he doesn't have to)

I had a rough time growing up with them - they did not understand me at all and I had a very difficult time getting remotely close to them until after I moved out and started my own life. I still, to this day, have a communication barrier with them - but not as one sided as it used to be.

On a positive note: My mother is very helpful when I need financial advice and/or support at times.... I can't say much for my dad lol


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