[INFJ] Are we cynical?

[Artemisia]

Recently I had conversations with two guy friends (one an ENFP and the other an INFP) and I went into that famous INFJ analysis of people's motives. We basically talked about colleagues (academics), society, etc.

I am usually a very good judge of character in that famous INFJ way and brought up the fact that a lot of academics are involved in scandals (some with students, some with money, and even a few with prostitutes and child pornography). I've been in academia for a while and my experiences seem to suggest that a good half of academics are corrupt in one of the ways mentioned even though most do not get caught. Both of my friends were appalled and immediately suggested that probably only 1% of academics are this way. I mentioned to them no only my experience in academia but also the fact that in other high powered professions (e.g., doctors, lawyers, priests, politicians) the statistics would probably be similar.
They were appalled by my allegations and called me a cynic.

So are we as INFJs really cynical or is it just that other types are usually naive? I have to say that a couple of ENTJs I know think along similar lines to us and know that people in power are not always what they seem to be.

I should also mention that one of the two guys (married) propositioned me for sex after this very conversation! I made it clear to him that I was not that type. And then they call me cynical!

 

[Hoodie]

Well I think to most people it's pretty obvious that in politics (and there's politics in everything) you're not going to see the whole picture. I mean, most people don't show you their bad side when you're getting to know them, and of course still try to keep that hidden as long as possible- just ask their family/friends. Basically what I'm saying is I think it's pretty common knowledge that there's corruption in everything, and a fair amount of it. But that's interesting that you're friends didn't think so.

I don't think I'm overly cynical. I googled the word to make sure my understanding of it was the same as the actual meaning, and I certainly am "distrusting or disparaging the motives of others; like or characteristic of a cynic." to a certain extent. I mean, I was sceptical of MBTI before I really started looking into it. But maybe that's not quite what that is. But I'm not a "cynic" just because. It's not like I go around telling everyone we're doomed because so-en-so's doing thus-en-such, or whatever. I just sometimes think twice about how things are run. Well, I'm not sure; I do have arguments with the TV whenever someone happens to have the news on... so maybe that's being cynical too...?

 

[brightmoon]

Scepticism maybe be accurate. Maybe we aren't so willing to accept things at face value and we question and probe. When you question and probe you uncover stuff. To be being a cynic is someone who assumes the worst about people without having evidence to base that opinion on. I thinl many of other types just accept things at face value and don't want to probe

 

[Night Owl]

Scepticism maybe be accurate. Maybe we aren't so willing to accept things at face value and we question and probe. When you question and probe you uncover stuff. To be being a cynic is someone who assumes the worst about people without having evidence to base that opinion on.

I'd agree here with the use of scepticism over cynicism. I think us INFJ's can easily become cynics (i.e. during my adolescent years, lol) but I think it's more fitting to say we are sceptical by nature, which can be healthy and necessary, yet may become cynics, which is almost scepticism for the sake of scepticism. Although people freely throw around the term 'cynical' with various nuances of understating and so I'll often condescend if I'm called as such bey saying: "I'm semi-cynical" or "I like to smell what I eat before I eat it."

Diogenes was among the founders of cynicism as a philosophy and he pretty much just criticised everything almost for it's own sake, just to uncover social absurdities and shake the status quo - I mean really he was the father of all trolls!

A few examples: (some found from here)

• Excreting before his hearers as a means of concluding his argument. It gives the phrase "that was a sh@# ending" another meaning.
• He'd urinate on those who offended him.
• He used to disrupt Plato's discourses by eating and making a racket. Eating was not even customary in the market place.
• "Someone took him [Diogenes] into a magnificent house and warned him not to spit, whereupon, having cleared his throat, he spat into the man's face, being unable, he said, to find a meaner receptacle."
• A prospective student wanting to impress Diogenes said, “If it pleases you, sir, let me prove to you that there is no such thing as motion.” Whereupon Diogenes immediately got up and left.
• He lived in a barrel, and lived ascetically as a lived-out social critique of the sumptuous Athenian lifestyle.

In light of the above, a sceptic seems more fitting than a cynic, of which Diogenes typifies to the extreme. Although I do have a similar tendency to want to challenge social norms and expectations, and not want to 'like' what everyone else likes - I did this in a contrived manner when I was younger, now I just do what I do without 'trying' to be different. But I cannot see myself excreting in a lecture theater to make my point. At least not for the foreseeable future.

I suppose being a sceptic and being sceptical are two different things. Perhaps if one has a habit of being sceptical that makes one a sceptic. I know for sure that I tend to be like this. I found at university that people would accept what the lecturers said as gospel, and would always hail peer reviewed scholarship as the crème de la crème, whereas I couldn't help but keep in the back of my mind: "This is likely just this lecturers opinion of certain objective facts, if based on impartial facts at all, and likely represents only one of various valid perspectives on this matter, without looking in to which which I cannot dogmatically accept what they're saying, but I will listen and learn." And in regards to peer review scholarship: sure, it is and can be the top of the pop, but peer reviewed is often another of saying: academia which has been filtered and selected as acceptable by an elite few who will likely not let any ideas contrary to their status quo pass through their academic sift.