An excellent not-quite-an-article I truly wish I had written. Nonetheless, any INJ should, with glee and with disgust, identify full or near-full with this, adequately, extensively metaphoric illustration of what it's like to be Ni-dominant.
It is remarkable how despotically premonition circumvents empiricism [i.e. N circumvents T / S]. [This is] how philosophy [N] has always done when it sets off to leap over the hedges of [concrete] experience to reach its magical, alluring endpoint. Philosophy skips fleet-footedly ahead with magical boots on: Hope and presentiment lend wings to its feet. Calculating reason [S / T] clumsily follows in its tracks while looking for better footholds [a surer start], so it too may arrive at the alluring endpoint which its divine counterpart [N] has long since reached.
It’s like watching two wilderness wanderers standing by a wild, roaring river whose current is so strong that the stream drags all rocks with it: One [i.e. N] jumps effortlessly across, using the fickle rocks as [momentary] footholds, before they immediately disappear beneath him and sink into the depths. The other [i.e. S / T] stands helplessly by the stream and watches: He must first build a foundation that is sturdy enough to support his lumbering, deliberate steps. Such a construction will not always be possible, and when it is not, there exists no force in the universe that can aid him across.
What then, is it that brings philosophical thinking [N] so speedily to its goal? Is it only because it traverses all space and flies over large distances at a higher speed than the thinking that calculates and measures [S / T]? No, it is because philosophical thinking [N] is lifted by an alien [subconscious], illogical power of creative imagination. Thus uplifted, he jumps from possibility to possibility; resting places that are only momentarily safe. Occasionally this intuition will grasp such a fleeting resting place even in mid-flight. For a brilliant foresight points out the footholds to him, even across vast distances, so that he can guess from afar, that here lies a sustainable foothold.
The power of the imagination [N] is particularly evident when, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, it illuminates and seizes upon analogies: Subsequently comes the reflecting intellect [S / T] with its measuring devices and trusted templates to try and replace analogies with equations and the [the intuitive’s] synchronicity with causality. But even when it turns out that this [replacement] is not possible … non-provable intuition still has its merit. For even if all the footholds [that the intuitive intellect pointed out] have crumbled by the time logic and rigid empiricism reach their location there is still, after all hopes of constructing something scientific [out of it] have been demolished, something that remains.
And in this residue lies an impelling force that gives us hope for future fertility.
It is remarkable how despotically premonition circumvents empiricism [i.e. N circumvents T / S]. [This is] how philosophy [N] has always done when it sets off to leap over the hedges of [concrete] experience
It’s like watching two wilderness wanderers standing by a wild, roaring river whose current is so strong that the stream drags all rocks with it: One [i.e. N] jumps effortlessly across, using the fickle rocks as [momentary] footholds, before they immediately disappear beneath him and sink into the depths. The other [i.e. S / T] stands helplessly by the stream and watches: He must first build a foundation that is sturdy enough to support his lumbering, deliberate steps. Such a construction will not always be possible, and when it is not, there exists no force in the universe that can aid him across.
What then, is it that brings philosophical thinking [N] so speedily to its goal? Is it only because it traverses all space and flies over large distances at a higher speed than the thinking that calculates and measures [S / T]? No, it is because philosophical thinking [N] is lifted by an alien [subconscious], illogical power of creative imagination. Thus uplifted, he jumps from possibility to possibility; resting places that are only momentarily safe. Occasionally this intuition will grasp such a fleeting resting place even in mid-flight. For a brilliant foresight points out the footholds to him, even across vast distances, so that he can guess from afar, that here lies a sustainable foothold.
The power of the imagination [N] is particularly evident when, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, it illuminates and seizes upon analogies: Subsequently comes the reflecting intellect [S / T] with its measuring devices and trusted templates to try and replace analogies with equations and the [the intuitive’s] synchronicity with causality. But even when it turns out that this [replacement] is not possible … non-provable intuition still has its merit. For even if all the footholds [that the intuitive intellect pointed out] have crumbled by the time logic and rigid empiricism reach their location there is still, after all hopes of constructing something scientific [out of it] have been demolished, something that remains.
And in this residue lies an impelling force that gives us hope for future fertility.
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