Game-board
Introversion and extraversion as exploration vs. winning
Imagine that you and some friends are playing a board game together, like Monopoly.
Taking an extraverted attitude, what matters to you--what you define as being of interest to you and meriting your attention--is the game. Every thought you think is about making a move in the game. Everything you do is a move in the game. The game offers things to gain, and you attempt to gain them. If something doesn't register on the game board, where everyone can see it, it doesn't seem relevant.
Taking an introverted attitude, you explore ideas and pursue goals without necessarily relating them to the game board. The game board stimulates you to explore or experience the world of what can be potentially explored or experienced. This is the world of archetypes. You might find the shapes of the pieces beautiful and focus on that, or you might find pleasure in engaging in moving the pieces around or rolling the dice, without regard for how these relate to success in the game.
A saint might intentionally lose at the game in order to get right with God or atone for a past sin. From an extraverted attitude, saintliness is completely idiotic. Monopoly doesn't give you any points for atoning for past sins!
Looking at the Function Attitudes this way
Here's how people might do Ego Orientation via their Dominant Function in this analogy:
Te: Apply strategies whose validity can be traced deductively back to the rules of the game. Exploit ways in which the rules of the game, as applied to the board at present, can combine to force your opponent's next move. It might not be apparent yet how your move will lead to victory, but you can always distinguish between a step toward it and a step away from it. A step toward it is one that constrains future possibilities such that a greater percentage of those possibilities are winners.
Ti: Explore and experience the structure of the game, the way its many elements relate, regardless of whether anyone else understands that or you see a payoff.
Se: Make moves that make a big impact, that surprise, can be seen, are dramatic, stand out from the rest of the current action. Do things that grab the attention of the people around you. You might not see how that leads to victory, but the whole path cannot be seen right now. Surely action that gets you noticed is the only way, though!
Si: Focus on aspects of the game that you can mentally represent and hold stable. Make these your own, private game, which you protect and cultivate regardless of the the game that everyone else is playing.
Fe: Find common cause with other players. Cast your lot with some but not all. You might not see how that leads all the way to victory, but surely loyalty will pay off--not just expedient loyalty, to gain some immediately visible purpose, but truly committed loyalty, demonstrated by things like sacrifice or moves that would not make any sense if you had no loyalty.
Fi: Tune in to the greater good: work for the players themselves, regardless of their scores in the game or how they can help your score. Make moves that would make no sense if there were no ultimate unity among people that transcends the game.
Ne: Play by weaving the other players' moves into a larger pattern--one where you come out ahead. Add to what the other players are doing by tossing in new elements, creating potential for new connections between different situations on the board. You don't know in advance what connections will form or where they'll lead, but the way to get an advantage is to change the situation. Then you can exploit new opportunities as they arise, before anyone else does, because they're too stuck on narrower goals.
Ni: See through the game: see the game as just one arbitrary game among many possible games that could be played. Detach yourself from the game, so you can see and evaluate the game itself from an outside perspective.
Of course the board-game analogy goes only so far, since life is not a zero-sum game and life lasts much longer than a board game. Hopefully translating the board-game descriptions back to life overall is fairly obvious, though.
More ideas
Si: Make moves according to tangible and reliable metrics of success, even when it means moving away from where the action is, because persistence will pay off in the end. "Slow and steady wins the race."
Ni: Mentally separate elements of the game: see ways that strategies depend on connections and assumptions that are not necessarily true. Search for strategies that render the opponent's threats irrelevant.
I don't think these fit the spirit of this particular exegesis, because they're attempts to win in terms of the game, not in terms of something outside the game. In other words, they're extraverted according to the approach this exegesis takes. --Ben Kovitz
Yep, it's easy to forget that the game board is serving as an analogy here, not necessarily as a literal social situation in which most people, regardless of type, will play along if for no other reason than to please the host.
Extraverts and introverts
In this analogy, the difference between extraverts and introverts is not whether one takes an exclusively extraverted or introverted attitude: everyone uses both forms of awareness. The difference is which is primary and which is made to serve the other.
Extraverts typically take an introverted attitude in order to think of better moves on the game board.
Introverts typically take an extraverted attitude in order to fuel their introverted quest or to limit the parts of the game they interact with to be relevant to their own, non-game use of the board.
For example, an extravert whose cognitive style leans toward Se might take an Fi attitude in order to tap into what will really please and attract people, in order to better understand what kind of action will get the most and best attention. Empathy as part of making an impact.
An introvert who tends toward an Fi style might draw upon Se in order to find ways to make serving the greater good noticeable and attractive to people. Hipness as market research for God.
Developing a Secondary Function, then, would be learning to take the opposite sort of attitude genuinely in the other way. For extraverts, seeing something beyond winning at the game in a way that everyone can see. For introverts, learning to take winning at the game seriously enough to defend your worldly interests.
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