More often than not, you will hear the following sentence, “I don’t care” come out of an INTJs’ mouth – the annoying thing to acknowledge by other people is that, we really do mean it when we say that we do not care…..”is that bad?”

By default, this phrase keeps us in a constant “bulletproof state”. It actually gives us a sort of protection from people when we are channeling out unnecessary drama, BS and all the other “glorious” crap that life throws at us – our lack of care also allows us to remove ourselves from a room with people who we know are ‘all about the drama’ without feeling guilty due to the courtesy or the obligation of having to be there.

We mean no harm by it – frankly, is it not a logical thing to do? Why should you have to be around people who does not bring out the best in you? Why should you be around bad people? We all have a choice, you do not have to put yourself in a position to grudgingly entertain people with your presence because you are fearful of hurting someones’ else’ feelings.

Ahem, sorry, I digress.

So, there are a lot of people who do get confused by our words and some actually get pissed off with our “attitude” or mentality; there are quite a few questions as to why INTJs act this way and so I figured, “why not lay down what is going on in some of our minds?”

BEHOLD! The different connotations as to why and when we use such an obnoxious phrase:

~ Gossiping – INTJs do not care for gossip, neither do we like it and so when people talk to us about someone else (backstabbing or just generally judging someone), then our “I don’t care” phrase and face will come out (the facial expression is optional but if I am close to someone then I want them to know that they should stop…like right now). Honestly, people should just promote what they love and not bash what they hate.

~ Feelings – To a degree, INTJs do not care whether they hurt someone or not – why? Because 96% of the time, it was not intentional; maybe we offended you by saying something before getting to know you first (some topics are taboo or contradicting these days, we get it) – our mistake of hurting someone is largely based on not knowing someone in-depth beforehand. So, here, we would recognize our fault and feel a veeeery slight…irritating apology surfacing.

However, we will care if it was intentional hurt inflicted by ourselves for the greater good; because, 100% of the time, there is a purpose to our actions and we can foresee the positive results stemming from the harsh actions. Nonetheless, we care (deeply) that we hurt you but since it was a must, it takes some of our guilt away.

As for hurting people with a tainted purpose, well, like most people, we also do not care about their feelings. Luckily, you would not find so many tainted INTJs because most of us are pretty well grounded or contained by or mind. Plus, the tainted INTJs are probably in jail – because once we fly off the handles, we really fly off the handles; if there is nothing to hold us back then we go dark FAST (I can say this because I can feel and “see” what I am capable of if there was no morals holding me back…which oddly reminds me of the Gremlins movies :’) – but then again, aren’t most people capable or prone to such psychopathic thoughts and tendencies too?)

~ Shield – This is one of the perks about not caring; we do not give a duck about what people say about us – don’t get me wrong, if it is constructive criticism then we will ponder your point. Otherwise, if it is just people pointlessly comparing us to someone else or putting us down (simply just trying to hurt us) then they should know that, we don’t react like most people do. Our lack of care for that person and their opinions would be at its’ minimal; we also have this “system” whereby we filter out crap efficiently – the phrase, “in one ear and out the other” holds true to us.

“I almost cared”

Now, our shield can get cracked, that is only if we actually cared about you and that we respect your opinions; sometimes, you may hurt us and in our moment of defense we may say that we do not care but deep deep down, we do, you successfully made us care without us showing you. This phrase allows you to not feel “guilty” and it shields us from letting you know that you wounded us as we silently retreat to nurse our “wounds” quietly.

Other than that, if you are a random stranger who comes up to one of us and say ,”you ugly”, then the unanimous reaction that you might receive would be our “neutral face”, we would also ignore people like these to reassure them of their insignificance (these people are just background noise); either that or we make a conscious effort to show you our creepy deranged smile……pffttt HAHAHAHA~.

(pfftt, that face though, love it!)

On a serious note, INTJs are somewhat very “established” or “settled” within themselves and so it takes a lot for us to get hurt or offended. We do not have an immediate reaction and majority of the time, we see no reason to waste our time and effort to give a reaction or to show acknowledgement as to what was said (especially if it was someone intentionally trying to provoke an emotional reaction from us).

Interestingly enough, INTJs can find things that are perceived as offensive funny, we may understand someone else point of view, we might even admit to a statement that was said, or as stated above, we just wear our neutral face.

~ Topics of the World – Sometimes, when we say that we do not care for some topics, it is true, some topics really do not interest us; at best, we try to stumble along with the conversation wherever we can. We are weird in the sense that we contradict our interests; for example, we could have a vast interest in Law but at the same time, have an aversion to Politics.

Some INTJs are not in tune with the Worldly topics such as Politics, Terrorism, War, Technologies, Olympics, World Cup, Celebrities, Grammy etc – and so, we find ourselves behind the times and we seem “uneducated” or “living under a rock” in a sense. Sometimes we have no idea what is going on around us and so we can become stuck in a rut, even if we acknowledge this, there is not enough interest for us to actually pay attention – to an extent, we care how “out-dated” we are yet we are not too bothered about this.

Having stated the above, yes, sometimes we wish that we can care more you know? At least then we would know what to say when pulled into a conversation that is not of our interest – like most people, it becomes a chore when we force ourselves to ram knowledge into our brain and so we just end up not picking up the topic altogether; or at best, we remember the basics (for a week) whilst most people might make more of an effort to impress people.

Anyways, there probably are more differing connotations that I may have missed when we say that we do not care – these are just some of our meanings interpreted.

The general obvious meaning to our words is that we really do not care

 

Geomeun Goyangi

***Please note that these blogs should NOT influence you to generalize that all INTJs, as a niche group, are all the same – because we are not; a lot of other factors shapes and individualizes a person.***