Perfect Conditions, Zero Drive — An ILI Case of Self-Chosen Stagnation

Friends, today we’ll look at an interesting case. A 20-year-old ILI girl had perfect starting conditions — money, connections, looks — yet ended in stagnation, laziness, and total unwillingness to act. Where is the ILI vaunted intuition? This is about lost opportunities, negativism, and how someone can derail their own life even with every resource.

A while ago I published a piece on the dual nature of the ILI: charged people with ambitions and the drive to achieve more. It drew many “this is exactly me” responses. The girl in this story is not representative — just a random real-life contrast between the ideal and what can actually happen.

Starting Conditions & Decline

Where do we start? With the starting conditions. We’re talking about a 20-year-old ILI girl, no higher education, dropped out of her studies. But her resource base was excellent: well-off parents, access to everything imaginable — the latest gadgets, newest iPhone, AirPods, expensive headphones, designer clothes. She was literally swimming in resources, born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Everything was done for her, everything was helped with, and all the decisions were made by her parents and relatives.

Appearance matter a lot for a girl (and probably for a guy as well). Hers was very good — not from any work on herself, just genetics. Tall, slim, with good curves… she looked attractive. She could have easily gone into modeling or the film industry. A real beauty.

As for ambition — she never had any. She was already fine, already having a great time; everything she wanted was immediately fulfilled. “I want a new iPhone” — bang, bought. “I want an iPad” — bought. “I want to relax in the Maldives” — off they went. Everything was always granted. Essentially no development of any of her own qualities. Plus she was indulged in everything. “I don’t want to study” — well, don’t study then. And of course that leads to sad consequences.

A lot of these psychologists, pseudo-psychologists — idiots, basically — say things like: “You have to talk to the little child in a certain way, you mustn’t load them down, they should be left to themselves. We don’t influence them, they develop on their own like some kind of vegetable.” Like a seed that fell into the ground, and under natural conditions — sun, rain — it grows by itself into a beautiful flower. Yeah, no. That works if we’re talking about the plant world. The real human world is arranged completely differently; that approach doesn’t work there.

So the original paradigm is different: we don’t want to do anything. Complete laziness, apathy, indifference, no desire to move at all. And she chooses that second option — do nothing, just stagnate.

As you understand, at some point the body starts working against us. Metabolism is great at first: you can eat whatever you want, stuff yourself with burgers, wash it down with Coke and not worry at all. Everything just processes itself. Then metabolism slows down, you start gaining weight, problems appear with skin, hair, nails, everything. If you do absolutely nothing and don’t take care of yourself, it’s inevitable that your looks will go downhill.

That’s exactly what happened to her. At some point she put on weight sharply. She didn’t particularly look after herself or her appearance. No exercise, no makeup, nothing. As for clothes: they bought her good branded stuff, but there was no real style. She didn’t give a damn about how she looked. However they dressed her, that was it. Just nice clothes that got replaced often.

Then family problems: the parents had money issues, the business collapsed, and so on. That feeding trough, that resource base, closed.

When you have a cool hoodie and can’t be bothered to wash it — you just buy a new one and throw the old one away. That’s how she lived: constantly new clothes. Then at some point there was no money. Now go take care of yourself, or walk around looking like a bum. She chose the second option — walking around like a bum. You have to look after your things, and she doesn’t look after them at all. Everything looks really shabby, even though the clothes were originally expensive, high-quality, and cool.

Energy Dynamics (Youth vs. Stagnation)

And here we also need to add that we’re talking about a young girl, 20 years old. In theory this is the peak of energy — you want to move mountains, you feel like nothing can stop you. Then all of that goes away. The energy leaves.

The way it was for me: I was constantly on the move with the guys. Constantly in the flow. Meetings, parties, clubs, get-togethers. You could go without sleep, without food, crazy energy all the time, doing a thousand things in parallel. Then the resources start to fail. It’s no longer the case that you can gallop around like a horse all day and think “Oh, everything’s fine.” No. You already understand that oops, you’re not that horse anymore. You need to rest, meditate a bit. That kind of thing.

By the way, one more point. I’ve said before that for an extravert to stay in shape, on resource, movement is necessary. He still needs to move, to scheme something: schemes, meetings, contacts, constant exchange of information, energy, emotions. Without that the psyche goes into a state of rest and he starts to fade. And it seems like the introvert is initially overexcited and therefore needs periods of relaxation. But it’s the same story there: if you’re switched off, you start getting used to that switched-off state, and there’s nowhere for resources to come from. You still need some exiting impressions to process and accumulate energy. If that doesn’t happen, if you’re doing absolutely nothing — it leads to a sad ending.

This tendency will only strengthen over time. No energy, no desires, nothing. It keeps rolling along the same track like a snowball — only growing. The apathy and unwillingness to do anything will only increase.

Socionic Analysis: Deep Dive

Alright. Let’s get back to the ILI essence. In her case it showed up as her being a terrible Negativist who said “no” to every suggestion and constantly considered only negative scenarios. She said “no” to practically every suggestion — a polar responder. You say “yes” — she says “no.” You say “no” — she says “yes.”

Something like: “Maybe we should still go study, get a higher education, so we can build some kind of career later.” In principle, that’s the right dynamic — what’s there to argue about? But she argued with it. She said: “No, I don’t want to strain myself, take exams, apply — I don’t want any of that.”

Even though the friends around her had all gotten in, and independently, on state-funded places. She wasn’t in some shitty environment. On the contrary, she was surrounded by charged people. But that didn’t help her. There are people like that — they just drift with the current.

I thought: well, how come — her leading function is the intuition of time, she should understand dynamics and trends. But in what key did she understand them? The way I see it: when she was still plugged into the feeding trough and had resources, people gradually started putting pressure on her: “Hey, you need to do something, you need to move, you’re not little anymore, you have to start realizing yourself somehow. Okay, you dropped out of education, so go work, develop, show results.”

And I think she understood perfectly well that this pressure would only increase. If she stayed in that environment, the pressure would keep growing. So in a way the family breakdown played into her hands — when the family problems started, her mother fell into depression, and so on. That gave her a bit of release: “Well, now I can keep drifting with the current and no one will demand anything.” It may sound strange, even absurd. But nevertheless, that’s life.

Next. For ILIs the stimulus to activity is self-sufficiency — they are driven by their internal interests. And if there are no internal interests, then what? How do you deal with that? External stimuli don’t particularly impress, excite, or stimulate them. Only internal transformation, some kind of inner growth. But some people have it and some don’t. Most people, after all, are on the periphery in every sense: mentally, materially, in everything.

Reality vs. Idealized Socionics

And what depresses me a little, to put it mildly. Moments like these… I had one: at a conference I was invited to NIIS to Prokofieva’s. And there was this moment. As illustrative, visual material I proposed a dialogue. A real live dialogue between people. And that dialogue didn’t land. The details don’t matter now. It didn’t land because they said: “Well, somehow it’s all rather dirty, rather crude, rather primitive.” I say: “Well, that’s life. That’s how people talk in real life. They don’t speak in prose, they don’t speak in Yesenin’s verses or Pushkin’s poetry. They talk differently, in a quite ordinary, everyday way. So why are you denying reality, why the hell are you doing that?” But nevertheless, that’s life. People like looking at ideal pictures on Instagram, and in real life whatever is in real life can just be ignored.

Alright. Back to this ILI girl.

You know, you can look at a person not so much from the point of view of the level of personal organization as from the point of view of their awareness and involvement. There is the so-called lower scenario — on low vibrations. You can be on low ones or on high ones. Low vibrations for an intuitive mean apathy, indifference, unwillingness to do anything, absolute ignoring of the physical aspect of the world: money, material things, even how you look. The person simply ignores everything and drifts like shit with the current.

In terms of logic you couldn’t say anything particularly outstanding was visible either. What was there was ILI coolness: maximum coolness, absolute lack of emotion, eternal skepticism, “So what.” Very low energy — energy-wise she basically did nothing at all. The energy was also dying.

At the same time she had no depression. That’s 100%. Her dynamics never changed. She was always like that.

What else can be added? Stubbornness. The person didn’t want to make concessions in anything at all. She really did achieve what she wanted — only the goals were somehow destructive. But she achieved them. Here you can put a plus: she achieved that everyone left her alone.

Conclusion & Progression to the Final State

What else? That’s basically it, we’re approaching the sad finale. From receptive-adaptive she became simply receptive — anti-receptive and anti-adaptive. So what’s the result? People like this form a certain layer, and there are quite a lot of them. They are mostly the general mass. Looking for themselves in some descriptions… in a description like this she definitely won’t look for herself. It won’t appeal to her, she won’t like it, she’ll say: “Eh, no, yuk, this is somehow biased, he said some nasty things, there’s nothing good here.” Well, damn, that’s life.

Still, many questions remain open. Why didn’t the ambitions work? How come — the volitional sensing is suggestive? Why didn’t it work? She was surrounded by people who were achieving results, becoming cooler, richer, higher-status. But that didn’t motivate her in the slightest. I honestly don’t know what would have motivated her. Absolutely nothing motivated her. She chose the life of a grey, dull, wretched person who is gradually erasing herself. If she was once noticeable, that image is gradually blurring, and now she is simply blending into the grey background that surrounds her.

Source: S. Ionkin