In any given society, among the greatest of crimes and taboos is simply non-participation in the group’s sanctioned practices and customs. This is a reality to which the extrovert remains oblivious and one which the introvert is never allowed to forget.
We typically think of transgression in terms of something one does. The crime of the introvert, however, is no single act. It is the overall failure to adopt the group approved talk, walk, behavior, and beliefs. It is a crime unlike any other crime, because it is not an action. In a sense oneself is the crime. In a word it is to be, ‘Incorrect.’
Different cultures and ethnicities are understood to be born into a different tradition. Some differences are expected from those born into clearly different circumstances. Most importantly, they are often in part shielded from the mass society by their less massive society.
Those who have diverged since birth in their personality, values, and preferences are not outwardly different and cannot be outwardly different. The mass society that claims them by accident of birth will punish or reward them according to their degree of adherence to its values and rules. There is no central intelligence or bureacracy that punishes, there is no need. There are millions of informal enforcers daily doing their work merely by holding and acting upon the common values with which they have been imbued.
A great many introverted people would likely be more social or socialize more out in the open if they did not live in fear of social censure. One key reason that introverts do not ‘get out more’ and one which most extroverts do not begin to understand is:
A life lived mostly away from the seething public sphere is safety from being revealed as Incorrect.
Introverts commonly describe themselves as being exhausted from social outings. In no small part this condition exists because: when the Correct are at their most relaxed, the Incorrect are most on guard. One is thus recharged, the other drained.
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I’ve been thinking about this along similar lines. If you’re familiar with Foucault’s concept of the ‘Panopticon’ and surveillance society, it would make a good analogy for the way different social agents, who have already internalized the values and rules of the dominant order, police those who diverge from normative expectations. I doubt most people realize this, and it probably only become apparent once you take possession of yourself and take the path of self-determination. It quickly becomes apparent that one cannot act outside the accepted framework of social perception and action. This, I sense, is the source from which we feel, intuitively or consciously, that we are not free, in any significant way. I think transgression is a valuable practice, and one should engage in it rigorously, as the ancient cynics had done. We should harden the social body to humiliation and censure by transgressing the bounds of the common, in order to liberate our field of possibilities. Death being a certainty, there is no need to continue the game, it is a losing battle, one which we would do well to violate.
I was not familiar with the concept of panopticon. Thank you for expanding my knowledge.
Bentham was very clever to realize that you can’t catch every offense. Thus the best solution is to design a system in which regular offenders will eventually be caught. Rather than wasting precious resources cracking down on every single violation, one has only to wait for perpetrators to run out of luck and incriminate themselves. Extremely relevant to the discussion!
Best of all, the more times you break the rules, the higher the probability you’ll be caught. Thus, the system selects against regular offenders and comes down much more lightly on the occasional dabbler in crime.
As career outsiders, the likelihood of us being discovered and censured rises to the level where we can no longer hope to avoid conflict with the accepted orthodoxy.
Foucalt was definitely not amiss when he compared any given social institution to the panopticon penal institution.
Most people never arrive at the zone of conflict and therefore never realize just how narrow the field of possibilities is.
To widen that field of possibilities is the objective I have decided to call ‘lessening friction of association’ for lack of any known pre-existing term.
True, the field of possibility can only grow so narrow before we simply have nothing to lose. Our degradation and subjugation to an arbitrary order reaches such an abject degree that even death in dignity, on our own terms becomes more valuable than any reward the accepted order could ever offer. (Chris McCandless comes to mind despite his imprudent and ultimately fatal risk-taking behaviors)
You are clearly knowledgeable and accustomed to critical thought concerning social structures. Thank you for your contributions here.
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