Monthly Archives: June 2009

Introvert Survival: Handling Extrovert Interrogations

When a Loud person asks you a question it is best to give a quick, snappy, truthful answer.
Directly stonewalling or displaying reluctance to answer personal questions from someone you don’t trust yet is sure to get very negative reactions in the workplace and other social environments.
Ironically, the ‘friendly’ questions that many extroverts ask are only friendly if you answer them to their satisfaction and do it quickly.

When someone asks a series of questions, what you learn from one question leads to the next question. So be truthful, but brief; snappy, yet vague. Just neglect to give them anything that would allow them to continue inquiring.
I needn’t be the whole truth. The answers only need be something that can be construed as true.

The key is that short, vague, honest answers are boring answers. Most extroverts assume that someone who gives a boring first impression is in fact boring. 90% of them will leave you alone if you can convince them you are socially acceptable but boring.
The main thing is to stop the questioning quickly. Once they start asking detailed questions about the latest pop stars, tv shows, fashion trends, sports cars, and athletes, the game’s up.
Once they start giving you stories about their favorite experiences at night clubs and other social venues, they will start to notice that you aren’t responding with your own equally thrilling anecdotes.
At some point they pause in between their sentences and say “Wow, you’re really quiet.”

Unfortunately, there’s the 10% of truly Loud people who don’t go away no matter how uniform you can make yourself. Worst of all, there’s authority figures and important people to whom you can’t afford to give any kind of bad impression.

When a Loud person with power over your life or your job starts asking ‘friendly’ questions, the unmitigated truth could be devastating. Boring answers could cost you their good graces. There’s no easy way out of this one, which is just one reason why introverts aren’t usually going to rise to the top in an organization. It takes the touch of a social expert to figure out what the lead extrovert wants to hear and how he or she wants to hear it.

The Tragedy of the Lords

A tragedy of the commons is said to occur when a resource available to everyone becomes overused until it becomes available to no one. Everyone loses in the end.

A tragedy of the lords is how I refer to the phenomenon of an endless escalation of socially motivated spending.
‘Keeping up with the Johnsons’ as it is commonly called.

In such a situation:
as one rises in economic status the more resources must be spent on tokens indicating one’s social status. Since everyone is trying to appear to have as high of status as possible, the necessary expenditure is always forced steadily upward.

In time, one car is not enough to keep up
one working spouse is not enough to keep up
a nicer, bigger house in a better neighborhood and a better school district is required to keep up
Even if a household got a third wage earner in the form of a worker robot, everyone else would get worker robots and the competition would go up yet another notch. People labor for that promotion and pay raise but no matter what they do, nothing will change. Worse, more money is just more rope to hang themselves with.

In such a system, millions of people fall deep into debt as they struggle to appear to have the highest status possible. Behind this flimsy facade there is mostly debt paper. A system based on illusion can last only for a time…
In the end, everyone loses the race.

Everyone ends up spending far more of their capital on the social expectations of strangers than they do on themselves and their families. This happens because arbitrary aggregate expectations become their expectations. To be trapped in a perpetual cycle of desperation is the price of letting an impersonal mass society define one’s personal desires.

Unquestioningly following a collective can be a terrible mistake in our complex modern world. However, most societies throughout history and to the present day are collectivist societies. Clearly it is not a recipe for disaster. The destructiveness in this case arises from a specific variety of collectivism.

-A small scale ‘tribal’ level organization has members who know one another and each other’s families. In such an organization, there is ample incentive for each person to genuinely care for and look out for every other. Such a collective is a stable foundation for social existence.

-A large scale collective society centers around tight family and clan bonds. A tribal-like foundation is preserved even if there are hundreds of millions of people.

-In a post-industrial Western style collective, most citizens have no defining tribal type organization to ground them. Each person is governed by the aggregate whims of millions of strangers. In such a situation, a million people could all lead each other to disaster. Each person is helpless to change the situation even if everyone knows on some level that everyone’s frantic struggling means everyone loses. Collective checkmate!

A tragedy of the lords illustrates the value and even the need for a more Subtle way of thinking. Simply doing what everyone else is doing is an excellent way to live in poverty while bringing in paychecks larger than anywhere else in the world. If you’re already earning so much but are still barely getting by are you really earning any more? Not really. As your pay increases, increased social expectations cause the cost of living to rise along with it.
Until one insists on self-defining and finding ways to deviate from the expectations, poverty and desperation are the order of existence whether you live in a house or a hut.

Extrovert ‘reality’

Introverts are frequently criticized for ‘living under a rock,’ ‘being sheltered’, and of course ‘being out of touch with reality.
So what exactly do they mean by ‘reality’? What do they imply is an insubstantial fantasy land?

The extroverted critic clearly presupposes a very precise meaning of all that is ‘real,’ tangible, and substantial.
From their criticisms we can infer that their reality could be defined as as:
the sum of the shared knowledge, preferences, and actions of every person in a given mass society.

The more people who are doing any given thing, the more real it is. I suppose this because:
the strength of criticisms they administer is proportional to the popularity of x thing ‘everybody else has heard of’ or ‘everybody else likes’ or ‘everybody else has done/experienced.’

The extrovert critic demonstrates that being defined by their surrounding society is one of their cardinal values. This is a value that is suddenly and jarringly violated when they discover the ‘serious’ person in the corner hasn’t heard of their favorite band. So important and ‘real’ is a detailed knowledge of the mass collective that they quite literally conceive of its absence in one’s life as existence in a land of fantasy and illusion.
To understand the Loud perspective is to understand that being even slightly out of tune with one’s surrounding mass society is to be mentally ill. From their definition of reality, it is the logical conclusion for them to arrive at that someone divergent lives in a realm of delusion.

Extrovert Malfunction in Foreign Societies

Extroverts are extremely specialized and well adapted to the standards of their society. They are so attached to their ways that encountering other customs and world views is extremely uncomfortable for them.
To see a Western extrovert in a foreign country reveals an important principle:
An expert in one society is hopelessly inept in another. When their main area of expertise becomes useless, they are crippled. Their reaction is usually one of frustration and denial.

In college, I studied abroad for a time in South America. I was one of a group of fellow Americans. We each were assigned to a family but attended all the same classes and a number of mandatory activities.

For most of them, the trip was fraught with social difficulties. Their usual assertive behavior made for tough relations with their host families. Some of them quickly got changed to another family which they didn’t like any better than the last. They complained about the matter, never considering that perhaps they ought to adapt and accept rather than object.

The girls in this group insisted on wearing short shorts and spaghetti straps on the streets, yet were outraged when every time they constantly received wolf whistles and other unwelcome attention. Instead of adapting, they continued to act as before while complaining bitterly and making pronouncements about how people in that country should behave. All they had to do was dress a little more modestly like the locals and their problem would have been solved.

Most of the Americans in my group reacted negatively to the local culture and spent all their time in each other’s company. In months of living there, some of them barely left with any more Spanish than they came with.

My brother when studying in Latin America had an embarrassing experience with a socialite girl in his group of students. She went up to a local and told him in broken Spanish ‘you must not smoke.’ Needless to say, her presumptuous demand was ignored.

The common pattern exhibited here is that many extroverts are quite simply unable to acknowledge that there is more than one Correct way for a social environment to function. The obvious refutation of millions of people living by another standard is an affront to everything they have founded their identity upon and everything they believe in. It challenges assumptions they were raised with and have accepted without question. The standard reaction is aggressive denial and an irrational struggle. To a true introvert, they most resemble toy poodles yapping shrilly at an indifferent and gigantic great dane. To view their utter impotence is a vindication and a delight.

These extroverts are used to living in a society they feel they belong to and which they feel belongs to them. At home they are used to having a say in how their society is implemented. When they arrive in a foreign country, they are quite simply unable to adapt to the fact that they are complete outsiders with no say at all.

As an introvert studying abroad, I found that I had an enormous advantage over the other people in my group. I had spent all my life in a society that had made me feel an outsider. To feel that I had no stake or say in the surrounding society seemed for me the most natural impulse in the world. That I had to adapt to what others were doing, even if I didn’t agree with it, was so obvious it didn’t need thinking. I did not share that need to judge and attempt to set things into a familiar order.
Consequently, I got along well with my host family and spent my time with them instead of the other American students. Investing all my time in my host family was richly rewarded. I had the experience of a lifetime and grew to appreciate another culture. I allowed myself to see both the advantages and the faults of that particular culture. In many ways, it was a big improvement over living in the United States.

The whole trip was an affirmation of strength for me as an introvert. It was an experience in weakness and disorientation for most of the extroverts.
Afterwards I could never forget that those who let society define them are noisy yet insignificant toy poodles if they are simply taken out of their element and placed in another.
I couldn’t help but wonder if being a social minority is an experience more extroverts need to have– that claustrophobic feeling of being crushed under millions of people whose customs and expectations drastically differ from one’s own.

Unity Does Not Mean Uniformity

Society and social interaction are helpful tools for the introvert. Society does not just happen for its own sake in our point of view. It requires justification, for from proper justification comes its legitimacy.
Thus, a key value of any society of introverts would be to minimize friction of association.
In other words each individual in an introvert society helps every other to be free to be their best selves without hindrance and to pursue their most sacred aims without having to conceal them.

Such an idea sounds nice, but many, many theoretical systems fall down abjectly in implementation. Skepticism is the natural response to any claims made on a theoretical level.

I would contest however that such an introvert society is quite viable.

I would examine the case of Switzerland as an example:

This modern nation began as nothing more than a confederation of disparate city states of several different ethnicities speaking several different languages. To begin with, these minor territories were just tiny arbitrary shards of an irreparably shattered Holy Roman Empire. They had nothing in common except a desire to be able to preserve their autonomy against their more powerful neighbors. Through mutual defense, each of these city states gained and retained their independence. As these individual entities sacrificed to a whole, their individual freedoms were both preserved and increased. The tool of a larger society they formed served its purpose of defense while successfully minimizing their friction of association.
Each of these city states(known as cantons) had their own, often radically different governments. Indeed, the administrations of these statelets ranged from democratically elected councils, to oligarchies of noblemen, to theocracies.

Even to this day the cantons remain autonomous and Swiss national identity is extremely strong despite huge disparities that have existed throughout the nation’s history. The bond shared by the cantons is predicated not upon shared language, but on shared purpose.

So I would say that events in real life, in real history tell us:

Unity does not mean uniformity

If the cantons were able to exist for centuries in a cohesive alliance that improved all the cantons’ freedoms, why couldn’t there be a similar association of individual persons, each functioning as their own autonomous statelet?

I would even contest that a genuine alliance forged from shared goals and interests is a far stronger foundation than that which can be produced from the mere pressure of social expectations– that which characterizes the banal and oppressive social environments that surround us.

History has shown us how mass societies can put millions of troops on the battlefield at a time and pressure them into killing one another en masse. These mass states in conjunction with mass societies have amply demonstrated that they can lead a man to a foxhole, but can they make him think?
Throwing an overwhelming quantity of warm bodies at the problem only works to a point.

Surely, an alliance of human beings is far more powerful if it enjoys the unmitigated loyalty of its members not out of ignorance or pressure, but from the imperative of mutually assured freedoms. A million troops can amount to no more than the net potential energy stored in their bodies and in their weapons. It is the very most that can be extracted from these soldiers. It is all that is wanted from them. In truth, a vast collection of coerced people will contribute far less than even their full physical potential. Each soldier is but an expendable token with a fixed value to be traded in whenever it best suits his arbitrarily elevated social superiors.

One truly free person in a group that they truly care about amounts to far more than the net force of their bodies. Their minds, their ideas, their being are devoted to the interests of their social entity. They choose to contribute everything they possibly could in their own best interests of their own free will. Such a person is far more powerful than a soldier/laborer whose limbs are moved by the will of others.

So with all these things considered:

-Hasn’t every introvert wondered how much less irrelevant input they would have to deal with if extroverts didn’t dominate every aspect of their immediate society?

-Politically correct people maintain that the ‘world needs both introverts and extroverts.’ But if extroverts disappeared, what essential component would be missing for an introvert (and vice versa)? Especially if all society was designed to accommodate the introvert remainder.

-Keep in mind, that in the present situation, the extrovert majority already discourages introvert participation in their society. Extroverts and introverts already live in separate worlds ruled by different priorities and values.

-The very most sought after job skills are talking with people, ‘managing’ people, and ‘being a team player.’ In other words, one of the main tasks of the entire workforce is simply dealing with high maintenance extroverts.

-Imagine what a unified yet mutually independent organization of Subtle persons could accomplish. With more focus on goals and genuine accomplishment and less energy spent on rote socialization, there would be great potential.

-A union of strong, self sufficient people comfortable with themselves united in a common purpose would implicitly require a bare fraction of the maintenance and management customary in a typical organization governed by Loud principles. Most introverts prefer to function as independent agents. A constant and firm hand of authority governing every action and process would be neither necessary nor desirable.

Why A True Introvert Will Never Change

Introverts have wished many, many times that we could be more extroverted, that life in society could be just a little easier. We tell ourselves again and again that we ought to ‘get out more’. Many of the books and websites about introversion are about how not to be introverted. As an expression of human desire, the market readily tells us that being an introvert is a difficult place to be. Most introverts want out. Or at least we think we do.

When decision time arrives we always stick to what we were doing before. At some point we have to face the fact that ‘getting out more’ means spending time in a noisy environment with people who look down on us as inferiors. When the time comes to suck it up and shed our personality for a new one that will make life easy we never move forward. The fact is that true introverts are kidding themselves when it comes to changing.

What always stops us if we really look inside ourselves is that we don’t really want to change, not even if we could.

Yes we would like to be accepted like an extrovert, yes we would like to make life easier. We’ve all daydreamed about it, but then, when we arrive at the decision point, reality strikes. We suddenly realize that to even attempt to change, we would have to sacrifice everything that we like and value about ourselves. Such a moment forces us to realize that in part we have chosen to be as we are in spite of the difficulties. When it comes time to reject ourselves, we discover that it is and always will be worth the sacrifice required to be the selves we most admire

It’s hard to survive as an introvert. It is considerably harder to put food on the table, secure shelter, meet all the basic needs. Hardest of all is securing human companionship. Life is often loneliness. Surely it would seem, we must change ourselves for the sake of survival. We all must put on a semblance of being someone else in order to make it, but it never seems to go beyond a skin deep conscious effort. We merely compartmentalize the self we love and keep it safely, completely separate from our mask. Our very deepest desires strive to ensure that our pretend identity never taints our true one. We insist on holding tightly to our introverted ways even when survival is on the line.

Are we stubborn and irrational then?
One reader of this blog wrote to me about how he felt after spending some time out with his friends:

“I have to sit down now and find myself again as
I feel I almost lose touch of where I am.”

When introverts spend too much time matching the expectations of another environment, we start to feel a sense of disconnection from ourselves. We stand contrary to all the forces and currents that surround us, sacrificing much and risking everything. Ultimately, we are willing to compromise survival to be connected with our best self. No amount of material benefit or power can compensate for losing the supreme power–

The power of determining who is to be our inseparable companion,
The self we must live with every second of our lives,
The self that colors our perception of all the world around us.

We cannot not truly desire to change even were we faced with death, because when it comes to the decision point, we realize that losing ourselves is merely death by another name.

Can Extroverts Be Beaten At Their Own Game?

Not likely.

Extroverts are very, very good at what they do. Competitive social interaction is what they have a talent for, what they’re passionate about, and what they put all of their time and energy into.
It is a daydream for many introverts to outmaneuver the Loud people who cause them so much trouble. However, this isn’t so far off from imagining climbing into a boxing ring with limited experience and beating up a professional. This is why it generally stays a daydream. Chances are, if we actually climb into that ring, that we’ll lose.

To succeed in throwing one’s weight around a different strategy is required.

Why didn’t we become experts in social interaction? In part because we have to devote all our time to be good at it. As introverts, we chose to focus on other skills and areas of knowledge.

Extroverts are extreme specialists. There’s one social setting or society that they have mastered through countless hours of practice. It’s the thing they do.
All an introvert has to do is change the game that’s being played and the extrovert is helpless.

One who is defined by society operates by strict parameters that they expect everyone else to share. So much so, that they find it discordant and jarring whenever basic assumptions or conventions are violated. Much of an introvert’s life is spent warding off extrovert knee jerk responses to unconventionality.
These knee jerk responses can also be taken advantage of because they are predictable.

Any given extrovert will try to take your measure according to their narrow concept of how someone should behave. It is amazingly easy to confound all their attempts to figure out your intentions. I hardly even have to try since I operate by very different motives and assumptions to begin with. By playing around a bit with what I choose to reveal or conceal, I can cause confusion. When someone is confused by me, it can give me a lot of room to maneuver. The response to confusion is often hostility. Hostility can be very useful if it causes the extrovert to ‘punish’ you by giving the silent treatment or by avoiding you altogether.
The person in question can’t be too important or long term. This tactic is best used to outmaneuver or neutralize someone who is temporarily in your life. It’s a smokescreen useful for keeping someone noisy and nosy off your back until you move on to the next thing. While they’re busily prevaricating trying to figure out what you’re up to, you do whatever it is you want.

For longer term involvements, it is wiser to play the Iago game. Extroverts expect people to wear their emotions on their sleeve. They make all their judgment calls by gauging emotions in others. It’s another predictable trait that can be exploited.
All my life, I have had to publicly conceal my true feelings and make active display of emotions I do not feel just to survive. Even when an extrovert greatly angers me, I know how to keep my displeasure under wraps. It doesn’t occur to most extroverts that someone who is angry would not assertively make their feelings known. Thus, an introvert has the advantages of secrecy and surprise. If desired, they can wage a war the that the other side isn’t even aware of.

The wise introvert can reap all the advantages of even the most abrasive extrovert’s social expertise while undercutting or sabotaging them when they inevitably get demanding and pushy. Just set them up with distractions or difficulties whenever needed. Stimulus begets reactions. Extroverts simply tend to respond before they stop to think things through. Their attention is easily diverted, even minor setbacks cause them lots of stress and eat up lots of their energy. If you’ve ever seen how an extrovert reacts to not being able to find a single misplaced item, imagine misplacing one of their belongings every time they were rude and aggressive. If they cannot be civil, simply keep them spinning on a hamster wheel somewhere until they are needed.

If there must be games, the most important thing is to not to play in the extroverted realm. That is a sure way to lose.
Better strategies are:

-Changing the rules
-Hiding the rules
-Obfuscation/distraction
-Hide intentions
-Hide the conflict itself so the other side takes all the punishment
-Be inconspicuous, don’t attract attention
-If one must engage, always do so in a place that is unfamiliar and disorienting to the extrovert. Extrovert social mastery only applies to the cultures and environments they know.

Perhaps these tactics sound manipulative or even a little evil? Not very sportsmanlike? Never forget that an extrovert will happily crush you and grind you into the floor in an open confrontation. They are professional fighters. They constrict, annoy, and oppress even when they’re trying to be nice. Introverts resort to alternate tactics because they’ve been left with no other choice. The objective is not retribution so much as it is simple survival. An introvert is happy if simply left alone. The extrovert on the other hand grabs for ever more power. At some point it is necessary to take self-defense measures or else be exterminated.
For an introvert, life can seem like war with everyone else and just making through a day often feels like a battle. If there must be war, personal autonomy must be preserved by any means necessary.
Fortunately, much conflict can be eliminated simply by living under the surface and doing whatever necessary to avoid attracting attention in the first place.
Avoidance is the best course of action
If that’s not possible, secrecy.
Never forget that if the conflict comes to light, society is on the extrovert’s side.

Introvert vs. Extrovert: Mental Health

As an introvert I have been made to feel many times that my ways are unhealthy or that I am even borderline mentally ill. My values and priorities are so alien to them that they naturally assume something is wrong with me. Worst is when they try to intervene and ‘fix’ me!

Never does it seem to occur to them that many of their behaviors are strange and disturbing from the introvert point of view.

What I notice most about extroverts is their almost compulsive need for constant stimulation. There’s this upset stomach look that comes across an extrovert’s face when they’ve no one(or even not enough people) to talk to. What happens next? Stimulation, any kind from anywhere. As introverts, we’ve ended up in cars and at restaurants with someone to whom we just couldn’t give enough interaction. It’s an annoying and heavy burden of responsibility. Most of us are not willing to babysit a grown person. The extrovert gets desperate, starts talking about pointless stuff, which causes an introvert to disengage entirely. We’ve seen what happens when an extrovert gets stuck in their nightmare scenario:

-The cell phone immediately comes out. Anyone who will say anything to them will do.
-Next step is loud music. The louder the better. Somehow this is soothing. The sheer white noise seems to fulfill some deep set need.
-The extrovert in question starts talking as loudly as possible, almost to the point of shouting in order to stimulate themselves. They don’t usually seem to conscious of doing this. In the case I’m forced to ask them to tone it down a little, they usually seem genuinely surprised at my request.
-Extreme fidgeting, finger snapping, knee slapping, humming to themselves. Often in conjunction with very loud music. By itself, it’s something of a last resort. When it reaches that point, I sometimes wonder if they’re going to snap.
-Amazingly, sometimes interaction deprivation(especially if prolonged) causes them to be quiet. Uncharacteristically quiet. When this happens they turn sullen and depressed. So much so that their dark mood practically fills a room.

Now, tons of extroverts have supposed there’s something wrong with me, but I have to wonder which way is unhealthy? It seems that the extrovert requires constant distraction from their own selves. That doesn’t seem like an indicator of good mental health!
-I have to wonder, what are they perpetually running from?
-Is it boredom from being forced to engage an underdeveloped inner life?
-Is it simply an unfilled vacuum, deferred questions, unaddressed personal insecurities that they must suddenly face?
-If it is that awful to spend time with yourself, doesn’t that strongly suggest you don’t like yourself very much?

They literally cannot live with themselves and I think by projecting their needs upon me suppose I must be thoroughly wrecked in the head by not constantly socializing. I quite realize that extrovert has very different needs from my own. I also realize that extrovert is incapable of empathizing with me.

I, the warped, sick, mentally ill introvert am at peace with myself, I enjoy just being me. In spite of this I recognize that other people have other needs. I don’t have to overload my system to feel happy and stimulated by the world around me.

The healthy, outgoing, achieving extrovert
-writhes in agony when forced to live in their thoughts
-can enjoy interaction with others but not themselves
-is unable to empathize with non-extroverts in spite of their fascination with other people.

Most worrisome of all, the extrovert has a relationship with sheer volume and noise of stimulation that follows a pattern very like chemical addiction. They are physically incapable of living without regular ‘fixes.’ They have to keep upping the volume because their tolerance is sky high.

Frankly, I find it a little disturbing that I’ve just described the sort of person who is thought to be the epitome of ‘having things together’ in our society.

In a mass society where most people are strangers, those most determined to break the ice and engage in networking win. Thus, I suspect that those most determined to project themselves outwards are naturally those trying hardest to escape from themselves.

The Myth of Introvert Weakness

Weak, shy, sheltered, spineless, head in the clouds, detached from ‘reality’

These are the things extroverts tend to assume about someone who does not immediately compete for attention. All such a person knows is the attention game. Anyone not playing is of course just someone who can’t play it very well. The extrovert sees people who can’t quite make it sleeping on park benches and assume they’ve encountered the same phenomenon when they meet an introvert. If they can be bothered to notice, their response is a mixture of pity and disgust.

In their view:
-One who does not speak out loudly is weak
-One who does not automatically assume they are right about everything has no spine
-One who does not attend attention conventions(social events) is sheltered.
-One who puts priority on mastering their inner selves has their head in the clouds.
-One who looks to the way society could be and recognizes that change is constant is out of touch with ‘reality.’

What we have ultimately is a rather low and contemptible individual. What we also have is a misunderstood individual.

The true introvert is in fact very strong and far more stable than the extrovert:

-There is no need to compete for validation from others by speaking loudly.
-There is the resourcefulness to consider what other views have to offer
-The ‘sheltered’ introvert builds knowledge and skills while the ‘wordly’ extrovert fritters away countless hours in idle chitchat.
-One who masters their inner self is made strong against anything that comes from without.
-One who looks to future possibilities recognizes that the present ‘reality’ is fleeting.

Extroverts readily click with their society and swim in its substance without difficulty. It makes life a lot easier.
Life is a struggle for the introvert. A struggle just to survive even as we watch the socialites thriving. We learn early that life isn’t fair, that society is inherently unjust. We expect punishment before reward. To be left alone is usually the best that can be hoped for.
Extroverts tend to deftly blind themselves to injustice(‘that’s reality’) are rather sheltered compared to introverts. Since there is no life for them outside of social status, they will follow any instructions given them by their authority figures. From the introvert perspective this seems rather spineless! Without some measure of self definition and defiance, most introverts would have been crushed long ago.

The introvert regularly deals with challenges that the extrovert simply cannot imagine. Basic social survival can never be taken for granted, only alone or with a few friends can one’s guard be relaxed. Life under the shimmering surface of society is not for weaklings.

Friction of Association and Social Selectivity

According to present tendencies:

-The more people in society, the less personal it becomes.
-The more mechanical it becomes, the more sophisticated formal rules and red tape required to maintain order.
-The more people, the more everyone has to sacrifice for everyone else.
-The more people, the less powerful the individual becomes.

This trend is an example of what I like to call friction of association.

Yes, there are tremendous advantages to reaping the productivity of a mass society, but it comes with a terrible price.
Redundancy cushioning is the predictable emergent property of this trend: Eventually the phenomenon of aggregated humanity itself becomes so large that no single person or group can make any significant change. Mass society itself becomes in effect enthroned as a mindless autocrat.

People form into groups to benefit from their combined productivity, for companionship, for protection, for increased variety of available mates. When friction of association reaches a certain threshold, losses begin to outweigh benefits. The abstraction of ‘group’ itself solidifies into a substantial governing force beyond any means of human regulation or accountability. It is difficult to hold a corporation accountable for its ‘actions’ when treated as a single being for legal purposes. It is altogether impossible to do so with an overgrown conceptual construct.

The only way out of such a situation is Fracture. To cease to acknowledge the autocrat, to create a new group.
To prevent the cycle from repeating itself, it is necessary to model new groups with the objective of minimizing friction of association.

One of the most successful ways this has been done is by being selective about who is admitted. Whoever is a member of your society is someone for whom you share responsibility. The beliefs and expectations of each person admitted determine what is to be the collective culture of the group. As such, high selectivity holds a social body to its original ‘intentions’ and keeps it in the service of those who founded it.

History tells us that cultures with precise definitions of belonging and exclusion are the longest lived. Excellent examples are the Jewish and Armenian communities that have persisted across milennia despite multiple attempts to wipe them out altogether.

These two example cultures endured stressors that would break apart any other social group because they had a well defined criteria for belonging (ethnicity) and most importantly, a complex shared tradition formally written down to serve as an impermeable barrier to outsiders and a powerful force of unity to those on the inside.