Thus far, it’s only available on createspace, but it will be available within the next week on amazon.com.
In the same timeframe it will also become available to bookstores, wholesalers, and libraries.
I didn’t originally intend to make a paperback, but the kindle version seems to be selling and someone specifically asked about it.
A Kingdom for the Introvert is now available on amazon.com as a kindle e-book. Since the book will be searchable from the amazon website, I’ve changed my usual pseudonym to something a little less random than ‘Gluon the Ferengi.’
What’s in it?:
-I’ve added a ‘prologue’ section. It’s a bio about my origins and formative experiences that made me who I am.
-I’ve added an ‘epilogue’, the last chapter of the book that ties up my main ideas and discusses some reflections I’ve had in the years since I began writing about introversion.
-I’ve finally grouped together all my posts on this site into a logical order that can be read as a single book.
-I’ve added a few new posts.
-I’ve converted some of my explanations in the comments section into annotations on the posts and written up some new ones where I’ve seen fit.
-I’ve made sure there’s a table of contents and a working NCX guide file that makes it easy to navigate through all the chapters and individual posts.
Update: It’s been brought to my attention that my amazon.com link won’t work properly for people from some other parts of the world. I’ll post links here to major Amazon world domains.
Canada
France
Germany
Italy
Spain
UK
If amazon isn’t a well established merchant in your part of the world, by all means, let me know who is and perhaps I can set up an account with them.
Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans etc. let me know if you’re having problems. I think you can probably order through amazon.com, but let me know if I’m wrong.
There’s one experience that is the greatest affirmation of humanity in the Loud ideology.
It is typically called “falling in love.”
The first thing apparent to the Subtle person is word choice. The word ‘falling.’ It implies ‘accidental’, ‘unintentional’, ‘helpless’, ‘overwhelmed’, ‘powerless.’ All this is precisely the point.
Falling in love in poetry, literature, cinema… is a celebration of helplessness and surrender. A ‘fall’ from the confines of a dull and daily self to someplace that happens to be better…for a little while. A brief period of liberation from the oppressive prison of a self that isn’t very fun to live with.
To one who is Subtle, it seems that the Loud routinely confuse love with sentimentality.
‘Falling’ in love is an oxymoron. True love cannot be an accident, because then it is just an accident, something that just happened to us while we were passively looking on. Where is the truth and where is the love?
If there were a Subtle language, I imagine one might say something like “place oneself in love”, “choose to love”, or “cultivate love in oneself.”
In the Subtle world view, there cannot be love without some sort of agency. Else, who loves?
If there is no who, we can’t be speaking of something that is human, but rather something animal or even mechanical. In Subtle-ese “Romeo fell in love with her” might be “Romeo was loved to her,” just as we might say the “the printer was attached to the power supply” in our common tongue. Actually… plugs are referred to as ‘male’ and ‘female.’ But I diverge—
Humanity in the Subtle understanding is not concerned with overwhelming surges of emotion as it is in appreciating the nuances.
Not in clamoring to ride oceanic tidal waves, but in feeling the play of ripples across a pond.
Someone who needs a cataclysmic fall, a tidal wave to really feel alive is someone who has moved away from their humanity. They are desensitized. Being Loud, they are very nearly deaf.
Every philosophy or culture seems to have a different definition for ‘humanity.’ The definition of what we should be. The Confucian principle of humanity(ren) for instance has a very different meaning than the Western ‘equivalent.’
To those who are Loud and extroverted, it is our emotions and ability to empathize that constitute humanity.
Those who do not immediately appear to possess these faculties are flawed and lacking as humans.
Look at nearly every scientist, nerd, or thinker as portrayed in popular cinema. The verdict: people who have all the wrong priorities. People who have distanced themselves from their own humanity or only had a very weak sense of it in the first place.
In trying to be something non-human, the mad scientist commits the crime of hubris. Invariably, a mistake is made or a mess created. The powers of intellect without the guidance of a Correct social consciousness prove disastrously short sighted.
In Independence Day, a scientist is fascinated with studying alien life, but he lacks the humanity and moral vision to realize that his academic prying is trivial next to one overriding fact: The aliens are evil. Lacking human moral sense, he gets himself and his crew killed when they try to cut open a dangerous alien on an operating table.
In the Polar Express one bad kid stands out from all the others. He’s not evil, just Incorrect. He’s the brainiac kid who knows lots of facts but doesn’t understand people, what it means to be a person, the social role he’s supposed to play. All the other kids seem to barely tolerate his presence. He repeatedly brings forth rational or profit-making considerations while they’re all riding on a magic train. Sometimes everyone just stares at him in shock for a moment, realizing he still hasn’t clued in.
In the Loud world view, there is indeed an idea of the magical that removes us from the mechanical and makes us human. Most of us just ‘get it’ but there’s always a few who don’t or won’t. This is the magic of being able to relate to most other people. Popular entertainment sends us an important message: No matter how smart, talented, or accomplished one might be, one is fundamentally flawed, incomplete, inhuman without an emotional understanding with the group.
To one who is Subtle, the level of the emotional, the empathetic, the group conscious, is a lower plane. It is more animal than human, really. Most processes are carried out on the level of intuition or the subconscious. The conscious will, the human has very little to do with it.
What really makes us human beings, in the Subtle perspective, is curiosity, a sense of reverential wonder, a deep love of life itself. Not mere rote powers of reason as the Loud commonly seem to believe, but to delight in their use, to fuel the imagination.
When we’re seen reading yet another ‘useless’ book, searching for philosophical justifications of things taken for granted, or learning about the workings of distant stars, the Loud are bewildered. They do not see the social, emotional motive in our actions. Therefore no humanity. To them, we are lifeless machines ticking methodically through reams of data…
As a kid, I would beg my parents for field guides. In time I had a private collection. At one point I had memorized just about every order of insect and all the parts of a sea anemone. Just a couple of years ago, I met someone who had studied marine biology. He was a bit surprised that I knew off hand that a ‘radula’ was chitinous cephalopod mouthpart, whether the rasping ‘tongue’ of a snail or the ‘beak’ of an octopus or squid.
To many people, my childhood activities no doubt seemed obsessive, mechanical, and pathological.
To me, it was just fun stuff I did during childhood same as playing video games.
There was nothing lifeless about it. Reaching out and learning all those little things about the universe around me was an act of affirmation of the love of life.
If there is a God, I imagine it would have felt a similar love for all those small details during the act of creation.
And as a human, I was merely following in the footsteps of the creator.
Some who visit here may have noticed I have stopped writing new posts and understandably, some might suppose that I have abandoned the ideas I espouse here.
I would like to immediately correct any such notion.
I feel almost as if this blog were a child of mine. I feel a sense of pride whenever I look back through the archives.
After nearly 100 posts, consisting of close to 60,000 words not including any of the comments, I’ve created a book-length body of work that covers all of my main points.
To go further could only dilute my main ideas and take up unnecessary space.
Furthermore, concluding this project has allowed me to turn my attentions to other writing projects in which I’m actively exploring new ground. I certainly haven’t stopped writing. I don’t think I could if I wanted to.
As a writer, I think it important to avoid the temptation to become stuck on a single issue and to always try to grow.
This is not the only reason why I will not make a career out of any one project.
I have a basic misgiving about many communities that gather around a grievance or discuss a specific problem indefinitely.
These sites tend to end up with a community of people united by victimhood. This kind of environment isn’t likely to help people progress. More likely it keeps them paralyzed right where they’re at.
I would like those who happen upon my writings here to use them to move forward in life. I don’t want these writings to be a final destination. I want this site to be a waystation to give a needed reprieve and show the way onwards to a powerful kingdom of our own.
The blog itself is about the formative steps I’ve had to go through, the life philosophy that formed as I progressed from a lost teenager full of self-loathing to an adult with a positive identity by which to define myself and a purpose to strive towards.
I would hope to discourage the formation of a new victim identity, the favorite response of nearly every ‘identity’ faction that feels slighted in our age.
I believe victim ideologies set forth a message of passivity and weakness. Pleading for concessions and claiming helplessness is not a positive outlook. As such it can never lead to the achievement of productive long term goals.
To get things done, one has to approach issues from a position of pride and strength, not of helplessness and victimhood.
I believe that discovering pride in oneself and forming a positive group identity with kindred spirits accomplishes infinitely more than focusing on “oppression.”
In this vein, I must note that there has been a new trend in writings about introverts.
When I first started writing this blog, most of the very few books out there treated the subject of introversion almost as if it were a disease.
Even books supposedly about introverts were clearly written from an extrovert perspective and were mostly about how not to be an introvert.
The latest books are some of the first I’ve seen that actively affirm that introverts have unique virtues and disproportionately make certain kinds of contributions to society.
This is a big step in the right direction but I still perceive a pervasive victim message.
I feel like this new discourse is still trying to be as non-offensive as possible.
Every time a virtue of introversion is noted, an equal praise of extroverts usually comes after a couple of sentences after or a deft apology that says some variation of “but the world needs both extroverts and introverts.”
Perhaps this is so, but these frequent disclaimers tell me that these new thinkers are highly insecure about their message.
They are still tethered to the orthodoxy and constantly looking back over their shoulder.
In this new sentiment, we still see worn, innocuous anecdotes of ‘shy’ introverts struggling to overcome their shyness. Serious issues are carefully disarmed by being made cute and humorous as in the popular Atlantic monthly article about an introvert’s daily frustrations. This article is a good article, but like the new, more sympathetic books, it shies away from the stark emotional reality of being an introvert.
You won’t see too much focus on the reality on the ground.
-Probably much higher suicide rates
-Living with the constant threat of being ostracized from society.
-The challenges of living through extreme social isolation and loneliness.
-The anger, hatred, and self hatred, the feelings of worthlessness that come with being thrown away like garbage into an outside place, a Void.
-The utter terror and emptiness of wondering if you’re the only person like you in the whole world.
To name a few.
We must be the change we wish to see and so I intend to step in and say my piece.
I am currently transforming this blog into a kindle e-book.
Addendum:
Some have interpreted this post perhaps differently than I intended, so I will clarify:
My work at the Kingdom isn’t done yet. I’ve yet to compile it into an easy to browse kindle book that will be far more accessible and logically put together than the blog.
And I’ll certainly be adding new content in the process.
I think writing about how to accept oneself as an introvert and counter all the negative messages society gives us is just a first baby step.
I believe that it is the calling of thoughtful, Subtle introverts to rise and exert influence. To claim our rightful place.
Ever since I’ve done most of my writing for this introductory blog, I’ve focused on asking fundamental questions and challenging established ideas in an effort to get some idea of a core philosophy and the basis for a system of economic, social, and political thought that suits a more detached, reflective sort of people.
I’m gradually encountering like minds through my blogs and it is my fondest hope that one day there might be a thriving community of outsiders pursuing concrete aims.
Over the years, I’ve learned most of the social skills I missed out on as a kid, but I’ve grown in my own direction and I can’t ever completely hide that.
Being overtly different from the people you meet puts one in danger of ostracism.
Over time I’ve found a few ways to reduce the likelihood of this outcome.
People are psychologically geared to live in small tribes. Whenever we meet strangers, they are not truly people in our eyes.
Thus, the importance of initial impressions.
This is the time in which you are either grouped into the ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ bin.
Once a person you have met has succeeded in establishing an empathy bond with you, you can begin to gradually relax, but at first, a single misstep can end in ostracism. You have to establish that you’re someone who can be sympathized with.
-Always eat meals with the people you’re living/working with if possible.
Humans instinctually form communal bonds when they eat together.
Eat what they’re eating, even if it tastes horrible, at least for the first few months.
This is the easiest and most effective way not to get ostracized.
-If you are offered some food, a ride, whatever—never refuse, even if you don’t want or need it. Even if the one who offers isn’t your favorite person. To accept is to become a person in their eyes and a member of the community.
Helping others makes people feel good. By extension, they will feel better about you.
When younger, I interpreted what people were saying much more literally. I got in trouble countless times by offending people who were just trying to be nice.
-With members of the opposite sex who are close to your age, never, ever try to ignore them. Both males and females will subconsciously feel rejected, even if there’s no attraction.
Courteous attention and some polite conversation can prevent what could otherwise cause the worst sort of social tensions.
Females especially, are prone to mobilizing all their friends and boyfriends against you if they feel you’ve given them the cold shoulder. And they will nearly always succeed in kicking you out.
This is one of the most common ways I’ve gotten myself ostracized.
Because of the general negative social feedback I got, I didn’t realize until my late teens/early twenties that women found me attractive and were trying to flirt or just trying to feel personally validated by receiving attention from a man they found attractive.
-Keep divergent interests in sci-fi/fantasy, computer games, any unusual hobbies concealed until you’ve known people for a few months. Anything nerdly or out of the ordinary that’s put fragrantly on display right away will cause people to judge you quickly.
-Show familiarity with their favorite brands, TV shows, bands, etc. Go on wikipedia if necessary.
I generally don’t research the group’s belonging tokens online because it’s usually not necessary to achieve the bare minimum of avoiding expulsion. Besides, I don’t want to clutter my mind with that stuff. Worse, one can come across as a douche or a soulless walking encyclopedia if you know the requisite information but clearly aren’t enthusiastic about it.
But wiki-clicking is worth considering if the stakes are particularly high.
-If you see public opinion turning against you, control the damage as best you can and make an exit plan.
Once you’ve overstayed your welcome, things will get ugly.
This one took some years to sink into my head. Socially inept, I would always think that things would just proceed normally, willfully ignoring or missing all the little warning signs that people drop.
I eventually stopped lying to myself and formed an axiom: If you are not seen as part of the group, the group will devise a way to eject you sooner or later. On the instinctual level, you are not a person to them. Beware!
The good news here is you mostly just have to handle the introductory first few months reasonably well. Once people feel that you are an ‘ordinary’ human being they usually won’t begrudge unorthodox habits and interests.
You won’t be everyone’s best buddy, but people will tolerate you and let you live in peace.
Loud people like to give advice.
Advice in my mind is telling other people to do what worked for you regardless of whether they’re anything like you.
There’s inherently something glib, dismissive, narcissistic, and shallow about advice-giving.
This is why people generally don’t like advice—especially from elders—and tend to ignore it.
I distinguish ‘advice’ from ‘counseling’.
A counselor is someone who genuinely tries to step into the shoes of another person and tailor their counsel accordingly.
The difference is that the counselor strives to understand and empathize when recommending a course of action.
People tend to take genuine counsel seriously because it is personal, personalized, and sincere.
To really counsel someone you have to care.
Advice can be flung around at any time, at anyone.
Often it is just a means of trying to socially dominate someone else by representing oneself as the wise one and font of knowledge. One might as well patronizingly pat the advisee on the shoulder as one shows them the way to the light.
Introverts are given a lot of advice and in my experience it is almost never helpful because I have little in common with those who give it.
If one is lost, counselors are the ones to listen to. Few people are willing to stop, talk one-on-one and really try to understand first.
Where giving advice is to profess that one has wisdom.
Even a shred of ability to counsel is a proof of some measure of wisdom.
Is advice worth listening to, then?
It depends.
One needs ask only one question to find out.
“How much is the advice giver like me?”
If the answer is: “not at all.”
Consider doing the opposite.
I rather enjoy drinking alone.
And yes, I’m quite aware of the implications in our wider society.
Yes, my family has a history of alcoholism.
Yes, I drink most days of the week.
Already, many people might ask me questions about a river in Egypt.
By the standards of my birth culture, I am prime alcoholic material.
Alone, I love to have a beer or some wine with dinner. And then maybe some port, brandy, or sherry for dessert.
Alone on the hottest day of summer there’s nothing like a bottle of rose champagne poured over ice, paired with fresh, chilled nectarines and overripe mangoes.
In the autumn, there’s nothing like crisp hard cider, sweet porters, and bittersweet stouts served with ham, bacon, aged cheddar, and apples.
As the weather turns cold, there’s a special delight to be taken in fiery spirits like a good brandy or whiskey sipped straight while reclining by a fireplace.
I find that alcohol has the ability to carry the intimate imprint of a taste, a smell, a place better than any other substance.
I remember being amazed the first time I had a certain scotch from an island off the coast of northern Scotland. It tasted overwhelmingly of peat smoke and of the sea. It made me imagine myself sitting alone in a small, warm hut on a forbidding northern isle able to hear winds howling outside and waves crashing at the bottom of a rocky cliff…
I’ve watched the way extroverts drink and as far as I can tell, they don’t drink for any of the same reasons I do.
Classic extroverts tend to drink:
In unfamiliar public places with unfamiliar people – to deliberately lower inhibitions. Imbibing in excess gives a socially accepted excuse to misbehave and vent one’s pent up social repression. Alcohol becomes an attempt to escape from responsibility and even from the oppressive prison of oneself.
It doesn’t really matter what they drink so long as it gets them drunk. Generally, the more the taste of the alcohol can be masked(to encourage easy overindulgence) the better. If there’s a killer hangover, no problem. It will make a great story to tell one’s friends.
The Subtle person drinks in safe, comfortable places, in the home, with close friends and family, often alone. Imbibing in excess is unpleasant and unseemly.
The desirable effect is a relaxed, contemplative, spiritual state. To be content to sit and enjoy that wonderful feeling of just being alive, to read a book, or to write.
Not just any drink will do. It must be something that makes both body and soul feel good. While drinking…and afterwards.
This Subtle ethic is one that many mainstream people can’t understand. On the occasion I catch myself speaking of my fondness of good drink, I sometimes see a funny look on other people’s faces.
The main society offers two possibilities in this vein.
a. You’re a drunk.
b. You’re a snob.
How does a Subtle person convey the idea of alcohol as more of a sacred drug as opposed to a mere party drug or a crude tool to signal social status?
The narratives offered by the mainstream birth culture are a barren expanse with little to offer.
Imagine using ‘sacred’ and ‘alcohol’ in the same sentence in actual conversation!
Perhaps better just to drink alone, in the home, with intimates.
“That’s reality!”
“Life’s not fair!”
These same lines were repeated verbatim by different people almost as if orthodox citizens had some script beamed into their head from a collective central computer.
As a teenager, I took these criticisms quite seriously and personally.
Surely I was perhaps deluding myself. Because if I had deluded myself successfully, I by definition wouldn’t be aware of having done so, right?
And the evidence of my failure in life, a dearth of connections and social status was staring me in the face.
There was a pragmatic defeatist in me that told me “They’re right. You have to change yourself or perish.”
But some indignant stubborn streak or passive aggressive laziness, however one wishes to interpret it halted any efforts I might have undertaken to whip myself into shape and embrace their wonderful unjust world.
Now, years later I look back and hardly find my critics inspirational.
I wonder now exactly what they were trying to accomplish with these shame-based criticisms!
We can sort of see it as a Pascal’s gamble.
—
A.
I’ve skillfully deluded myself that I’m not a miserable failure. I must accept their world view, dutifully settle into my ‘place’ at the bottom of the totem pole, and stoically take all the beatings and injustices that life typically rains down on social inferiors while trying desperately to ‘better’ myself at the expense of someone else.
The only relief comes from “putting in the work” to “get my shit together” and “pull myself up by my bootstraps.”
My only hope to succeed lies in renouncing everything I value in myself so that maybe one day I can be a mediocrity living comfortably above the societal basement crammed with outright rejects.
B.
I’m a majority of one and I am in the right to renounce my oppressive, backwards, dying birth culture and create one of my own that values and affirms my natural virtues.
There is certainly plenty of injustice in the world but I will never use this ‘unfairness’ as an excuse for subjecting myself to social debasement and degradation. No amount of compliance or appeasement on my part will beget any appreciation from the unjust. There is no respect for those who have no self-respect.
—
In retrospect I realized:
No possible good outcome could result from accepting my critics’world view! It did not make sense on any level to renounce a hopeful and optimistic world view in favor of a dismal hell of a society with no meaningful purpose or values. A society that had already decided I was an undesirable!
Because I knew I was not an objective observer, I knew I could never be sure if I was deluded or not…
But in a way, the very idea of renouncing myself in favor of my birth society eliminated itself.
How was any life in their world worth living?
Looking back and examining their admonitions now, their presumption and condescension is astounding.
They nobly took it on themselves to offer me a position living in the sewers while they lived on some higher plane and they honestly expected me to take it! Their opinion of me was that low. No wonder some part of me always raged whenever I heard their words of false concern!
The outsider has a special place in the cosmology of the Accepted.
Within any community, there are always tensions, a friction of association that threatens to tear apart the social order.
Of all social rituals among the most important are those that deal with defusing these tensions.
In this respect, an outsider is an important part of the community by not being a part of it. Simply being ‘outside’ implicitly puts others ‘inside.’
The simple existence of an outsider puts the whole social world in perspective.
The shunning and persecution of the outsider, the other is the most powerful of all Rituals of Unity.
To carry out this ritual is to place in that one person all of those amassed woes of society.
And once this living effigy is constructed to symbolically burn it upon the altar of unity.
But it can’t just be any source of otherness, it has to be something sufficiently foreign, hate-able, and threatening. One has to earn it and be worthy of it.
After all, what has become of the United States without a Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia to inspire fear, drive everyone together, and resolve internal disputes for the good of all? The substitute sacrifices that have been offered up since then have been rejected by the Gods.
Without a fitting sacrifice for the Ritual, the society cannot be properly purified of its ills. The people must drift apart and squabble.
If you have often been that one person who just can’t seem to fit in, it behooves you to understand just who you are.
You are a demon, Ahriman, Satan, St. George’s dragon, that snarling little dwarf permanently lodged beneath Shiva’s foot, Orwell’s Emmanuel Goldstein… the embodiment of everything that tempts people away from their proper social roles and undermines the Correct order.
It is in part for this reason that I identify all Subtle things with shadow, darkness, the night, the moon, the underworld, chaos…
Once you understand your place, just who you are in their universe, there is a certain delicious delight to be taken in it.
And many things in our lives that seemed mysterious stand suddenly explained.
