Category Archives: Commentary

Life After Mass Society?

I received this comment from a reader:

Hey this is Adi. I have been reading a lot of your posts and like this blog a lot and I am posting for the first time.

I have a question that has been bugging me since I first started reading some of your posts. Before that let me clarify that I am your fellow intorvert as well. What I want to ask is, I still don’t understand a purpose of life that doesn’t involve social success and achieving a position in society. Because, the way I have been growing up, a lot of things that you have mentioned are extrovert traits are, the ones I have possessed too in spite of being an introvert. And yes, the way you have stated earlier, I too have wished that I was a person who is sought after by people, can make social bonds easily. But it hasn’t happened and then after realizing my true selves, I have started accepting myself. But still, I do not understand the purpose of life if you remain completely detached and aloof from society. Can you explain what are you living this life for? One example could be living for a very crazy passion if you do possess one. But what if you don’t?

Someone gets all the certificates and learns a skill.
Then the skill abruptly goes obsolete or gets outsourced.  All that effort for nothing.

Someone works for a lifetime and then retires.
They ask themselves, “Why am I still here.”

Someone comes up with a great idea or does the majority of the work on a project.
Their manager takes all the credit and moves up yet another notch on the ladder.

Does all that social stuff really give us purpose or does it merely distract us from questions of purpose?
You can get rewards and praise for doing what the society values, but is it all just noise that distracts from asking whether society values the right things, or whether the society is good and just?
What kind of person makes it to the top of society?  Are these the people who should be on top?  Are they good and just?
Does society care about you to the degree you care about it?  Can a mass society care about you?  If it can’t care, are you just another insignificant worker bee?  How then does society provide us with purpose or meaning?

Does it matter how many gold stars society puts on your forehead if you’ve not learned to be happy with who you are?  If somebody took away those gold stars tomorrow, what would remain?  If you lived for the gold stars and they’re gone now, who are you?

If one doesn’t have any ‘very crazy’ passions, perhaps they should explore and find some.

You’ve brought up excellent questions.  Questions that open up more questions.  Questions that can be scary to confront.  But there is a much deeper sense of peace and identity when we begin to figure out the answers.

When you don’t let the sum of all people(society) dictate who you are, the result is immense freedom.  This freedom has nothing to do with going off to a mountain monastery or living as a hermit.  It’s a state of mind that allows you to perceive the world around you differently:
Think of it this way:

Imagine someone living in a fabulously wealthy society where everyone is expected to have a palace.
This person feels stressed out, unhappy, and ‘poor’ because they can only afford a sumptuous Victorian mansion(butler included).  So long as social expectations define their world view, they will remain unhappy no matter what fantastic luxuries they might have.  Circumstances might change but the big questions are constant.  “How will I get what they have?”, “What will they think?”, What will they say?”

As soon as the person begins to derive expectations from within,  they see the mansion through new eyes.   The person is free to perceive its beauty for the very first time.  It is no longer a disgusting source of social shame, it is a house.  An enormous house abundantly equipped to fulfill every possible human need.  A house far bigger than anyone could possibly need.   Suddenly, it seems ludicrous that one’s life purpose could have been chasing after a still bigger house.  Surely it was never a purpose at all, just a way to pass the time until death.

The Insanity of Defining the Self By Society

Very recently, I found myself on one of Southern California’s mega highways in the company of a highly extroverted friend of mine.

3 PM had just hit and we were desperately struggling to get free of the LA area before it was too late.

‘We’ll be fine once we get past the 605′ he said.  On his cell phone roadmap, we could see red zones of congestion spreading by the minute.

Almost by the minute, traffic was moving slower and slower.  Without a guardian spirit on our side, we would soon be gridlocked.

In these type of Calfornian conditions, one is looking down four enormous completely packed lanes.  One can see thousands upon thousands of cars stretching into the distance.  There’s plenty of time to look around and take stock of everyone else’s hummers, luxury SUVs, audis, and lexuses.  All of these high end vehicles as far as the eye can see.  Thousands upon thousands stretching into the distance.  The remarkable and respectable becomes banal and vulgar.  The bar of competition rises that much higher.  Late on a cloudy afternoon, people’s headlights start to come on.  Countless pairs of glowing insectoid eyes fill the view of every driver.

Suddenly the whole place and its sheer excess made sense to me.  I  turned to my friend and goaded him.  “I think I get SoCal now.” I told him.  “You all are in your little car among millions and have to tell yourselves, ‘I’m not just another drone like all those people I see around me.’   You have to be able to tell yourselves that you are better.  It drives all of you to your famous levels of ambition.”

My friend has run for political office, has the social graces to charm an entire room full of people and become the life of the party.  He is highly intelligent and can engage people at a cocktail party on nearly any subject.  He can speak fluent Spanish and is as comfortable deer hunting in the mountains as he is sipping port and taking a fine cigar at his favorite watering hole.  In short, he is a very electable person.

He had to concede that indeed he had to believe that he was not just another drone.  That he was a unique SoCal overachiever, not just the regular kind.  He chuckled at these existential dilemmas because it’s kind of a game between us.  Yet he will continue his life’s task toward recognition regardless.

Earlier, that day in L.A., I had noticed the exact same phenomenon we experienced on that highway.  It was just like Ancient Rome with its seven hills or even an ancient Mesopotomian city with ziggurats towering over the common hovels.  In every day life, there was no escaping the life-defining fact of social competition.  The richest and poorest of a nation are there in the same place at the same time.  On the heights are the palaces of the winners.  In the flatland gaps between hills are places where even the city’s 13,000 cops don’t dare to go.  Never before had I seen such stark contrast.

I saw one winner’s balcony in particular jutting out over a crowded shambles below.  “They must come out and give Benediction to the Masses,”  I joked.  My friend had cracked up as I raised my arms in imitation of the Pope.  Surprise, surprise, more than one person has called me a cynic and condemned the dark nature of my humor.

The whole place was spectacular in its glorious decadence and inconceivable squalor.  Each one was all the more striking for the other.  I saw hordes of people without a penny within sight of the famous Hollywood sign.

L.A. is an excess even for my friend.  He much prefers the more moderate and austere character of San Diego.  Once we had gotten past the 605 we were free to zoom wherever we pleased through the Californian countryside.

It was dark outside and quiet as we drove along.  “It’s completely insane.” I said, still stunned by the day’s experience.

“Yes,” he agreed.  “Insane.”

It was more evident to me than ever that it is pure folly to allow society to define oneself.  It is foolishness and futility to judge oneself by the masses.  Without self-definition first one becomes lost in a cruel and elemental jungle of arbitrary social distinctions.

So long as I self-define, I could live in peace even sleeping on a bus bench at the foot of a hill slathered with the homes of famous actors.  The famous actors on high are no doubt busily competing amongst one another.  No matter their luxurious trappings, the character of their existence could not be said to be essentially different from that in the slums below.  No matter who you are, there are always bigger fish, and if no bigger fish, life’s purpose has come to an end.

The Listener Test

“At work today, I was socializing with two extroverted co-workers. I wasn’t completely comfortable, but I was able to get a few words in every once in a while. Then, a third extrovert came up, and I found that whenever I wanted to say something one of the other girls beat me to it by one or two seconds. I started feeling extremely awkward, because I was just standing there and not contributing to the conversation.”

Full thread:

This forum poster described a phenomenon I’ve experienced very frequently. For one whom social interaction is competition for attention, one who enters the arena with other goals cannot possibly hope to compete. Those who talk at the competitive level are so saturated by Loud attention getting tactics that they don’t even notice someone who’s trying to talk normally any more. They’ve long forgotten that the main purpose of conversation is to convey meaningful information and have constructive discussions. The rat race has consumed them utterly.

Frustrated with being ignored, I resorted to a test while growing up to see if someone was worth my time. I would say something in a measured tone of voice at indoor volume. I would then monitor the response. Most of the time the eyes of the extrovert in question would remain glazed over with incomprehension, if indeed they were even aware of that I had been talking. They would quickly flit onto something they thought more stimulating. Appallingly few people passed this test and I would feel more alone than ever. But this test ultimately did help me find people who didn’t see people as advertising, who wanted more than shallow stimulation from conversation, and who wanted to be my allies, not my competitors.

The truth I have found is that most extroverts live amongst so much noise pollution that they quite simply can’t hear the spoken word until one keeps a sentence to no more than a few words, fires them out quickly, and puts great emphasis on all the stressed syllables. It seemed to me that to get a Loud person’s attention, I’d have to address them in much the same way as I’d address a pet dog. Such a realization was very discouraging indeed!

Sound Familiar?

“I hate to say it but my 11 year old nephew is a real nerd. He had NO Friends at all and really does not talk to anyone other than his teachers. He used to be a friendly little boy but liked to talk about things that were quite strange and really had no interest to kids his age. He became an outsider at age 7 and never really recovered. His IQ is at the genius level but his memory is poor so he gets only C’s in school. He is terrible in sports which makes him even more of an outcast because that is what gives kids prestige at his school.

His parents send him to all kinds of organized activities but no one has anything to do with him. So he participates in silence. I tell my sister she needs to send him to get professional help but she disagrees and says no one can learn how to make friends or have social skills, popularity is just something you have or not.

So, do you think professional help can make the boy have friends?”

The whole thread

Commentary:
-I love the phrasing “do you think professional help can make the boy have friends”
It betrays the Loud perspective that friendships are above all social artifacts one accumulates to seem normal.
As for ‘professional help.’ Since most people define themselves and all others by the standards of society, then failure to belong can only be seen as a sickness that needs to be cured.
It is only a matter of time before this kid is given some pills to purge him of his ritual impurities.

-“He became an outsider at age 7 and never really recovered.”
Isolation begets isolation. In a loud society, all social involvement is competition. A child who falls behind at any point has no chance of competing. Even those who are caught up must struggle to survive.

“His IQ is at the genius level but his memory is poor so he gets only C’s in school.”
-Blissfully unclear on the concept. Schoolwork tends to drop in priority when you are the odd one out and everyone around you is a potential enemy. There is always pain and fear. One’s guard is always up.

“He used to be a friendly little boy but liked to talk about things that were quite strange and really had no interest to kids his age.”
This kid had clearly different values and different interests from the start!
Anyone becomes less responsive and friendly when living for years in a hostile environment. Though well intentioned, the poster is clearly disconnected from empathy and understanding on even the most basic of levels.

Every school has that one kid who is not willing or is not able to respond appropriately to social norms. Usually it is a combination of both.
This kid grows up as a pariah, never able to forget that he does not belong.
Then as an adult he is more or less left alone. He has his private domain in which his activities are hidden, life is good. He thinks the past has been left behind. He tries to tell himself it’s just an inconvenient experience he went through as a kid.

Yet these were the formative years. Such a person has been shaped by rejection from childhood. There is more pain and anger there than he would ever be willing to acknowledge.
He has a good job contributing to a society that tried to destroy him from the time he was able to walk.
For all his life he lives under the surface, always hiding his full potential under a bushel.
He might very probably have a stable marriage and children. But nothing ever really changes the fact he is an Incorrectness that never got weeded out.

Thoreau the Introvert

One cannot read Walden and be in doubt that its author is a true introvert.
Alone much of the time in his small, secluded cottage, Henry David Thoreau used his distance from society to engage in contemplation concerning the nature and purpose of society itself.

It sends a thrill through me to read passages such as:
-”In a savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best…In modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter.”
-”Men have become tools of their tools”
-”I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”

It is precisely this sort of thought that escapes those who live on the microscale.

He seems to anticipate modern mass media and its saturation with trivial information when he comments:

“We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.”

Thoreau is an introvert who understands the shallowness of a Loud culture striving away only to sustain itself:
He believed that most modern developments are
“But improved means to an unimproved end.”

One can see from Thoreau’s writings how his 19th century America was the clear and logical ancestor of the present day America.

Thoreau’s life is an example of how it is the calling of the introvert to live on the macroscale and to reduce gigantic problems to essentials.
He is an example of how Subtle thought has existed across generations and how such thought by its nature seeks to assign a greater meaning to the human experience and a greater dignity to the individual.

Rulers of Celephais

There was once a story by H.P. Lovecraft that particularly stirred me.

It was about a man who ruled over a fantastic kingdom in his mind yet seemed a half-mad beggar to all those who saw him fumbling about in our reality.
Actually, whether his kingdom of Celephais is the true reality or imaginary is left unclear. It is suggested that with his death, the man finally comes to be wholly immersed in his grander reality.

I couldn’t help but draw some parallels between this story and how introverts tend to be perceived in the larger society.
Introverts are quite typically immersed in a glorious domain of knowledge and serious hobbies. For an introvert, the pursuit of these interests often becomes more stimulating than the mundane every day life that surrounds them. After all, there seems little time for talking with a new acquaintance about the weather when great literature awaits one’s perusal.

The great kingdoms ruled by introverts are invisible to the larger populace. Because their gaze is turned to another land they are misunderstood and dismissed as sad and socially inept. Little does the social majority understand that they have disdained the mighty Rulers of Celephais.

The inner wealth of those who are Subtle is no physical possession that can be capriciously stripped away. Once obtained, it is a constant, lifelong guide, an ever giving asset. As an introvert acquires treasure: the way is opened to attain ever more of it.