Category Archives: Introvert vs. Extrovert

Extrovert Critic: “But Don’t You Want To Fall in Love?”

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on

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.

Introvert vs. Extrovert: What Does It Mean To Be Human?

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on

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.

Advice vs. Counsel

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on

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.

Introverts and Alcohol

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on

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.

Extrovert Critic: “Life’s Not Fair!”

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on

“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!

Extroverted Critic: “You Need to Be More eMOtional”

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on

“Sometimes you need to let go man and just go with your eMOtions. You think too much.”
What Subtle person hasn’t spent years getting bombarded with this platitude?

The critic is usually well-meaning and just trying to help, but it gets old and comes across as patronizing.

It’s implicit in their advice that they, and outgoing people in general are superior emotional beings who feel more while I’m some sort of semi-automaton.
Why do they feel more? Because they talk about it more of course. And if one’s feelings are not talked about or otherwise put on display, they don’t exist, right? Truly the Loud ethic at work!

I’m appalled sometimes at the insensitivity of social normals. They expect me to explicitly verbally communicate every little thing to them. If they were the EQ geniuses they would have me believe, why are they utterly unable to read some pretty obvious non-verbal cues that indicate my mood, especially while they’re talking down to me? But somehow totally clueless, they keep prattling on.

What they do not realize:
‘Emotion’ means very different things in the sunny surface Loud world than in the Subtle shadow lands.

To your normal person who feels comfortable within the Accepted orthodoxy, emotion refers to the overpowering instinctual survival impulses, though they would not recognize them as such.
In other words:
They worship sheer intensity of feeling whatever that feeling it might be.
Look at the heroes through whom they live vicarious lives in film and fiction!
In their world, bigger is better.

True emotion, however, is more than just capricious passions.

It is distinguished first not by intensity, but by breadth and nuance. A single overwhelming emotion is like a plain lump of white sugar. A complex blend of understated, interrelated emotions that must be puzzled out through introspection, this is a chocolate mousse cake.

To one who is subtle, simply going out for a casual walk and lapsing into a contemplative state as the sun sets and the shadows grow long is a real emotional experience.

The thing we feel when experiencing mortal fear, obsession, or despair, or exultation is just a momentary rush. It puts us outside of our own self and overwhelms the faculties.
Recalled later whether fabulous or traumatic, it’s almost dream-like…never quite real.
We weren’t feeling it, it was feeling us.

Ultimately, the small thing felt intensely is more powerful than the large thing that consumes us. Because in so doing we develop a sense of self and grow closer to it. It makes one less a passive, reactive animal, more aware of what lies within.
Feeling in the Subtle way doesn’t just happen to us. It’s a capacity in oneself that must be nurtured and encouraged to flourish.

In short,
The Subtle emotion must be cultivated within humans, it makes us more powerful
The Loud emotion is common to all animals, it overwhelms us and forces us to submit.

This basic difference I think, is why I feel resentment when I am advised to be less analytical or get in touch with my emotions. If only they would understand! Not only do I feel deeply, but have a different understanding of what it is to feel. I often wonder how I would explain, only to subsequently realize that there’s no way I could do so within normal, acceptable conversation.
And having realized this, it’s almost as if they’ve slapped me in the face, while my hands are tied behind my back!
And there’s no way I can explain this to them either…

The Butt Sniffing Phase

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on

When we see unfamiliar dogs meet one another, they’re cautious, suspicious, constantly trying to size each other up and work out a hierarchy. They sniff each other’s butts chasing each other around in circles until some kind of steady order is established.

Very many of us go through an entire lifetime without hardly ever getting past the initial butt sniffing phase.
In our society, politicians, salespeople, advertisers, pick up artists are among those we call social experts. They are experts because they are comfortable dealing with large numbers of other people, especially acquaintances and strangers.
Thus it is quite possible for an expert never to have really understood or moved beyond butt sniffing.

In terms of biological imperatives, and basic needs we are all very much alike. Indeed social experts pride themselves in being able to talk to anyone and sell them anything. The job of a social expert is to simplify people to a lowest common denominator and bypass the uniqueness of the individual. It is easy for these celebrated specialists to forget that our fundamentals are like a set of rules within which we must operate, but that an infinite degree of variation is possible within those rules.

Animals would seem to be even more firmly governed by instincts and general rules than are humans, but we quickly begin to notice that each animal is different.
One of my best friends and former college room mate had two guinea pigs he kept in the room. Part of their charm was the fact that each one had a distinct personality. Though their brains were simple relative to our own and mostly limited to the imperatives of survival, you could increasingly appreciate them as individuals over time. This relationship I started forming with a couple of rodents was very fulfilling because it caused me to reflect: if even these small creatures had plenty of personality, how great then are people?

This realization seemed to me a sharp rebuke to my entire society, a society that tries to reduce human interaction to formulas for getting things we want out of people.
This Loud paradigm is as distant as possible from the formation of rewarding relationships. It actively debases and standardizes people for the sake of short term gains. Is it any wonder so many of us feel jaded about humanity? Is it surprising that a sense of nihilism, cynicism, disgust, distrust, despair, and lack of direction pervades every aspect of our culture?

It is hard not to be frustrated. Who hasn’t gone through facebook or dating site profiles and felt that sick feeling afterwards. Chances are, everyone had the same sort of pictures, the same sort of write ups, liked the same sort of everything, left behind the same superfluous trail of boring hourly updates, like slime in the wake of a snail. As we looked at each new person’s face, our stomach sank as we immediately identified them with an archetype straight out of TV or the movies. We go on to read to read their profile desperately hoping to have our preconceptions proved wrong… in vain.

Truly it is hard for us to believe that any of these people have more personality than an Andean rodent. Has our society truly perverted and stunted us to the point where a guinea pig indeed has more inner life than we do?

No, I think. Those profiles are universally banal and disappointing for a reason. Each one is an image of us that is suitable to the understanding of our society. After all it’s in the public domain and anyone might happen across it. So each profile ends up seeming like a shameless advertisement desperately trying to make a mundane and underwhelming life seem exciting. It ends up being about as exciting as one of our familiar brands at the supermarket changing their packaging a bit and proclaiming: “New improved flavor.”

The underlying problem here is that we must introduce ourselves whether in the company of strangers or making an online profile. There’s only a few things we can say about ourselves that are going to be a universally acceptable opening gambit. Without some specific context or established relationship there’s really not much we can say that is meaningful and without major risks!
At the beginning of a chess game, there are only a handful of possible opening moves. But the complexity and uniqueness of the game multiplies exponentially with each move. The same principle applies when first meeting someone: across a hundred million people we encounter a stultifying sameness.

Our Loud society is so fixated on the beginning phase that we forget the 99.9% of social relationships that lie beyond it.
A cloistered introvert with a few lifelong friends might well know more of humanity than a famous socialite.
Indeed, the province of the Subtle person is the human being.
While that of the Loud person is the human animal.

When we make this distinction we can begin to make some sense of our dilemma.
When we meet a hundred people at a social function, flip through a hundred applications, or read a hundred facebook profiles, we inevitably end up depressed and disappointed.
How did we expect to feel after sniffing a hundred butts?

Introvert vs. Extrovert: Restaurants

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on

I found the ideal sort of introverted restaurant in England.  It’s a dying breed of restaurant except perhaps in the countryside where only 20% of the country’s population lives.  It’s another Britain really, as foreign to the rest of the country as is the Continent.  This sort of restaurant is called a pub.

Every small town has at least one.  Often, the building was originally an old stagecoach inn that serves up the same sort food it would have 300 years ago.  Upon entering, it’s clear the average person used to be shorter.  A modern person of average height stands just a few inches below the ceiling.  It’s like entering a comfy hobbit hole.  The stone walls are often clearly the uneven type thrown together by hand.  Usually, there is a crackling fire on the hearth.

Pubs are typically quiet places.  They are meeting places for the locals.  Not just rowdy men or young people but entire families.  On slow Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays there’s usually a quiz night or some other special occasion to attract patrons.

There was a feature of pubs that at first absolutely stunned an American like me:

You have to go up to the front and order food yourself when you’re ready.  If you just sit there, no waiter will come to pester you.

Once you’ve gotten your food and drink no one pressures you into asking for the check and getting the hell out of there.  In fact, it’s routine for people to stick around talking for a long while even after they’re done sipping at their beers.  No pressure, complete relaxation.

And the beer:  It’s primarily what’s called ‘real ale’ in Britain.  It’s dark, bitter, thick, and foamy.  It’s liquid bread that would fill you up before you could ever get very drunk off of it.  It’s often served only as cool as a cool cellar.  It makes one tranquil, warm, and drowsy on a rainy winter day when the sun goes down by 4 PM.

The menu at a pub rarely has more than half a dozen different entrees.  Choosing a meal is always quick and simple.  After having a steaming, piping hot steak and ale pie one might wonder why British food has such a horrible reputation.  Culinarily, the British are the masters of desserts served hot.  In the cold and clammy climate of the UK there’s no delight greater than a freshly prepared berry tart or treacle sponge drenched in lots of hot custard.

This pub experience was all an immense departure from the norms of my home country and from the majority urban UK.

The typical American restaurant is a corporate chain in a rush to make quick profits.  Customers are rushed to tables and are pressured to make decisions within a few minutes of sitting down.  “Do you need another minute?” the waiters ask with nervous sweat visibly beading on their brow.  I often wonder if they’d be in fear of getting fired by their manager if I told them “No, I’m going to sit and chat with my friends half an hour over an ale before actually ordering any food.”

Actually, it’s not uncommon for a typical American waiter to turn nasty if they think you’ve taken too long.  They adopt a petulant sneer and start pretending you don’t exist once you’ve figured out what to order at your leisure.

An American restaurant is not so different from a night club!  The noise level is usually astonishingly high with hordes of people crammed in close proximity.  Customers are brought in and out of the establishment on a conveyor belt.  Time is money!  One can observe a freshly abandoned table wiped down and reset within a few seconds by frantic workers.  Such a scene resembles a pit crew changing tires on a race car.

Who would ever want to sit down and have a meal in such horrid adrenaline drenched atmosphere?  Clearly, though this place must have a strong appeal to most customers.

What could this appeal possibly be?

Anyone who’s worked in restaurants, retail, or hospitality already probably has some idea of the answer.  It becomes clear that certain customers get a rise out of an environment teeming with stressed out underlings at their beck and call.  An ugly truth about many people: feeling powerless in their everyday lives, they love nothing better than a clerk or waiter to lick their feet and massage their perpetually bleeding egos.

I often have trouble getting any relevant information about a restaurant when I look up online reviews.  More than half the time, people have little to say about the food but instead obsess endlessly about how their waiter was five minutes late with their drinks.

No matter what one’s rank in America, one can always go to a restaurant and have an attractive, well-dressed young person grovel and make silly insincere recommendations about a menu they’ve never actually been able to try out for themselves.  I strongly suspect this pre-packaged subservience plays a role in how people justify paying the substantial bill of eating out.

Unfortunately, the introvert, though harboring as many frustrations as anyone else, has little desire for this rent-a-sycophant system.  No sooner has a menu been opened than a staff member descends like a gadfly, making obsequious sales pitches and asking for a decision with desperation that’s thinly masked by a grin.  The hurry, the noise, the sheer ugliness and venal nature of the entire outfit!  Few places could seem more unappealing to an inward oriented person.  There’s no possible way to communicate to that waiter to do away with all the hurry and pretense.  Even if the waiter could be made to understand, they would be compelled to stick to form by the expectations of their boss.  There’s little to do but to focus on the positive aspects of the meal, still knowing well that the experience could easily be immeasurably better.

The Loud person never seems to understand that the human body is not just a machine.  We do not fill ourselves with food as a car is filled with fuel.  The circumstances in which we sit down to eat, who we sit down to eat with are just as important to our nourishment as any physical quality of the food itself.  To be relaxed at the table is to be a free person.  To be stressed and hurried even at the dinner table is to live as the most abject of slaves…

Where socialites take over, social institutions that might support Subtle people die out.  Restaurants, like so many other aspects of life, have become little more than a reflection of the sheer desperate ambition of a Loud majority.

The Misery of “Happy” People

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on

Surely a culture where everyone must smile must be a happy culture?  Surely a merry holiday must be the happiest time of year?  Surely a stunning model makes everyone feel good about themselves.

Alas, that’s not how people really think.  Attractive models make people feel horrible about themselves.  Holidays are ground zero for depression and social pressure.  A culture in which one is disparaged for not smiling is a pressure cooker.

Ironically, all these ‘happy’ things don’t make people happy.  Of course no one could publicly admit this without being subject to social censure, so these dreary processes drag on unchallenged, each person a prisoner to the uncompromising mass crowd of their ‘peers’, a faceless multitude with whom in reality they share nothing in common.

In our present modern society false public happiness is exalted into an art form.  Never mind that so and so idol died from an overdose of sleeping pills just like all the rest.  What matters is the brilliant smile they had in all those pictures on posters, in films, in magazines.  In old Aztec times, priests would sometimes wear the flayed skin of their sacrifices.  Too often, the very fame that ‘everyone’ craves is just such an Aztec priest, wearing their skin while they languish, exposed and bleeding.  Too often, the actual person dies without even ownership of their skin.  That bloody priest of fame keeps his garment.  Nothing fuels fame and sales like self-inflicted ‘martyrdom’.

When I ask people about favorite holidays anymore, everyone above the age of 10, myself included usually says ‘Thanksgiving.’  Maybe 4th of July or St. Patty’s day for some.  Everything else, the dreaded death of X-mas, birthdays, and especially anniversaries and Valentine’s Day is a horrific minefield.  The slightest misstep results in a social explosion.  Making it through holidays requires nothing less than a steady hand at disarming bombs.

What do the few holidays people still actually look forward to have in common?  They’re still simple holidays that take place mostly in the home with family and friends, revolving mostly around traditional foods and company.  There is a minimum of social expectations, demonstrations of loyalty, and pressure to perform.

This is precisely why an introvert secretly cringes when asked “Why don’t you smile?”  “Why are you so gloomy?”

As with the nastier holidays, the good will is simulated, the joy forced and false, money and status the bottom line.

For all one knows, the only way the smile police keep smiling is by popping pills prescribed by their friendly neighborhood psychiatrist.

Indeed, if the statistics are any indicator, the present competitive society is so pointless and miserable, legal neuro-active big-pharma drugs are the only way people keep up without wanting to kill themselves.

Consider the ubiquitous candy jar.  It usually sits in an office space or cubicle with the usual pictures of family and strong hints of hobbies and a life outside of work.  We go into this office for some sort of task or processing, the one time we’ll ever be there.  Whether it’s an office building or a local bank, we wonder, “Is the candy in that candy jar really meant to be taken?”  We hesitate and then restrain ourselves.  The candy jar remains perpetually full.  In nearly everyone, some deep seated intuition, ancient as human society itself tells us when giving and hospitality is real and when it is just a façade of generosity.  We know when taking from another is okay and when an offer isn’t really meant in good faith but only made for the sake of appearances.

It is exactly this sort of false giving and generosity one experiences when cheerfully ‘asked’ to smile.  The ‘asker’ may not realize it themselves, but they are not issuing a request but a warning.  They are signaling to the introvert that their member status in the group is in danger if they fail to compete for favor more intensely.  In the sycophantic setting of a royal court, those who fail to ingratiate themselves are cast aside and crushed underfoot.

Loud people seem to find the subservient smile of an underling pleasing.  To Subtle folk, such an expression is unnerving, clearly akin to the snarling of a cornered animal.  Yet until there is a fundamental change in the structures of power, we shall all have to wear perpetual slavish smiles as if we all had the soulless painted features of marionettes.

Extrovert Critic: “You Read Too Much”

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on

Builds Upon: Rulers of Celephais,
Introverts vs. Extroverts: Learning

We’ve all heard this criticism.  We read too much.  When we’re seen reading, especially some subject material that seems uninteresting, we seem ‘out of touch,’ ‘with our head in the clouds,’ ‘on another planet.’

In general an introvert submerged in reading is perceived as trading the vibrant world around them for the dusty and colorless world of books.  The experience within books seems like a faded and flat flower pressing compared to the three dimensional, colorful, living flower.

To the extrovert, a book is a pale abstraction that crumbles away against the vitality of actual experience.  By extension, someone who spends considerable time reading is dry, abstract, lacking in personality, vigor, and practical knowledge.

To an introvert, however, there is nothing abstract, cold, or distant about habitual reading.  Rather than distracting from the surrounding world, it sheds light upon it and makes it richer.  For a Subtle person, the information found in books makes the experience of our world immeasurably more beautiful.  It allows us to reach back into time and through the wisdom of ages so that we may put our world into perspective.

Books allow us to perceive the wonders of our world through countless other people scattered across time, place, and circumstance.  To a subtle person, an extrovert lives in a very small pond indeed.  They understand their universe almost exclusively through a random handful of contemporaries.  That they see introverts as deprived is just a symptom of their ignorance.

A Loud person tends to perceive dead words on a page that yield a pale impression and nothing more.  Someone who focuses on all things on the Surface remains on the surface of things.    A Subtle person seamlessly moves beneath the dead words and into the pure meaning they represent.

To a Loud person, the content of books is dead, dry, fossilized information.  You get a can opener and open it up when you need it.

To the Subtle person, books are living streams of consciousness from other human beings in which we can actively participate.  It can be almost like becoming someone else for awhile, a way of freeing ourselves from our own lonely perspective and mental patterns. We are often accused of being selfish, yet we perhaps spend far less time living in the desires and thoughts of the self than do our extrovert critics.

An extrovert could respond that TV and film perform the function of allowing one to step into another’s shoes.  Surely these are more tangible, visceral mediums and therefore far more effective than a book.   After all, we empathize with the characters we see on screen and are drawn into a director’s vision.

However, books operate on another level because they demand active participation and voluntary shedding of our own perceptions.  Visual entertainment gives us the vision and all we have to do is sit back and watch.  There is not much participation, mostly just passive dictation to the viewer.  TV and film can be excellent ways of escaping our own world.  They offer a complete vision to replace our own.

The importance of books that extroverts tend to miss is that one must create the vision.  We must actively concentrate on adopting the thought patterns of another and seeing clearly through their eyes.  In books, we must actively bring our perspective in synchrony with another.  Thus we expand our own perspective rather than replacing it temporarily with someone else’s.   When reading a work of fiction, for instance, we must draw from our own experiences to bring alive the blueprint the author has set before us.   In trying to make the plan come to life, we are reshaping our own mind until we have a key that fits in the door to another mind.   The more we practice, the better we become at falling into the mental rhythm of another human being and escaping the confines of our own solitary vision of the world.  The fluid, multi-faceted understanding that results from reading is a source of incredible euphoria the equal of any of life’s greatest pleasures.

That an extrovert would consider us dead, absent, and isolated from the living world because of reading reveals their inability to see that the dry words on the page are merely a blueprint, an invitation to build something.  A something that never turns out the same for any two people who try it, or even for one person who builds from the same blueprint twice.