leahbobet | Aren't You Having Fun?

mrissa has me thinking about introversion and extroversion. Specifically, how we use those labels, what assumptions they carry, what their social function is.

(Warning. This is gonna get kind of nitpicky and technical in a semantics/philosophy/armchair psych kinda way, and I'm not sure where it's going until it gets there. Fasten your seatbelts.)

We throw around the idea of introversion in a way that's odd mostly for its essentialism, its description of something in one's social conduct that is utterly not malleable or arguable. And I'm not saying it is malleable and all those people really ought to just buck up and conform to the social expectations of their local village. The point is the assumption, the way we appeal to that label. We're not keen on linking permanent traits with patterns of sociability these days or dividing people into 'kinds' of people. Current society really is down on models of behaviour that are not modifiable by some means, that's hardwired into us. The expectations are for behaving to the expected social patterns regardless of who we are or what we're doing at home. Which is why this interchange, if you look at it, is really...so weird:

"Aren't you having fun?"
"No, I'm an introvert."

Game over, right? There's no arguing that. There aren't a lot of social labels we can appeal to in a way that shuts down any rebuttal. For example:

"Aren't you having fun?"
"No, I'm a Taurus."

There's another bundle of character traits given a label. But Tauruses are still expected to give way when their local norms say the appropriate social practice is not to be stubborn. The Early Modern Melancholic was still expected to provide nice conversation at the dinner table. Misanthropes can hate people all they want, but the prevailing connotation to the word implies that really, they shouldn't. There's an underlying assumption in that, whether it's a true or false one: the idea that deviance from norms of sociability in these cases is a choice. That the people under these labels could, if they really wanted to, just shape up and behave like everyone else.

Nobody seems to do that with introversion and extroversion.

Sure, yeah, people do it to individuals all the time. But there's a difference in quality there: people refuse to believe that you're really an introvert or extrovert, rather than feeling that introversion or extroversion in and of itself is a chosen social deviance. What's being questioned is your inclusion in the category, not the validity of the actual category. I don't know that people consider "introvert" and "extrovert" as...well, excuses for being a brat.

So introversion doesn't pattern like a bundle of character traits given a label. What does it pattern like, that quality to the label of social behaviours against the norm that are rooted in permanence, subject to lack of choice, superceding the will? It patterns with mental illness.

Try again:

"Aren't you having fun?"
"No, I'm clinically depressed."

Nothing to argue there. Person didn't choose that, can't do anything about it, will continue to behave in a way that you do not feel fits the norms of sociability in this situation. No culpability. Move along, right?

That's even weirder.

Because mental illness has that perjorative connotation. There are campaigns to reduce the stigma of depression, and that's all it takes to prove that there is a stigma. But...introversion and extroversion don't. Yet we still assign them no culpability for flouting the norms of the social situation, whether we think that situation calls for a higher or lower level of social engagement.

But I wonder...is that social patterning we do without thinking getting at something?

I'm an introvert. It's rather severe, actually. I learned to put on otherwise when I started working in retail, and that professionally detached false face is my survival skill. I don't know that my introversion is actually a natural part of my personality, though. My parents had a big chunky portable video camera when I was a kid, and before school-age I was actually pretty extroverted. I couldn't wait to engage with other people. I wanted to talk to them and hear what they had to say and sincerely enjoyed other people. I have video proof.

Then, as the standard geek sob story goes, I was teased regularly and severely, to the point of people encouraging suicide, for the next ten-odd years.

I'm not surprised that people require a hell of a lot of energy from me, that engaging with them wears me out. I'm running a lot more software in my head for every human interaction: what this person's saying, what they might really mean, whether there are openings in this I'm leaving for them to do something unto me, what their body language says, where my escape routes are. I can run my professional persona on autopilot and it requires relatively less energy, but actually engaging with a human being is exhausting. No wonder being by myself is preferred, more energy-efficient, and just...so much more relaxing.

I have no idea if this theory holds water for me, never mind other people. It's not even really a theory: I'm sort of just thinking out loud here. Personalities change as you grow. It could be indeed a natural predisposition that came up, coupled with my pain-in-the-ass childhood, and intensified an effect that was already going to be there.

But I really do wonder at this assumption we have that introversion and extroversion are natural and hardwired components of a personality, and the way we give them social leeway like nothing else gets without a corresponding social penalty. I wonder if we do correlate introversion with damage in some way I can't quite get at -- read it as a coping mechanism for a trauma even if it isn't that thing -- because it's not like our society is shy about telling people who have natural and hardwired preferences that they ought to suck it up and be different. Unless we think it's because of damage. Then we get out of their way.

Why's this the exception?

Because it is. Because the easiest way I know to get out of some of those stressful situations is a demure smile and a "no, sorry, I'm kind of an introvert".

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I suppose on consideration what I'd actually say is probably closer to "It's a lovely party, I'm just a little tired." Or, you know, some other formulation that isn't quite untrue. A lot depends on whose asking -- a friend? A total stranger? The hostess? One of my spouses?

I think ... there are social lies and social lies.

I mean, the situation that people were talking about over in

mrissa's lj, of condolences - which is an extreme case but therefore sort of useful illustratively - meaning it isn't the same as feeling it.

I'm not always feeling it, but you know, that's my problem, not to be inflicted on someone who's in mourning. If somebody's in trouble the least I can do is express sympathy, and I just need to grit my teeth and do that.

My tricky point with condolences is actually the cases where I neither mean nor feel it.

In neutral situations, I can mean it without feeling it. I am sorry that this person hurts and has lost; I don't have to feel the loss myself.

In non-neutral situations, well. Death in your circle or not, I continue to not owe you anything, and there will be no reprieve of the dislike you have justly earned. The social expectation that I ought to suspend it...rankles. That death is not between them and me.

My general approach in a case of that nature is to avoid the situation if I can. But if I can't ... I'll suck it up and make the noises.

I'm actually kind of in favour of that social expectation; it's not what I owe to them, necessarily -- it's what I owe to myself, and to the fact that the dead person probably never did me any harm, and to that proud and battered reification the social contract, and even to the innocent bystanders, because there usually are some.

Plus, all my grandparents are gone and my parents aren't getting any younger; I have very selfish uses for a reputation as the sort of person who treats grief with respect and deserves the same.

I don't think that's hypocritical, no And I suspect it's something my feelings will change on as I get older and more patient, as I have been slowly getting for the past five years or so.

I won't piss in people's eye in a time of grief: that's kicking while down, and inappropriate. I just don't think they ought to come to me for sympathy if they pissed in my eye over something.

Oh, THERE I am with you.

I'll generally give them the sympathetic noises, as long as it's not going to involve me being dragged back into their orbit, but at that point it's because if I can get an asshole out of my life for fifty bucks it's usually worth fifty bucks, you know?

It occurs to me I should probably mention in these kinds of conversations just how much it takes to get me to actively dislike somebody. I might make a lot more sense then. :p

Heh, gotcha. Me too; perfectly decent people I just don't see the point of are another matter, and are in fact WHY I developed all these slightly Jesuitical social tricks -- because that is not their fault, and talking of geek social fallacies I have, and this is probably influencing my take on things quite a lot, been somewhat scarred by dealing with that segment of the Geek and general population that has serious difficulty with the fine gradients between 'honest' and 'brutal', and the idea that you don't extol the first to give yourself an excuse to be the second...

Yeah. Honesty should not be brutality.

Aren't You Having Fun?

Now I am all thinky.

Re: Now I am all thinky.

I have a terrible feeling that this is where I brand myself a howling hypocrite

Re: I have a terrible feeling that this is where I brand myself a howling hypocrite

Re: I have a terrible feeling that this is where I brand myself a howling hypocrite

Re: I have a terrible feeling that this is where I brand myself a howling hypocrite

Re: I have a terrible feeling that this is where I brand myself a howling hypocrite

Re: I have a terrible feeling that this is where I brand myself a howling hypocrite