Plight of the Introvert: Introverted and Inferior(?)

American culture can not handle an introvert. It is far too often I have heard the word “anti-social” flung around when someone would rather stay home than do too much outside the house. I myself have been subject to a number of “concerned” people that have worried about me when I never wanted to go to parties or withdrew after doing too much socially. It was (and to a lesser degree, still is) quite common for me to not want to go out. I lock myself in my room quite frequently, writing, reading, studying, playing video games, working on various projects, doing puzzles, and just generally occupying myself. But this isn't seen as “normal,” or how a person “should” be, and it's clear by the way people treat it that it is misunderstood. I can't tell you how many times I have had someone say, directly to me, some variation of the following:

“You can work on that.”

“You can learn to overcome it.”

“That can be fixed.”

That can be fixed. Like I'm broken. Like being an introvert is being an incomplete human, and I have to work at becoming a “whole” extrovert.

That hurts like hell.

The truth is, this is an integral part of who I am. It's part of my personality, but even deeper, it's part of how I function. Introverts in general process things differently than extroverts. We're wired in such a way that actually requires seclusion in a manner that extroverts often can't grasp. And more than just the way we think, it's actually brain chemistry, so try as we might, it's not something we will ever “learn to overcome.”

The thing of it is, it's not as if extroverts are dominant and introverts make up a small portion of society; from what I have read, introversion is just as common as extroversion. But we worship extroverts, making them an ideal, thus making extroversion ideal. The celebrities, the athletes, the rock stars, the people who are always the center of attention and love it. We admire these people and raise them up as some sort of image of perfection, completely overlooking the positive traits others have that prevent them from the spotlight.

Introverts in general are more inclined toward academic pursuits than extroverts. This isn't because they are smarter (although I have read that the people that have been classified as geniuses have been disproportionately introverts), but because they think differently (something I will go into more in a later post, probably my next one). Many of the greatest writers have been introverts. Einstein was an introvert. So was Mozart. These are people who spent inordinate amounts of time alone, holed up in their work spaces in seclusion, and we hail them as legends, yet shun the practices that made them such.

I think there are two main problems:

First, as I mentioned, we see successful people in the spotlight and idolize them, which inadvertently leads us to shunning that which isn't like them. Our society does not praise authors the way they do other celebrities (why aren't Stephen and Tabitha King known as the power writing couple Stevitha?). America does not laud mathematical and computer programming skills the way they do guitar prowess and singing (imagine how different our society would be if we did!). As long as the extroverted are the ones who get the majority of the attention– and they love the attention the way the introverted often do not, so I fear this will always be the case– then I feel extroversion will always be elevated as superior, or at least somehow preferable.

Second, the extroverts are louder. I do not mean that as an insult, but as a simple matter of fact. While the extrovert is more prone to speaking, the introvert is more inclined to listen, or at the least less inclined to talk as much. So as a whole, the extroverts say more, talk more, and thus are heard more, in a sense leaving the introverts in the dust. The internet has been changing this dynamic in a way nothing else could (for example, see this very blog), but away from technology, in a more direct setting, still the extroverts appear dominant. And why do the introverts get pushed aside? Because we do not interrupt as much, because we are less insistent, because we do not care to contribute to the incessant din that bombards us at every turn. By our very nature, introverts are less seen and less heard, and thus become relegated to some sort of inferior state of being by sheer virtue of being drowned out.

I do not know that any of this will ever be “fixed,” as it were, but I do think there can be significant improvement. At the very least, I think it would go a long way toward better understanding (and less hurt feelings) if everyone was made aware the differences between introverts and extroverts, and it was made known that both are equally natural, neither being in any way superior or preferable to the other.