Thoughts on Introversion (II)

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

-Mark Twain

Introversion may represent an extremely small niche of experience among all life. Even among humans introverts are decidedly a minority. They constitute only 35% of the general population (40% of males, 30% of females), though they far outnumber extraverts in the fields of science and the arts. As a natural result of this minority, culture and society cater mainly to extraverts. This manifests most clearly in the social differences that arise. “Going out” and “having fun” is expected of us – these are external things that are easy for extraverts to understand and do. The inner world of introverts is inaccessible, so it’s often treated as though it doesn’t exist or is meaningless. If you’re not doing something, you’re “not doing anything.” Extraverts will say “Why don’t you go out more often? You never do anything.”

Introverts can feel pressure to conform for extraverted expectations. Those who don’t are labeled as loners or recluses, while those who do can suffer from a lack of the alone time they require. On the other hand this causes introverts to become more balanced – forced to develop their extraversion they learn to become comfortable with their secondary function. Extraverts feel little pressure to develop their internal worlds, and often their secondary function remains underdeveloped. This only serves to exacerbate the extraverted leanings of society, but the end result is that introversion is both a blessing and a curse. A man who carries heavy things all day becomes stronger than those who lead comfortable lives. But he still has to carry heavy things.

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See also:

Thoughts on Introversion (I)

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Alix Perez & Sabre – Solitary Native || 2007/Solitary Native/Old Flame

Scent Sense

“You smell good.”

Do you? A year ago I gave up cologne, shampoo & body wash, and traded my Old Spice for a mineral stone. And I eat clean. So I smell good. My sweat smells clean, if it smells at all. But I don’t smell good. I don’t smell like flowers or cedar, citrus or musk. I smell like a person. When someone says “you smell good,” what they usually mean is “your cologne smells good.” Telling someone wearing cologne that they smell good is like telling someone wearing a tux that they look black. It’s semantics, and it’s not.

I remember riding a streetcar in southern Germany on a hot August day. These days they wear deodorant like in the colonies, but not in the early 90s. To this day the smell of of body odor and cigarettes is an instant passport back to my childhood. The smell of a human is strong, primal. It evokes emotions that only barely ripple the surface of our conscious mind. It’s a chemical signature, imprinted with everything from genes and hormones to what you ate that morning. It’s an indicator of sexual compatibility. A friend of mine used to drink and smoke heavily, and after a twelve-hour shift you could smell him from a block away. But his girl loved it. She used to tell him all the time how his smell turned her on. Call it pheromones, call it whatever. She liked him, and he smelled like him. Not flowers or cedar, citrus or musk.

You could say that wearing scent makes us less human, but animals don’t wear perfume. Augmenting our bodies is perfectly human. I’d say it makes us less us. I say be what you are, smell like what you are.

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The Hold Steady – Citrus || 2006/Boys & Girls in America

Fiscal Responsibility

It was against this backdrop, namely, the ultimate and the infinite, that an organization known as the Vietnam Day Committee invited Kesey to come speak at a huge antiwar rally in Berkeley, on the University of California campus. I couldn’t tell you what bright fellow thought of that, inviting Kesey. Afterwards, they didn’t know, either. Or at least none of them would own up, despite a lot of interrogations and recriminations and general thrashing about. “Who the hell invited this bastard!” was the exact wording.

He comes on soft, in the Oregon drawl, like he’s just having a conversation with 15,000 people:

“You know, you’re not gonna stop this war with this rally, by marching… That’s what they do… They hold rallies and they march. They’ve been having wars for ten thousand years and you’re not gonna stop it this way… Ten thousand years, and this is the game they play to do it… holding rallies and having marches… and that’s the same game you’re playing… their game…

There’s only one thing to do… there’s only one thing’s gonna do any good at all… And that’s everybody just look at it, look at the war, and turn your backs and say… Fuck it…”

They hear that all right. The sound of the phrase—Fuck it—sounds so weird, so shocking, even here in Free Speech citadel, just coming out that way over a public loudspeaker, rolling over the heads of 15,000 souls.

There was no way one could prove Kesey had done it. Nevertheless, something was gone out of the anti-war rally.

-Tom Wolfe

Whenever someone mentions the occupy Wall Street protests I think of that scene, especially poignant when you compare the weight of the war with our current grievances. Let’s set some things straight.

Wall Street’s fucking beautiful. Because it’s going to destroy capitalism. Capitalism requires infinite growth to survive, but it’s a system based on finite resources. See the flaw? Capitalism was born in a time when labor produced product and product produced money; in that reality it’s a viable system. The stock market created a reality where money is both product and payment, a feedback loophole that literally makes money. Money’s created from money, and in the process it’s become less real. Money went from gold to fiat currency to pure mathematics. The problem isn’t Wall Street; Wall Street is the solution. Running capitalism in the 21st century is like trying to run CS5 on an Amiga. Wall Street is waving the flaws of capitalism in our face; it’s the herald of change, and it’s going to run the system into the ground by turning money into valueless, meaningless numbers.

That said:

In the meantime, here’s how you occupy Wall Street. You don’t. You don’t invest in stocks, you don’t get a portfolio, you don’t get an IRA. Don’t own a credit card. Don’t get a loan. Stop shopping at chains. Keep your money local. Rent from a person instead of a corporation, buy your food from farmers, put your money into a local bank or under your mattress. Don’t go to college. Live in a different country. If you can’t walk the walk, don’t bitch. Getting mad at Wall Street execs because your investment portfolio lost money is like protesting soccer because you got your ass kicked by Pelé.

If you don’t like a system, you don’t hold a rally. That’s their game. If you don’t like a system, stop being a part of it. That’s the only thing’s gonna do any good at all.

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Chad Valley – Ensoniq Funk || 2010/Chad Valley EP

Thoughts on Happiness

I don’t talk much about happiness. We’re happy when we fall in love, when we reunite with friends, receive a compliment, get a present, relax at the end of the day. Happiness is fleeting. Have you had a week when you were happy? A month? In order to sustain happiness, we must continually cultivate events and sensations. Our lives become bound to moments; moments fade, lives fade.

Only the brave renounce happiness. In a group, we try to appear happy – if we are not happy, ask friends, what’s wrong? (If we are not happy, says the ad, try this.) It’s hard, sometimes, to make your point, that lack of happiness does not mean sadness. So we say it another way – there is nothing wrong with not being happy. And then they laugh, and their happiness seems so much more attractive.

Lack of happiness is not synonymous with sadness. The more emotional among us swing from passion to apathy, nurture to rage. Happiness is not always present; neither is sadness. The more stoic among us live lives on an even temperament, preferring the world of thoughts to that of emotions. Happiness is not always present; neither is sadness.

Expectations of happiness are a problem. When we’re told we can be happy, we wonder why we’re not. We second-guess ourselves, our lives. We forget that unhappiness is often more universal, that happiness is often the rarity. Yet this only drives us harder to seek it, to be one of those few who possess it. And miss the most important point:

Happiness isn’t the goal. So I don’t talk much about happiness; I talk about contentment, positivity, peace. These are the things that last; these are things we can strive for. Happiness does not lead to accomplishment; accomplishment leads to happiness. Being positive is an accomplishment; attaining peace is an accomplishment. And when happiness comes along, in its bursts and glows, we appreciate it all the more.

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Nina Simone – Mood Indigo || 1958/Little Girl Blue

Beautiful Girls

Tell a girl she’s beautiful. It’s a compliment, right? Think about what you’re saying. When you call someone pretty, you’re saying they have symmetrical features. They have a nice chin to forehead ratio. They have good genes. You’re listing physical dimensions. It’s like calling a basketball player tall; not a compliment any more than you’re stating a fact. When the dimensions are on the face, as opposed to the legs and torso, we think of it as a compliment, when it doesn’t have anything more to do with their person than the size of their hands.

It feels good be complimented on looks, and yet the beautiful complain that people’s assessments tend to stop there. Being called beautiful can carry no more charm than being called tall. Imagine telling someone how they’re a great basketball player. That’s a compliment. That’s something they worked at, something that they did themselves – it reflects on them as a person, not a body. This is the personal connection, the validation we crave – we want people to respect us as wholes, not aspects. In that area being attractive can be a disadvantage.

For everything else, though, they’ve got it made.

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Bent – Beautiful Otherness || 2003/The Everlasting Blink