From "The Curious Personality Changes of Older Age/When people lose the ability to control their circumstances, their selves sometimes evolve instead" (The Atlantic).
Speaking of "a decline in extroversion," I'm finally reading a book I've had in my Kindle for years: "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" (paid link). I switched over to that book — in self-defense! — halfway through reading RFK Jr.'s "American Values/Lessons I Learned From My Family" (paid link).
So I was amused, to read, on page 6 of "Quiet":
If you’re an introvert, you... know that the bias against quiet can cause deep psychic pain. As a child you might have overheard your parents apologize for your shyness. (“Why can’t you be more like the Kennedy boys?” the Camelot-besotted parents of one man I interviewed repeatedly asked him.) Or at school you might have been prodded to come “out of your shell”—that noxious expression which fails to appreciate that some animals naturally carry shelter everywhere they go, and that some humans are just the same.... Now that you’re an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you’re told that you’re “in your head too much,” a phrase that’s often deployed against the quiet and cerebral....
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In the headline: “When people lose their ability to control her circumstances.”
This is a conceit. Show me anyone that can control their circumstances - the ones that really form the basis of and impact life. Anyone here making a firm plan for how many breaths they’re gonna take for the next 2 years. Every breath you get as a gift. How about your body’s functional performance. You feel under control that you’ll never get sick or encounter an accident? How about your relationships? You feel certain you can control everyone around you and what they do? Or let’s look at your wealth or your reputation. Think you control those?
The only things I found I can control are my motives, my effort, and my attitude.
This topic conflates aging with introversion.
- Older people's bodies don't function as well or in the same ways as younger bodies. The appearance of introversion may result from poor nutrition or latent medical conditions or the 'slow fading death' of some elderly people. They have also been around the block many times and may not want to rehash the same conflicts with personality types they've always disliked.
- Introversion routinely reveals the blind arrogance of extroverts. Extroverts thrive on social interaction and thereby cannot understand how asocial people could be happy. They feel superior even when clueless. Some 'shy' people DO INDEED have anxiety disorders, but this isn't introversion at all. It's fear-driven avoidance of perceived social threats rather than an independent preference for solitary activities. These are completely different way to be alone.
Non-social nuances are a permanent blind spot for extroverts.
I tend to correlate people with an intolerance of silence with neurosis or drugs, prescription and/or recreational…
My experience is that it's the extroverts who have anxiety, who crave acceptance, even from people they despise. I call it the Previously Conservative Supreme Court Justice theory.
We can assign all kinds of narratives to the phenomenon, but really we are just projecting our personal beliefs on others. Any objective understanding of the motivations of other people is impossible, the threads are too complicated. From "you're just too old and tired" ... Maybe, or is it "I have travelled widely in Concord," who is anybody to judge?
I call it all 'filtering'. You reach a point in life where you filter out the people (and things) who are more annoying than pleasing. People who are either unproductive in their lives or in their thinking. People who bring nothing to my table.
I'm down to the 'vital few' when it comes to friends and I find my wife and I are making new friends for this next phase. But...only a few make the cut. We're picky when we go out because, let's face it- most restaurants suck these days and they're overpriced to boot. And the good ones, or the great ones, are too expensive to talk myself into going more than once in a great while. We save our time and money for those things we actually love (orchestra). And we focus on those things. Life's too short to blow time on bullshit entertainment.
I love to read, to write, and hike, and I spent a lifetime in front of hundreds of people every month. So I'm good at my desk or out on walking around a new park, checking it out with our dog. I'm tapped out with humanity. So...I'm filtering who is allowed into my life. And despite the local paper telling me all of the great things happening in town this week, I honestly don't give a shit. We love living our lives the way we do now. It's as good as it gets. I may appear more introverted, but I can tell you I'm the same. Just feeling more urgency to live my life in the manner I choose, doing things I love- not things suggested for me by others.
BTW, that quote from Thoreau is kind of ironic, since he supported himself as a travel writer.
Reading the book "Quiet," I get the impression that the tendency toward introversion/extroversion doesn't originate in something about one's attitude toward other people — something in the "social" category. I think it's something in the nervous system that has to do with reactiveness to stimuli. It's a setting that then affects all your experiences. There's a high/low reaction to stimuli and if you are highly sensitive to stimuli — and babies were tested with stimuli like a strong smell or light — then you're going to seek a less stimulating environment.
I've heard the difference between introvert and extrovert explained like this: everyone has an energy beaker. An introvert starts with the beaker full, and each social interaction drains it until they need to go into a quiet place and re-energize. An extrovert starts with the beaker empty, and each social interaction fills it.
"There’s a stereotype that older people are grumpy shut-ins...."
After enough interactions with college credentialed (not educated) yutes who Know Everything and are on a Mission to Save the World, can you blame them?
Doesn't help their energy level when their docs have them on all sorts of meds.
“An introvert starts with the beaker full, and each social interaction drains it until they need to go into a quiet place and re-energize. An extrovert starts with the beaker empty, and each social interaction fills it.”
So when an introvert gets drunk he looses his beaker and has to fill a new one with energy by annoying everyone else.
That book is excellent. I say that as a strong introvert, married to an extrovert. I've recommended my wife read it, but so far she hasn't.
The comment by Kate at 8:46 AM has, in my view, an accurate illustration of extrovert/introvert.
During my working life I was forced to negotiate with all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds with all sorts of problems. I got through most days, but some days were just god-awful. I don't actually miss my negotiations with the zeitgeist, but I do miss my wish to be part of the zeitgeist or, at any rate, the sense of balance and good cheer that made it possible for me to participate in life.....Nowadays, I stay within my bubble. My life is just as dull and predictable as I can make it. I rely on muscle memory to get me though the day.....No real regrets about any of it. One last bucket wish. I found out where my forebears came from in Europe. I want to go to their villages in Ireland and Germany and maybe say a prayer in the local church. That would give me a sense of closing the circle or completing the suture. So much of my life is loose ends and open wounds.
Not putting up with bullshit != grumpy.
Introvert/extrovert aren't immutable traits. When I ran my show, I was very much an extrovert, both towards members and the public in general. Now that I'm concentrating on my writing and painting, I'm introvert in that I spend most of my time at home but when I'm out I enjoy people. So, 75%?
I started Quiet but didn't make it very far because it all felt too conceited. I'm mostly an introvert -- back-office, computer nerd, don't-interact-much-at-the-gym type -- but I'll talk to almost anyone when out and about. But yeah, when I was a Young Man, I loved living in the city with lots to do all the time and people all around. Now I'm in a nice, quiet area in a nice house and like it here.
I believe anxiety and depression tend to increase with age and has a biological basis.
I'm a gregarious introvert.
As for the age aspect, I am always delighted to meet new people who share my interests and disinterests.
Blogger Mason G said...
"There’s a stereotype that older people are grumpy shut-ins...."
After enough interactions with college credentialed (not educated) yutes who Know Everything and are on a Mission to Save the World, can you blame them?
Yes, but some of us just get arthritis.
Quiet is one of my favorite books. Now I need to reread it. I remember learning that an introverted personality would fit better in Asia than in America.
"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." ― Blaise Pascal
Enigma,
Stereotype much?
And I'll sign on the Freeman's statement, too!
I'll sign on to Freeman's statement! Stereotyping and pigeonholing... bleah.
I'm a smug introvert too but God bless that one extrovert inlaw who actually talks to you and makes a family gathering bearable.
Late comment here, so maybe it won't get posted, but this was a very important read for me a while back, since I've always been an introvert: "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking." If you are an introvert like me, you should read this.
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