The Right to be an Introvert

It may sound strange that anyone speaks of the right to be an introvert. The matter of such rights simply does not come up, not only as a political cause but even a more abstract moral claim, and indeed thinking about the matter I suppose that most will see little point in discussing the matter as no one is questioning or interfering with anyone's right to be an introvert.

But is that really the case? Consider what is known of the "biology" of introversion. In introverts' nervous systems the "rest and digest" response prevails over the "fight or flight" response (the acetylcholine-driven "parasympathetic" over the "sympathetic" nervous system). Their brains also maintain a higher "baseline" of alertness and readiness than tends to be the case with those who are more extraverted (certainly going by the level of activity in their (thicker, bigger) prefrontal cortex, which handles planning, deep reflection, and situating oneself in time and space, and their more active amygdalas--memory, decision and emotional response-processing nerve centers); they process stimuli through longer, more circuitous neural pathways (a differing "functional connectivity" in which "introspective cognitive pathways" and "internal processing" are more prominent); and they reach reward satisfaction at a lower threshold (more sensitive to dopamine, less of it will get them to a state of satisfaction). This combination of nervous system orientation, elevated baseline alertness and readiness, and differences in stimuli processing pathways and reward response, has practical consequences, making introverts prone to be more sensitive to subtle details, more analytical and deep-thinking, and--apparently--more inclined to use these capacities (because their nervous systems, and their baseline of alertness and readiness, orient them to "conserving their energy," and they can find satisfaction in solitary activity, and activity others conventionally find "dull," such as calm reflection or study). However, these same neurological traits often leave them less quick to react and more susceptible to being overwhelmed, while experiencing others' demands and impositions as more painful, and interpersonal confrontation as more stressful and exhausting (because they are more sensitive to demands and imposition and confrontation, because they have fewer spare "resources" with which to meet them, because they process so much more internally in a way that leaves them more prone to ruminate and suffer in other ways when people mistreat them).

All of this has a great many practical implications for their interaction with their environment--particularly where introversion is so pronounced as to really make a difference in one's daily life. Being in an environment where authority is present and overbearing, where others set rules and enforce routines with which they must comply, where status competition is constant, where one is surrounded by people behaving obnoxiously toward each other and oneself--few find much pleasure in all that, but the introvert suffers more than others because of their sensitivity to that obnoxiousness, and their internalization of what they experience. Given an order they are less likely to "snap to it"--because of how stimuli make their way up their neural pathways--and of course those expecting people to "snap to it" do not react graciously. Given an order to which they are resistant by an authority figure, where others would simply grumble the introvert may feel that they are under attack--and in following the order feel themselves capitulating before an attack, with all the wrenching pain of surrender. Social rituals others don't think twice about ("Let's start by having everyone stand up and tell us their name and say something about themselves to the rest of the class") may be pure torture for them. And so on and so forth, all as after being subject to these things they have a need for time-consuming recovery, and face consequences if they don't get it. They do rather better in conditions of solitude, where they can exercise some control over the stimuli surrounding them, and direct their own action.

But which set of conditions is one more likely to face in school, in the workplace? Which set of conditions does society demand its members accommodate themselves to? We are much more likely to be trained for the former, because we are much more likely to be offered the former, than the latter--solitude and self-direction something the privileged are able to get if they want it, all as everyone else has to get on without it, all as there is certainly no provision to either direct introverts to those all too few places where they might be happier and more productive, or go any way toward accommodating them in the circumstances where they find themselves. The square peg, especially where fending for themselves, is simply required to fit themselves into the round hole as best they can, the matter as simple as that--because society doesn't recognize the introvert as having the slightest claim on its consideration whatsoever. Indeed, the introvert is likely to get treated worse than others--because they fit in less easily, have less support from others, are less prone to assert themselves and generally not be the useful tool that those in charge demand, making them more prone to be bullied by peers, bullied by authority figures. Indeed, if entirely capable of study, hard work, accomplishment (often, exceptionally so) the circumstances within which they are obliged to work are far from what would be ideal for letting them realize their potentials, while they incline less than others to the competition and confrontation forced upon everyone by the terms of the vulgar chase after "success." Naturally their gifts and their efforts get them less than their due.

Given all this it does in the end seem to me that there is something to be said of the rights of introverts--that so far as society is concerned, they don't have the right to be what they are--and that one may reasonably see this as a significant societal failing. What might actually be done to redress that failing may be another matter, but the point remains that there is a failing here, no matter what the idiots already assuming that particular jaw-jutting, stony-faced expression to go along with the "Don't care" shrug with which they reflexively react to any mention of society's imperfection think of the matter as if they have a deep personal investment in immediately shutting down anything of the kind, unpaid policers of thought and speech who are much more often than not enabling their own oppression. Naturally the thoughts of such, if one chooses to dignify the discharges within the gray matter inside their skulls with such a term as "thought," mean infinitely less to me than mine do to them.