Tuesday, October 23, 2012

"The Power of Quiet" and "The Power of Introverts"

"The Power of Quiet" comes from RSA Shorts:



Here's the same individual - Susan Cain - on "The Power of Introverts" at TED:



HT Brain Pickings.

This is from the YouTube page of the first video, and sums up a bit of what's being said there (the video's only a couple of minutes long):

The world is full of noise and those that are the loudest are the ones we tend to follow but what about the quiet ones?

Author Susan Cain shines a spotlight on introverts and reveals how over time our society has come to look to extroverts as leaders. Not suggesting that one is better than the other, Susan argues that the world needs an equal space between introverts and extroverts; that an innovative, creative world wouldn't be the same without the two coming together.


In the first video, Cain notes that while people who are loudest, most assertive, and/or most gregarious and the "best talkers" get the most attention - and that people tend to follow their ideas - there is "zero" correlation between "being the best talker" and "having the best ideas."

She says that in the "shift from an agricultural economy to a corporate one," we started to admire people who could be "magnetic and charismatic - because these were the qualities that seemed to matter."

This is actually quite interesting - and explains why (as she mentioned) something like "character" is no longer much valued for itself. Which means that things like "developing character" have little meaning to people. It explains why (for instance) the "7 Deadly Sins" are no longer part of the culture.

I was just looking at something called "A Diurnal for the Changes and Chances of this Mortal Life" at Google Books (I was originally searching for the "Salisbury Diurnal," which unfortunately is not free). It was published in 1885. It's a book of quotes for every day of the year - many in the "character-building" mode. The introduction says that it's "not a devotional book" - but the dedication page offers a verse piece called "Benedictus qui venit in nomine domine" - which starts out "In the name and peace of God I enter this new day." January 4th is a partial quote from 1 Corinthains 13: "Charity suffereth long, and is kind ... is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil ... beareth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things."

There are quotes from "Bishop Thirlwall" and "Dr. Pusey," as well as from George Herbert and "E. B. Browning." "Inspirational" books likes this - books that attempted to form people according to religious (and other) ideas and propositions - were once quite common. What's sort of interesting about that, too, is that the culture once assumed something I don't think it does any longer: that people needed forming - that we didn't come by certain things naturally - and that there were tried and tested ways of doing this.

There was a parallel in the secular world, too: Civics. Discussion of "Citizenship," and what that meant and how it was accomplished, were part of the school curriculum; I don't think this is true any longer. I'm certain many of these ideas came from ancient Roman and Greek discussions of the topic - i.e., "Philosophy."

It's interesting, too, what A.A. says about "character building" (my bolding):
Certainly no alcoholic, and surely no member of A.A., wants to deprecate material achievement. Nor do we enter into debate with the many who still so passionately cling to the belief that to satisfy our basic natural desires is the main object of life. But we are sure that no class of people in the world ever made a worse mess of trying to live by this formula than alcoholics. For thousands of years we have been demanding more than our share of security, prestige, and romance. When we seemed to be succeeding, we drank to dream still greater dreams. When we were frustrated, even in part, we drank for oblivion. Never was there enough of what we thought we wanted.

In all these strivings, so many of them well-intentioned, our crippling handicap had been our lack of humility. We had lacked the perspective to see that character-building and spiritual values had to come first, and that material satisfactions were not the purpose of living. Quite characteristically, we had gone all out in confusing the ends with the means. Instead of regarding the satisfaction of our material desires as the means by which we could live and function as human beings, we had taken these satisfactions to be the final end and aim of life.

True, most of us thought good character was desirable, but obviously good character was something one needed to get on with the business of being self-satisfied. With a proper display of honesty and morality, we'd stand a better chance of getting what we really wanted. But whenever we had to choose between character and comfort, the character-building was lost in the dust of our chase after what we thought was happiness. Seldom did we look at character-building as something desirable in itself, something we would like to strive for whether our instinctual needs were met or not. We never thought of making honesty, tolerance, and true love of man and God the daily basis of living.
A.A., of course, was born in 1935 - when the U.S. was still an "agricultural" economy.  (I do think there's more to the issue than this, though; I think it has a lot to do with wealth, also.  When far more people were far less wealthy, there was far more incentive to "form" oneself in a way that was acceptable to others.  People who have money don't have to worry about this as much. And there are other things involved as well.)

So here we have some interesting ideas:  "agricultural economies" and "corporate economies" validate and emphasize different personality traits - and the culture itself changes on this basis. Entirely different modi operandi (!), habits, customs, and even beliefs will develop depending on what the culture - via its economy - prizes. "Character-building," for itself, is no longer regarded as important - and perhaps it's not even understood as a concept. Wealth may be a big part of all this as well.

But if it's true that "character-building [is] something desirable in itself, something we would like to strive for whether our instinctual needs were met or not" - well, doesn't that mean our wealthy, corporate, "extrovert" society needs outside help? Is "character-building" (i.e., "honesty, tolerance, and true love of man and God") optional, or necessary?

It is interesting, too, that the secular world seems at the moment to be doing better at "tolerance" than the church is - and that the church is the only institution left in society that even pretends to have anything to do with "forming" people formally, in ways meant to help them flourish. I would say, though, that the secular emphasis on "tolerance" comes directly out of the Civil Rights movement in the 60s - itself heavily influenced by the church.

Clearly, the church is basically a conservative institution; it prizes its own ideas and conclusions out of, perhaps, a worry that changing any one thing will deform the institution itself, for the worse. Or, simply because it believes that time-tested is best. In any case: perhaps a bit of mutual help - some cross-pollination of values - here might be in order?

I wonder, too:  a program of "formation" has to be organized along its own philosophical lines; it's got to be holistic in some way, and pointed to some end.  It's got to be integrated.  So is the piecemeal "formation" we're seeing now - which, as far as I can see, consists of what happens at work, what one's family and friends think and say, politics, and the "culture war" - with perhaps a bit of the "confessional culture" thrown in (but which doesn't seem to mean that people are getting any really good grip on what's going on with themselves, although I think it does help a bit along these lines) - going to be effective in any particular way?  Or is it just going to lead - as it seems to be leading - to dis-integration and reactionism?

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