Throw a non-sequitur grenade, or social strategies for introverts

The other day at the Center For Inquiry Austin non-fiction book club we discussed Susan Cain's "Quiet: The Power of Introverts". All the 8 people in the room self-identified as introverts. We told personal stories of extreme social avoidance (one person, as a teenager, asked his/her parents to turn down an invitation to a school dance on his/her behalf), and debated whether Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a rare example of an extroverted scientist, or if he only acts as an extrovert as a public figure. We also discussed how the workplace and the rest of the society can be hostile to introverts -- that's one of the points the book brings up. "Open" office plans, a.k.a cubicle farms, don't so much facilitate collaboration, as keep introverts from getting work done; in brainstorming exercises, the most dominant person's ideas usually get pushed through, no matter their quality, and the quieter people's ideas not heard; and we won't even mention the horror of various "professional development" and "team building" events, which, as several members attested, did absolutely nothing for their professional growth.

(Myself, I was lucky enough to get exposed to a team-building event just once. It was lead by a motivational speaker who made us play little games -- the bane of introverts -- the purpose of which was to demonstrate some simple and obvious idea. For example: write your name 5 times with your dominant hand. Now write it 5 times with your non-dominant hand. Did it take you much longer? Does it look like chicken-scratch? See, it shows that it's easier and faster to do things you're naturally good at, and much harder to do things you're not good at!

I started out with an open mind. I considered that all those games and exercises, all the platitudes they were designed to express, might add up to some genuine insight. But I lost hope for any such revelation, when I saw the speaker struggling to explain the concepts of "form" and "content". Apparently she thought that we -- a group of programmers and other technical people, who earn their daily bread from abstract thinking -- didn't already know these concepts. Moreover, she thought we would find them hard to understand without a concrete object analogy. So she looked around with urgency in her eyes, grabbed a cup from the table, and raised it, saying: "Form is like this cup, and content is like the water in the cup." After that, I pretty much tuned her out.)

CFI Austin non-fiction book club. More pictures from CFI Austin can be found in my photo gallery.

But back to the discussion.

We also touched upon the appeal of cults, and (at the risk of making it sound like an extrovert hate fest) speculated about how much stock market crash can be indirectly blamed on extroverts, their irrational confidence making investors believe that this market bubble was different. The discussion often deviated from the book (which is just as well, because I haven't read it), but this was one area where everybody in the room had personal experience with, and sharing that personal experience was even better than discussing the book.

Since ~ 75% of society are extroverts, most social conversations flow in such a way that people don't stick to any one topic for more than a few sentences, touching it superficially, and moving on to another topic by association, not because it logically follows. For an introvert, who think *before* they speak, and speak only when they have something to contribute, such a conversation becomes meaningless. By the time they are ready to share their well thought-out point, the conversation would have moved on. So, are there any strategies for an introvert to make social interactions more self-friendly? Some people suggested to interject a complete non-sequitur. Like a grenade, it will cause some chaos in the conversation: "Huh? What did she just say?" And then the introvert can make a point they're trying to make.

Movies: The Dangerous Method

"The Dangerous Method" is a movie about Carl Gustav Jung, and his complicated relationships with two people: Sigmund Freud, his colleague and mentor, and Sabina Spielrein, his patient and lover. It was not a bad movie, but I expected more of it.

While it touched upon Freud and Jung's friendship and rivalry, their diverging methods of psychoanalysis, and their eventual breakup, its primary focus was Jung's affair with Sabina. Not that it was a bad choice, given how vivid is the character of the crazy and brilliant, but mostly brilliant Sabina. Like most people in this story, she was a real, historical person, a young Russian Jewish woman who met Jung when she was mentally ill, was enormously helped by psychoanalysis, and later became an innovative psychiatrist herself. Keira Knightley's acting is a bit overdone in the "crazy Sabina" scenes, though it's amazing how such a beautiful actress contorts her face and body into such ugly poses. Overall I think she was great in this role.

Speaking of actors that were not so good in their roles: professor Aragorn! And not just because of his Lord of the Rings fame. Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud just didn't compute. Every time I saw him on screen, it pulled me out of the story. Even with the "authentic" makeup, hair, and beard, Viggo looks nothing like Freud, at least in the pictures I've seen. His acting wasn't convincing either. He played Freud with all the same cliches that denote a sophisticated man of a bygone era: slow, drawn-out sentences, half-closed eyelids, a pipe permanently stuck in his teeth. It's like I've seen this character on the screen hundreds of times, and I don't even watch that many movies.

For a movie about the birth of psychoanalysis, it oddly lacks intellectual content. Considering how Jung's ideas about archetypes and collective unconscious captivated the public (even if they later fell out of use; even so, writers and artists still derive inspiration from them), they get surprisingly little mention in the movie. There is a scene that suggests that Jung's notions of anima and animus were planted in his mind by Sabina: in one of their conversations she says there is something male in every woman, and something female in every man. And so the movie removes the last reason for a viewer to believe that Jung was famous for anything other than his polyamorous lifestyle, or wacky paranormal beliefs (he thought he was capable of premonition). He is a vivid, conflicted and sympathetic character, but it's not clear what he was notable for.

A movie about Jung that didn't concern itself with any of his intellectual contributions, but only with his romance with a patient, was like... why, it's like a fantasy novel that focused primarily on an exchange rate between Elvish gold and dollar.

Then again, I shouldn't criticize the movie too much. We are talking here about historical figures that achieved a mythical power in and of themselves, and their lives cannot be squeezed into two hours of screen time. To tell a story about them requires ruthless picking and choosing.

A natural explanation for a woo-woo phenomenon

A recent article in Salon.com made me think that some people's claim of ability to see auras may be neither a lie nor wishful thinking, but simply a case of synesthesia.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/01/15/synesthesia/

To quote the article,

Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which activation of one sensory processing system (e.g., numbers or written language) leads to the automatic engagement of a second, distinct sensory processing system (e.g., color) to create a "crossed" sensory perception. For example, as in my case, numbers appear to have their own colors. Or, in other forms of synesthesia, sensory processing is "crossed" with emotion processing, imbuing letters, words, days of the week or months with their own personalities.

The author further says:

[...] people had colors, too. Not everyone. But many people did, whether I liked them or not, whether I knew them well or not. I didn't have to think about it; it was just so. As apparent to me as their eye color.

And

For much of my childhood, I enjoyed my synesthesia. [...] I'd turn my eyes to a teacher halfway through class to bask in her lavender glow. [...] I'd heard about auras -- radiant light surrounding a person, somehow revealing or reflecting his or her soul -- and I figured the color I saw from certain people, or numbers, was an aura. Had I somehow gained access to a spiritual dimension?

So the so-called "aura" (or, rather, the ability of some people to see it) may actually be a natural phenomenon. Of course, it is useless for any practical purpose -- you can't extract any real information from it -- because it is purely subjective. Any two synesthetes will see the same person's auras in different colors and attribute different emotional qualities to it.