Blog Mirror: Introverts Don’t Hate People, They Hate Shallow Socializing

 

Introverts Don’t Hate People, They Hate Shallow Socializing

The Case Against Travel.

That's the title of an article in the current issue of The New Yorker.  It's available online, and it's brilliant.

I'm in that category of people who don't like traveling.  I like it in the abstract, but in the reality not so much.  When travel is approaching, I frankly dread it.

This is a bit ironic for a person who has traveled as much as I have.  I've been to three foreign countries, a minor number by real traveler standards, and a large number of the States.  Having said that, since graduating from college, all of my travel to foreign countries has been work related in some sense.  And prior to that, every trip out of the country, in those cases all to Canada, were to visit relatives, save for one.

The ironic thing is that I generally don't mind traveling when I am traveling.  The article itself taps into why. Travel for work is not vacation travel, so there's nothing, if you will, artificial about it.  Vacation travel can be artificial, although unlike the author of this article not all of it is.  I could imagine living a life in retirement in which I traveled with my spouse and dog in our trailer to hunt and fish, perhaps going all the way up to Alaska, but that's also a bit different.  It's more like being a nomad, which our species once was universally.

A friend of mine loves traveling, and given the traveling that he does, I have a sneaking suspicion that the day will arrive at which he wants to retire and that retirement will have been delayed, some of his retirement money having been spent on travel to far distant places.  He's invited me on trips more than once, and I've always declined.  "Don't you want to see the Holy Land?".  No, I don't.  "Don't you want to see Rome?" Well, if I was in Italy, I'd go to Rome, but I'm not going to make it a purpose destination.

Travel for work. . . or for study, and study can be one's own personal studies, is different.  That's noted in here as well.  

It's refreshing to read somebody who gets it.

I abhor new ways of life and unfamiliar places. . . . The idea of travelling nauseates me. . . . Ah, let those who don’t exist travel! . . . Travel is for those who cannot feel. . . . Only extreme poverty of the imagination justifies having to move around to feel.

Fernando Pessoa

The Introvert's Lament. That awkward conversation.

Lawyers tend to discuss a lot of topics, and many vigorously.

"Lonesome Charley" Reynolds.  Son of a physician, Reynolds was such a loner that he ended up with a solitary name in an occupation that involved solitude, that of U.S. Army scout.  His days ended at Little Big Horn.  Prior to being a scout, he'd occupied a variety of occupations, including that of buffalo hunter.  His visage has appeared here before.

These include some of the topics you aren't supposed to discuss, notably religion and politics, although I don't know that you really aren't supposed to discuss them.

When they are discussed, however, they need to be discussed in some intelligent context.  I'm not afraid of discussing them, and as over the three decades of legal practice I know have I've worked with one individual who made it a minor and occasional sport to attack Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, I've found myself having to defend my beliefs simply for walking into the break room.  On that, I'd note, that I don't like having to engage in such debates not because they're serious topics, but rather because somebody is in an ornery mood and just wants to argue, or who views arguing on such matters as sport.

I note, on that, in recent years this has happened less and less as I've been able to pretty much defeat the opposing view to the point of concession.  It's at least to the credit of the arguer that they don't go away mad, but concede.

Anyhow, this isn't about that.

People who like to comment on public speaking often note that "you should know your room".  I think extroverts, or at least highly extroverted people, don't tend to be able to "read the room".

Twice in a week I've been in the office doing what I do in the office, which isn't theology, and had a coworker who is a coreligious simply blurt out of the blue, and I do mean blurt out, his concerns over Pope Francis.

From an introverted way of thinking, it's one thing if a person is idled, i.e., there's reason to believe that I'm in a posture in which I'm not engaged in some other intellectual endeavor of a work fashion, and the setting is appropriate to bring up a religious topic.  I.e., if I'm sitting in the break room alone, or if I'm in my office on an off hour looking at pictures of naked elk, or sporting goods equipment that I don't need but what like to have.  For one thing, if approached in such a fashion, on a topic that's sort of inside baseball, that's a different deal.

Indeed, the same coworker likes to go to the fellow who has an office near me and blurt out stuff about the Minnesota Vikings and Greenbay Packers, which is fine as they both have an interest in football and football is a monstrous triviality.  The fact that I'm a conscripted third participant in some boring discussion about a boring sport is irrelevant, as my opinion on the terminal dullness of football is not going to be impacted on this, let alone am I go to form an opinion about either team.

And that gets back to part of being an introvert.  We have next to no "casual conversations".  

It's not that we do not enjoy conversing, we do, but everything we're saying is some sort of analysis.  That isn't true for extroverts.  Extroverts often talk just for entertainment, the same way that some people pick up Cheez-Its from a bowl.  "Hmm. . . I'm bored. . . Oh! Cheez-Its!"

"Hmm. . .I'm bored, I don't want another Jesuit Pope again, ever!"

And here's the problem.

To an introvert, it's not only the statement made that now needs to be rapidly analyzed and responded to, but the audience does.

It's one thing if there's no audience.  Then, bare minimum, you'd be entitled to say "oh, why do you feel that way?" and go from there.

But if there is, and in an office there is, you know have somebody blurting out a personal opinion on a deeply religious matter that's going to be taken in analyzed, and filed away in some fashion by the listeners, the same way I would if somebody blurted out, "Russell Nelson is the worst Mormon Prophet of all time!" (which I've never heard anyone say, by the say, it's just an example).  Whatever the merits and demerits of the person might be, to outsiders with no context it's going to be filed away in some fashion, and probably not in a really helpful way.

Put another way, I don't think the Protestant background listeners were probably too concerned about Papal Cardinal appointments and whether they are too liberal, or if Jesuits make for poor Popes.  All of those topics are current ones in the Catholic and Apostolic Christian world, but they require intelligent discussion and a receptive or at least interested audience to be properly developed.

Or, as Jimmy Akin has noted, don't turn people off by arguing badly, and as the podcasters on Catholic Stuff You Should Know have noted, "don't be weird".

By the same token, I really don't think that minorities find it amusing to have somebody try to be amusing with their ethnicity.

I note this as I also find myself occasionally interacting with somebody who has a very, very nice Mexican woman working for them.  By Mexican, I mean Mexican. She's from Mexico. This individual finds it funny to refer to himself as Alejandro and affect a fake Mexican accent.

I don't like to be on the receiving end of such efforts at humor, and maybe I take it more poorly than she does, but that's just wrong.  I ran into this again the other day, and while I'm generally slow to react to these things, as I don't expect it, it made me mad, and I'm still mad.  I guess I'm now primed, as I'm an introvert and I don't have any idle conversations, but I'm at the point that when it happens again I'm going to say something.

Words have consequences, and quite often, they have consequences for somebody who is simply listening.

Prior Related Threads:

The Introverts Lament. "I'd like you to meet. . . "

The Introvert Subsistence Hunter Meets the Extrovert Midwestern Gregarian

On Arguing and Evolutionary Biology

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Matthew 5

Yes, this post will somewhat lack direction.

The Happy Warriors and the Wolves.

People who like to argue provoking an introvert into arguing. . . as seen by the introvert.

I don't like arguing.  It's one of the constant ironies of my profession in relation to me.

I'm really good at arguing.  I always have been.  I didn't intend to make it my living, that's for sure.  It was an accident that it ended up part of rice bowl really.  I hadn't intended to go into litigation, but when I was in my last year of law school I clerked at a firm that did litigation and now, 32 years later, that's where I still am.  

I learned to argue at home, but not in heated debates.  My home was pretty intellectual and I was the only child. Different parents deal with that differently, but as my parents also came from intellectual homes it was normal to discuss the merits and demerits of a lot of topics.

I'm highly used to arguing professionally, and of course do it all the time.  And I can do it on any topic, or at least on any I have knowledge of.  On some topics which are open to debate, such as certain historical topics, I do enjoy it. But I don't like argument for argument's sake.  And I regard forensic debate, as done in high schools and universities, with absolute contempt.

Indeed, I'll occasionally hear somebody aspiring to be a lawyer, or even who became a lawyer, state that they did it as "I like arguing". That doesn't make you well suited to be a lawyer, it means that you're an asshole.

Professionally, or on the topics which are open to debate and about which I enjoy discussions, I can completely separate myself from the argument.  Except where people can't do that, and get personal, mean or petty, I don't leave the courtroom or the discussion angry.  Not everyone can do that, however, and I note that some of the people who claim that they "enjoy arguing" cannot.  

Indeed, there is a real psychological difference between gregarious arguers and introverted intellectual arguers.  I'm highly introverted and when people who like to simply argue on stuff provoke one with me, I normally avoid it completely.  If basically cornered on one, however, and forced to argue, I have an Irish temper, and that spills over into arguing.

People think that people with Irish tempers fly suddenly into arguing  Not hardly. Rather, they avoid the fight until forced into it. At that point, it's not for fun, it's for blood.  At the point where one of the "happy warriors" that I encounter socially finally provokes me into an argument, as they "enjoy arguing" the game hasn't begun for me, as it isn't a game.  I never ever argue just for sport, in that context.

Indeed, I have a friend who claims to like arguing and constantly is provoking arguments with about anyone who will argue.  This doesn't usually involve me as I'll avoid the conversation.  When he's in the lunch room dissing something to provoke an argument or some body of thought, I just leave without joining the fray.  

The other day, however it became impossible as I was cornered on a topic. And as I'm really good at arguing, and this wasn't professional, and no separation was possible, I was forced to join the argument.

Provoking such a person into an argument like that is a lot like throwing rocks at wolves. Normally they'll walk away.  But if that gives you the idea that they always are going to do so, you are mistaken. If they turn on you, they're going to try to kill you, metaphorically.  Such arguers don't believe in allowing the other person to "walk away to fight another day". The battle is on and there will be only one survivor. That's it.

Which is where I'm at in such debates, metaphorically.  By the time I was done arguing with the person, I'd not only defeated their argument, I'd left the happy warrior as white as a ghost, broken down, and shaking.  And I don't regret it a bit.  Join me in an argument for sport and not know your facts, I'm going to destroy you.  I'll keep arguing once you try to disengage and I'll leave your argument torn to shreds and your world view messed up. 

If you are a happy warrior, i.e. an asshole, leave people who aren't like that alone.  We just wondered in here trying to get through the day, not for your sport.

We don't argue for sport.

And here endth that lesson.

Evolutionary Biology and the Argument.

Mother and daughter cooking. They'd probably been arguing before the photo was taken.

I'm constantly and deeply amazed how little attention evolutionary biology gets.

We are right now in a constant swirl of social nonsense which anyone with a modicum of understanding on evolutionary biology could avoid.  I'm practically at the point where if a person is going to spout off on any topic, they should have at least had an introductory course on it.

Indeed, the contempt for science, on the right and the left, is simply epic right now.  There are entire topics that "conservatives" can't touch right now as they run contrary to science.  And the left, which likes to point this out, is at war with evolutionary biology.

It's a tragedy.

And here's where I'll stand to get myself in trouble.

Men and women are radically different, as I've mentioned here before, and one of the things that they are really different in regards to are household arguments.

I don't argue much with my wife.  Every married couple. . . lets' make that every couple, argues some.  But we don't argue much, which is a good thing of course.  In addition, I don't like to argue, and therefore I generally avoid arguments with people if I can.

My wife and daughter, however, argue with each other constantly.

I don't think either one of them grasps how distressing this is to a person who doesn't like arguing, particularly as there's virtually no way not to be involved in their arguments at some level.

I think this is a common feature of household dynamics, and I think its' explained by evolutionary biology.  Look it up on the net, however, you'll get a pile of social science crap, most of which isn't scientific in nature whatsoever.  Indeed, for such a common occurrence you'll see efforts to blame it on everything other than what it is. Blaming it on men is one such common approach, which is not only non scientific, it's just bullshit social propaganda.  I.e., it must be the fault of men as everything is the fault of men.

So, what provokes this part of my post?

I generally stay out of the mother/daughter arguments if I can, including avoiding efforts to be drawn into them.  When I can if there's a real point of contest that there's a solution to, or a problem that has caused them, I point it out, and generally the view is accepted.  This presumes, however, that you know what the argument is actually about. 

Often, you will not.

Indeed, there will be an observation on that below.

My work involves a lot of professional arguing. And as an introvert, my work also has the feature of dealing with people a lot, something that's draining on introverts.  At the end of a day, an introvert needs a little down time.  I often don't get it.

The other day I didn't, on either score.  When I got home, my wife was on the driveway (people can hear my vehicles distinct sounds pretty easily).  I thought at first how nice that was, my wife coming to greet me.  

Instead, I got in an odd tone, the question "what do you want to do for dinner?"

Now, that's an innocent enough question to be sure.  I really didn't have an answer, and I virtually never try to actually dictate a dinner choice.  I've given up on that, and after a long day, I don't really have any desire to plan out a dinner. So my answer was something neutral, as in whatever you want is fine.

"I haven't planned anything" was the response, and it was a bit of an agitated one.  Now, that's a common response to a conversation that I'd just as soon not have, but which we frequently do.

My wife is one of those people who like to make decisions by presenting endless options.  I've posted on that decision making type here before, on our laws of behavior series.

Everyone must make decisions in life, of course.  But not everyone has the same decision making style. Some people are highly analytical, others highly instinctive. Some make decisions based on facts, others on emotions.  Some make decisions rapidly, while others prefer to deliberate slowly.

But there are some people who actually prefer to have options, rather than make decisions at all. For highly decisive people, these people are aggravating in the extreme.

Chances are high that everyone knows somebody like this. Confronted with the necessity of deciding something, they tend to go to a decisive person and lay out the options. The decisive person will decide. Rather than accept it, the other person will set out 27 more options, and go on and on actually past the point where the other person  has committed a decision, with that person usually aggravated in the extreme by that point.

These people like options more than decisions, and are often able to get by on a lot of decisions by not deciding.  Somebody else will end up doing it, usually to the declared surprise of the option lover, who doesn't like having options eliminated, and who has added an other 72 options by the time the decisive person forces a commitment.

This is often my wife's approach to decisions.  If you are in the opposite camp, and I tend to be, this is a species of torture in some instances, although there are instances in which I will do that myself, particularly on some very serious topics.  At any rate, the I haven't planned anything comment drew a second "I want to go out".

That was fine, and was followed by me with a question where to, which was followed by the reply she didn't want to go out, but order in, which I agreed to.  This was followed by a comment that we'd saved food she didn't want to waste, which was true.  I said that was fine, which was followed by there wasn't enough spaghetti, which is what we'd saved. Then she pointed out there was also a chicken breast that had been saved from the day prior.

At this point there was clearly no way out, so I just said, thinking I was agreeing to what had been noted, that I'd make something with all of those, which was followed by that being an impossibility.  I then agreed to cook something, even though I'd done that the day prior after a really long day, which brought back the comment that she didn't want to waste food.

A conversation like this, for a person who is required to make decisions all day long is a special sort of torture.  I'd been asked to make a decision, given a range of options, and then told that all of the options were 100% impossible. What's the point of that?

Well, there probably wasn't one.  What was really going on was a continuation of some sort of argument about which I'm still unclear, between my wife and daughter.  My wife, in frustration, spilled out into the driveway to give me a set of problems because she was upset at my daughter.  I vaguely discerned that the conversation had started with one between them on dinner.

This flowed into a conversation in which I tried to draw my daughter out on the question, but she already had her back arched up as well, and it was instantly an argument between the two of them, with me as the unwilling referee. That rapidly expanded into a set of planning demands from my wife, who likes to plan things with precision further out than I conceivably can.  I'll tend not to plan things until I know that I can, which must be frustrating for people who like a clear agenda.  Indeed, I'm not really big on clear agendas for a lot of things as, over time, I tend to find that my professional life disrupts them.

This went on and on and ultimately I was involved more and more, something that I hate to do, until I was finally engaged.  And at that part, I destroyed all of their arguments Teutoburg Forest style and went off to the room where this computer is located, shut the door, and sat by myself.

On their own they came up with a dinner plan and we had that, and a very quiet evening.  People, having made me bitterly angry, avoided me, and they probably still should, as I'm still bitterly angry.  

What was that argument about?

I don't know, but I don't think it has anything to do with dinner. That would be monumentally stupid.

What I think it has to do is having two closely related women in the same household.

I know that sounds Neanderthal, and that's likely what causes female therapists to claim that the spats between wives and daughters are men's fault, but in looking up mother daughter conflicts, I came up with one comment that I thought absolutely brilliant.  Here it is:

mothers and daughters fight from 10 -20 there is nothing you can do about it . unless you are thinking about getting a divorce back up your wife in front of your daughter all the time . have a quiet word to you wife when its just the 2 of you . but if you take your daughters side she will think its ok to fight with your wife .

I think that's right.

That is particularly the case that "mothers and daughters fight from 10-20 there is nothing you can do about it".

But why?

Nature.  I.e., I think that's DNA.

In spite of what bullshit sociologist think, women mature much more rapidly and their behavior is radically different from men's.  And that impacts their relationship with their children, i.e., boys and girls, much differently.

From about the time they're 13, girls DNA tells them they are women.  And it also tells them that they are to be the head of their domestic households.  In the Old Testament we find examples of ancient Jews with more than one wife, and almost invariably it ends up being a miserable experience as one woman doesn't like the other and it drives the man nuts.  If you can stand to watch the horrible television show Sister Wives, you'll see the same thing at work.   Cody Brown must be on the most extensive set of pharmaceuticals imaginable simply to eat breakfast every morning.  Brown is a member of some Mormon offshoot that must compel him to such a lifestyle, but the more typical reaction in that circumstances is probably the one portrayed in Paint Your Wagon where the frustrated husband auctions off one of his wives for domestic peace.

That's a different situation, obviously, but the same logic, I think applies.  Once a girl hits 13, in her mind she's fully mature and her natural impulses are telling her to run things in regard to herself, and in the house.  Those same impulses are at work in her mother.  Getting the two to mesh, perfectly, isn't going to happen.

For whatever reason its different with men.  Men generally don't try to be head of the domestic household in a family, even if they are very much the head of the family in general.  In a tribal society, they're out during the day trying to hunt something, and they have to have cooperation with each other to get that done.  Just as too many cooks spoil the broth at home, a lack of teamwork in the field can get you stomped flat.

Additionally, irrespective of what bullshit sociologist wish to believe, men generally have a pretty strong protective instinct and women know this.  It's part of the reason that women in combat is a frankly stupid idea.  Any man who wont' act to save a woman from harm, if he can, isn't worth his rations, and rank and position have nothing to do with that.  It just is.

Women also have a strong nurturing aspect that men lack to the same degree.  Almost everyone knows this, in spite of what they might assert.  When we find that in men, it's remarkable.  Be that as it may, in the domestic household its generally what makes the mother somebody that children turn to with problems, arguments notwithstanding.  And this frustrates mothers in regard to their daughters and also strongly ties mothers to their sons.  

All this goes back to the tribe and what we were days long gone, maybe even before our current species. And that's what those arguments are about.  They aren't about dinner, they're about "this is my tent."

None of which really deals with the complications such things entail or that arguments are serious by nature (except to the aforementioned "I like to argue" crowd).  But which partially explains why I have a long day ahead of me and I'm already tired.  I love my family, and I like having them all here.  One of the tragedies of the modern industrial world is that everyone has to leave home, it seems.  I'll be glad when the arguing era stops, which hopefully it will soon.

The Introvert Subsistence Hunter Meets the Extrovert Midwestern Gregarian

"Lonesome Charley" Reynolds.  Son of a  physician, Reynolds was such a loner that he ended up with a solitary name in an occupation that involved solitude, that of U.S. Army scout  His days ended at Little Big Horn.  Prior to being a scout, he'd occupied a variety of occupations, including that of buffalo hunter.

I've been a Wyoming hunter my entire life. And in the context of being a native Wyomingite, what that really means is I'm a subsistence hunter.

The Subsistence Hunter

Elk hunter in Wyoming, early 20th Century.  In a lot of ways, for some, it hasn't changed much.

There's a lot more to that last sentence than immediately meets the eye as it implies an ethos and a very extensive one.  It also implies one to almost anyone who can state the first sentence as well.  Indeed, it tends to apply to people who grew up in what geographers would define as rural areas, but which those who have experienced it would define as natural areas.

Subsistence hunters hunt for food. But more than that, they believe, and believe strongly, that securing your own food in nature, the way that human beings have done since before humans had language and ever since.  It expresses, at least to an extent, a longing for a more natural condition, and a questioning of the history that lead us away from agrarianism, with which it is closely linked.

As a child, I was first introduced to bird hunting.

My father hunted birds and the thing he hunted more than anything else was waterfowl.  I started hunting birds at about age 5.  We also hunted sage chickens during the short sage chicken season, and when Wyoming reopened a dove season, we hunted that as well.  As a early teen we started hunting blue grouse when a friend of my father's, who loved eating blue grouse, started taking us.  For my father, all of these game bird species had been ones he'd hunted when he was young and to the extent that some had dropped off that reflected the pressures of work.*  Work disrupted his hunting of game birds that had to take him far afield, which did not mean that he wasn't outdoors generally on a weekly basis. He was also a dedicated and successful fisherman in a way that far surpasses my comparatively meager efforts.  Indeed, I'm a fair weather spring and summer subsistence fisherman where as he fished far into the fall.  He didn't ice fish, however, which I've taken up, with my daughter, a little.

Me and my father when I was a little kid.  This is at the Dan Speas Fish Hatchery.

Shortly after I started hunting waterfowl, I started hunting rabbits too, and it was a byproduct of it at first.  Rabbits are everywhere in Wyoming and if there were no ducks to hunt, where we hunted them, I sometimes hunted rabbits.  When I was grade school, however, I had a couple of friends, one a native Wyomingite who was the child of native Wyomingites, and a native Utahan who was the child of native Uthans, whose primary hunting activities, as a kid, were focused on rabbits, so stand alone rabbit hunting came into the picture.

Native hunter with rabbit, 1890.

Big game hunting didn't come in until just about the time I was ready to leave grade school.  My father had hunted deer and antelope when he was young, and at a time at which antelope populations had just recovered enough to allow for antelope hunting, but he had also quit doing that when I was born for the same reasons noted above.  He took it back up when I was a little older.  Some of my friend's fathers, however, were dedicated Wyoming subsistence big game hunters all along.  As soon as we were old enough to big game hunt ourselves, which was an older age than Wyoming provides for now, we all became deer and antelope hunters. Some of my junior high friends were also elk hunters, something that some of my father's friends were as well, but which required a much more extensive time allowance for big game hunting than my father had.  I didn't start hunting elk until I was in junior college, when I had a lot of time, and could drive.

By that time my mother had fallen extremely ill and my father and I were basically on our own, or more properly on our own with an invalid to care for.  As hunters, our table was shiting over from heavily game to more and more exclusively game.  When I left for university, I was on exclusively game.  When I got back out, and my father passed away, that continued until I was married.  All in all, I lived on game almost alone for a period of over a decade.  As my father put in a huge garden, and I kept it up after he died until the first few years of our marriage, we were not only on a sustenance hunting diet, but a sustenance produce diet as well.

I'd still live that way, if I could.

Which I probably could, but my ranch raised wife insists on beef as well, so we pack a volunteer cow annually.  We supplement that, however, with a lot of wild game.  Having said that, the last couple of years, due to the percentage of licenses that go to out of state hunters, we've had bad luck in drawing big game licenses. But that's another story.

Springer

Pheasants are an Asian game bird, long hunted in China and Mongolia.  China once had huge pheasant populations until Chairman Mao ordered them wiped out, because he was a Communist doofus. 

The Springer/Bump Sullivan Wildlife Management Habitat Area is an area in Wyoming's farm belt owned and operated by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.  It's use and size, as related by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, are as follows:

Public Access Area Open: Foot and horse access open year-round
Exceptions: Closure is limited to vehicles only. Foot and horse access open year-round
Recreation Opportunities: Fishing, Hunting, Camping, Hiking, Wildlife Viewing
Amenities: Comfort Stations, Boat Ramp
Restrictions: Oct. 1 - Memorial Day Weekend
Additional Restrictions: ORV travel is not allowed
Total Acres: 3071.4

One of the hunting opportunities afford by Springer is pheasant hunting, and the WGFD raises the pheasants.  I.e, its a wild bird farm run by the State.  It isn't the only one. At least one more (and there's probably more than one more) is located near Glendo Wyoming.

I don't know how long Springer has been around.  I really only became aware of it as an adult and only then when one of my uncles, who had hunted in his youth but not much as an adult, started to hunt there with his coworkers.  When he first started to do that he lacked a shotgun, so he borrowed one from me for a couple of years until he bought his own.  

I wasn't tempted to go to Springer at the time and it was for a long time thereafter that I wasn't.  This was partially, indeed mostly, for a philosophical reason.  Pheasants are a wild bird, but to my mind, pheasants raised on a bird farm aren't wild, so it didn't match with my ethos as described above.

Indeed, pheasants aren't native to Wyoming. . . or North America, at all.  Not that this particularly bothered me.  There are a lot of bird species that have been introduced into North America, although pheasants are the only game species I can think of offhand.  At least one other game bird species, however, has been introduced into Wyoming, and that very successfully.  Indeed, almost too successfully.  That other species are turkeys, which are now everywhere, including all over town.

Introducing wild species into an area they are not native to is a dangerous thing to do and with at least mammals, I'm really opposed to it.  Indeed a couple of domestic species that have been introduced into North America and then escaped to go feral have been real nuisances, those being feral (i.e., "wild") horses and feral cats.  Chronic Wasting Disease, the disease related to scabies and mad cow disease that's been ravaging deer and elk populations in the West came out of Colorado game farms, something that shouldn't be legal. And feral pigs are wreaking havoc from Colorado on down.

But generally introduced game birds haven't been a problem and are even a benefit where they've been introduced, so I have not problem with them.  Indeed, pheasants have been so successfully introduced in the Midwest that they're practically a native species now.  And they do a lot of good, actually, in terms of pest eradication.  More pheasants, fewer grasshoppers.

So that wasn't my problem.  It was the farm aspect of it that was my problem.

Well, once I started practicing law I was introduced to a set of hunting practices that were more social in nature than the sort of hunting that I was used to.  And right about the same time, or actually while still a law student, I was strongly introduced to big game trophy hunting.

I've never accommodated myself to trophy hunting, although I don't begrudge those who hunt for trophies as long as they eat the meat, which you are required to do by law, and which they generally all do.  I do have a problem with managing big game horn populations for horns.  I feel that they should be managed for populate, and generally in Wyoming, they are.  I hear trophy hunters complain about that, but I"m sure not one of the ones complaining.  I will complain on another thread about the number of licenses going to out of state hunters, but that's for some future thread.

I have accommodated myself, however, to the game bird farms.

Perhaps it just hypocritical, but I think it's okay largely for the same reason that I'm okay with stocking fish, something that I've been familiar with my whole life.  Birds are frankly a lower form of animal, and while I'd rather catch wild fish (and usually do, as I fish in the mountains most often), I want fish in all the streams and rivers and that means stocking. Same with birds. That gets birds out there.  Indeed, pheasants exist in a couple of places locally where I know that they were introduced eons ago, and they wouldn't be there otherwise. Down in the farm belt some of the pheasants make it out into the farms and take up life there, having been established in this fashion. Where we farm now there are pheasants that got there that way. And in much of the farm belt the fields would be devoid of a year around bird but for pheasants.  Waterfowl would be present seasonally, but not all year long.  

And game farm birds to serve to get hunters out into the field and introduce some to a more natural way of living than would otherwise be the case.  With me, even in my now ever advancing years, I engage in  even bird hunting in really rough terrain, part of the reason that I'm in good shape for my age.  But I know that a lot of desk bound workers aren't going to hike a couple of miles into the hills just to have a chance at native birds, hunt miles while doing that, and hike miles back out.  I'd do that every day if I could, but a lot of people can't. And they can't, because they physically can't.  Stocked birds helps reverse that a bit.

And it helps keep wild grounds wild.

So, I've acclimated myself to it.

The Midwestern Gregarain

Construction workers drinking beer at the entrance of a bar, December 1940.

People who don't think various cultures are different even within the United States just haven't met very many people from elsewhere.

The West seems to favor people like me in a way.  I.e, in a lot of settings it's pretty easy to be an introvert here.  

Indian scout, Mexican Revolution, 1911.

Being an introvert isn't the same thing as being a misanthrope.  It just is a different mental make up.  As part of that makeup we find social settings, frankly, draining, except when they're people we're highly familiar with. Extraverts are just the opposite, and extreme extroverts highly different.

I think a lot of that is genetic.  My father was certainly an introvert.  But some of it may be learned or environmental as well.  I grew up as an only child and when I was 13, my mother became extremely ill which left the family as basically me and my father, as previously noted here.  In that setting, you learn to do things for yourself, entertain yourself and you learn not to ever be lonely, as you always have yourself. At some point, you not only learn that, but you need it.  Too much interaction is too much, and you need a mental break.**

Extraverts, on the other hand, aren't that way at all.

Enter my coworkers.  My coworkers is from the Midwest where it seems to me the urban culture favors extraverts.  The same is true of the East.  They always has.  If you read about working men in the Midwest and East prior to the onset of the day, you learn how they worked closely together, and the hit the bars, after work, and on weekends they all went to the same ballgames and the like.  Good depictions of this are given in the film The Deer Hunter and Good Will Hunting, and pretty accurately.

This makes for an interesting dynamic if you aren't in that group, as they way they view the world is so very different.  My coworker, for example, always eats lunch at work except when he eats lunch out with other people.  When he eats out, he invites people to eat with him that he finds interesting and chats them up.  I'm sure they are interesting, but I find eating lunch with people I don't know well extremely stressful (and I often don't eat lunch).  If he eats in the office, when I come back in I often find him engaged in conversations, as entertainment, that he finds interesting in ways that make me feel very awkward.  We're co-religious and I'll answer questions and provide explanations, or defenses, regarding our Faith when called to do so, but I don't intentionally spark religious debates or just interject religious topics into the middle of casual conversations.***  He does all the time.  I'll write about such topics here, but I don't routinely interject and discuss them with people unless I know them extremely well.

At the end of the day he often socializes with coworkers.  "Let's have a drink!" is a common plea from him.  I nearly always decline these invitations as after a day of interacting with people all day long, I want to go home.  He and his family have people over for dinner or activities constantly.  We only do so for really significant occasion or occasionally for holidays.  I'd find a weekend in which I had invited a group of people over for discussions on religion or whatever to be taxing, and no break from human interaction for me is taxing.  Indeed, I always cringe in horror when I have work to do that takes me into the office during the weekend and some helpful assistant starts asking to come in and help me.  Help, for me, in that situation is not coming in to help me.

And hence my confusion.

The Trip

As soon as we got our reserve date, my excited co-worker starting asking; "We're going down the night before, right?"

I was baffled and simply answered that we were going down.

It's only 90 miles away and some people, maybe me, will be bringing their hunting dogs.  Staying in a hotel with a hunting dog is a pain and, frankly, in my line of work I've stayed in a pile of hotels and really have no desire to stay in more except when I can't avoid it.  For years I've had the 300 mile rule which is that if something I need to do is 300 miles from here or less, it's a day trip  That way, I avoid the hotel.  I'm a super early riser anymore so I can make 300 miles from here easily before 9:00 a.m.  Making some place 90 miles away by sunup is no problem.  Indeed, getting somewhere by sunup is something that is easy for me to do anyway as I have a lifetime of experience at it, first as a kid, then as a soldier, then as a geology student.  No problem.

Unless the weather is bad, of course.

So, we always having our own view of things, I didn't take this question seriously, until it became obvious to me that it was seriously posed.

"Um. . . why would we do that?"

"Because we can eat out and drink beers!"

I"m not a teetotaler by any means, but like most subsistence hunters I don't mix alcohol with hunting.  I.e., staying up late the night prior and drinking beer isn't something I"m inclined to do.  Having a beer with dinner, if I'm camping, is something I will do, or having a beer or wine with dinner if I get something and cook it that night at  home, which I'll often do, is also something I'll routinely do. But traveling someplace, putting my dog in my hotel room, and then drinking beer. . . I'm not going to do that.

For that matter, we all work together anyway.  And we all have to stay in hotels all the time.  Why would we want to do that.

Well, if you are an extravert and dig lots of socializing, you'll no doubt understand why.

If you are an introvert subsistence hunter like me, you won't get it.  Shoot, you won't even do it.  

I'll just drive down early that morning.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*I was well into my adult years before I'd been to all of the places in the state my father had hunted and fished as a young man.  I'm only now making it to some of them.

** People would find it odd, but statistically, a lot of lawyers are introverts. This probably has to do with the study of law being bookish, something that introverts are naturally drawn to.  Ironically, the practice of law tends not to be bookish.

This gets to another point.  Introverts aren't hostile to human interaction, they can just get too darned much. When they do, they seek to withdraw.  As another blog notes, introverts often want an invitation, except when they don't (and you won't know when that is or isn't), even if they shy away from gatherings.  They often do very well in gatherings, which causes people not to realize that introverts are introverts.  

As an example, public speaking doesn't bother me at all, and I frequently get "I don't know how you do that" from people who otherwise are constantly talking.  That's easy to answer, around people, save for people who an introvert is highly familiar and comfortable with, introverts are "on".  That is, they're minds are focused and they're running at high speed. That's the very reason that they crave breaks from the same sort of settings. For introverts, again save for people they're very comfortable with, there's absolutely no such thing as a "casual conversation".

***It's obvious from this blog, but I'm Catholic.

The Introverts Lament. "I'd like you to meet. . . "

 "Lonesome" Charley Reynolds, one of the 7th Cavalry's well known scouts, and one who lost his life at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.  The son of a physician and sufficiently well educated that he was in college at the time the Civil War broke out (he left college as a result), Reynolds took up occupations which allowed him to lead a solitary life, such as being a hunter and a scout.  He was famous for keeping the details of his personal life, and indeed his entire interior life, to himself.  I get it, even if most historians don't seem to.  He was just an introvert.

"Oh no."

That statement, and that reply, are things I often hear, and then think to myself.

The reason is that I'm highly introverted.

It sounds odd, and many people who know me would be surprised by that statement.  For one thing I'm a lawyer and lawyers, even though it turns out a very high percentage of them are in fact introverts, are not associated with that.  Indeed, we're associated with the opposite.

Additionally, even highly introverted people such as myself can be "on" in context.  So, at work, I'm engaged and dealing with people.  I have problem addressing juries, clients, etc. etc., in context. I've served on councils and boards, and I often find that I'm the one speaking.  So, naturally enough, people assume that I must be extroverted.  How can you address a crowd of strangers on delicate topics and be introverted?

Well, you sure can.

One of the hallmarks of introverted people is that we really don't do well in social settings that have no discernible immediate purpose and are made up of people we don't know. Give us a setting and a purpose, and we'll more than rise to the speaking occasion, and likely take over it as well.

But give us no other discernible purpose other than to be with a lot of people we don't know and we'll calm up in personal agony.

Another character trait is that we need down time, in a major way.

That catches people off guard as we're often perfectly free to ramble on, as I so often don here, in person with people we know.  But that doesn't mean that we enjoy doing the same with people we don't.  Indeed, while that's apparently relaxing to other people, it's hugely distressing to us.

This in turn is a real problem for introverts in the modern American world.  We don't "network" well. We don't network at all.  There's nothing that sounds fun to me at all about being in a room full of people mingling with people I don't know.  I don't enjoy talking about myself ("so. . what do you do") and I don't enjoy offering opinions on political or social matters to strangers out of context.  While I could address a group on nearly any topic, if I'd been giving a reason or task to do that, I don't do that with people I don't know very well, in person.

I often am on the periphery, for example, of discussions on social issues, political issues or religious issues, or even scientific issues, out of a context and in which I'm with people I know, but not well.  I can listen to such conversations and be well aware that I know vastly more than the people who are talking, even debating, and that I could in fact crush one side, or even both, in a debate, if I entered it. But as I didn't go to debate, and just ended up the silent third partner in those discussions, I stay that way.  I don't say anything.  And if invited to, I'll usually say something that basically is neutral and leads me out of the discussion if possible.  It's not that I'm chicken about debating, I do it all the time, it's just that mentally, that's now where I was at the moment.  Just this past weekend I experienced when a debate or discussion arose between a rancher and a rancher/Protestant minister on references to Jesus in the Koran.  I know a lot more about that topic than either of them did.  I found that I needed to go to the kitchen to get myself some lunch rather than enter the debate. . .

Being an introvert also places me in the position of turning stuff down, which often strikes people as odd or rude.  For example, when invited to certain things in a business context, my instinct is to flee.  Dinners, sporting events, plays, whatever.  My first instinct is to bolt.

This can cause us to be mistakenly regarded as rude even as people who know us in workplace settings, where we're "on", think we're the life of the party.  It's all in context.  For example, I will not engage in small talk with people on airplanes or trains.  I won't.  Occasionally I'll have somebody try, but when I'm in that setting, I'm usually reading a book.  I like reading books and its one of the few chances I have to actually concentrate, uninterrupted, on a book. And as conversation on planes or trains is always the ultimate in small talk, and as I find that sort of talk absolute torture, I'm not going to do it, even if I'm capable of doing it.  Nonetheless, occasionally you'll get seated next to some extrovert who really really wants to just talk. I'm sure they think that the introvert, i.e., me, is rude.

Likewise, occasionally in restaurants somewhere when I'm traveling the same thing will happen.  "Would you mind sitting at the bar?"  The answer of course is no, as you want seated.  Next to you some happy traveler will soon attempt to strike up a conversation.  "Reading a book?".  "Yep". "Good book?"  Oh no. . .

And sort of related to this is the attendance declination.  As readers here can tell, I'm a fairly serious Catholic.  I tend towards being a fairly isolated or small group one as well.  So, occasionally I'll get a query like; "Why don't you join us for the out of town men's retreat this weekend in . . . ."  No way.  I don't know those guys and I don't like being locked up with a lot of folks I don't know.  There's a reason that I think the Desert Fathers are really cool where others like big communities of people.  Indeed, I'm so introverted that I've declined being a "greeter".  Greeters are people who are stationed at the entrances of churches as extroverts strongly believe that everyone entering a church needs to be greeted.  I try to avoid greeters if I don't personally know them as the "welcome!" and smile just appear to be invitations to me to get into a conversation that I don't want to get into on my way into church.  Being a greeter would have been a nightmare to me and I honestly simply told the person that.  She was likely surprised (and perhaps didn't believe me, maybe) as I'm a lector, and to extroverts that would seem inconsistent.  It doesn't to introverts.

Apparently all of this is highly common for introverts, and the explanation apparently is that we're wired to be really "on" in these situation in away most people aren't. While other people are decompressing by chatting, we're basically physically in the same place a lion is when its about to spring on a gazelle.  But nobody wants to be in that spot all the time. While others are engaged in light chatting, we're engaged in listening to every sentence, every pause in every sentence, and everything going on, analyzing it all in rapid succession.  When other are sad when the party ends, we're glad, its such a relief.

An interesting aspect of this is that people who know and are friends with introverts will often try to bring them "out of their shell", and according to some this is a good thing.  Left to ourselves, we'd tend to isolate ourselves, which we are told is not a good thing.  Who knows.

It's hard to tell, but as low as 16%, or as many as 50% of the population is introverted in varying degrees.  That means, of course, from 50% to 74% of the population is extroverted.  I have no ability to really tell where things really fall, but my guess is that well over half the population is extroverted.  Indeed, while I certainly know other introverts, amongst those I immediately deal with, I think only me, one person I know and work with, and some of the immediate members of my family are introverts.

I know that some members of my immediate family are.  That leads me to suspect its a genetic trait.  My father, who was an absolute genius, and who also dealt with members of the public all day long, was very introverted.  Probably few people outside of the immediate family knew that however as, like me, during the day, he was on and had to be.  My son is pretty clearly an introvert, but not as bad as I am.

Well, bad is the wrong word really.  It is just one of those things that is.  And probably for a reason.  Nature probably wanted a certain percentage of people to click on in an intense way most of the time, and that's how most of my interior life is.  I tend to be thinking all the time.  I don't like engaging in small talk as none of it is small to me.  If people complain about a problem my mind turns to solving it, and that's how most introverts are.  But by the same token you can't solve all the problems with a lot of background information going on, so we tend to crave that silent room. And, by the same token, being in a world where all problems must be solved, and apparently you must solve them as why else would people bring them to you, means that you would like a little alone time, and sometimes that means you are happy enough just sitting there saying nothing at all.