Why it’s Dumb to be Introverted
I am an introvert and it’s dumb.
I’ve been looking at systems thinking and the phenomenon of emergence and it is teaching me why it’s dumb to be introverted and isolated.
Emergence is the idea of higher intelligence appearing from the interactions of a group of individuals of lower intelligence. Ant colonies are a great example as are flocks of birds.
We don’t give enough thought to how much what we know is encoded in our environment. We fail to think about how much of our capability as humans emerges from our interactions with other humans.
Only a few months ago my aunt fell and hit her head. She was in hospital for a few days and passed away. While she was in the hospital, I was visiting with my parents and we were talking about my grandparents and stories of their childhood. My Mom was trying to recall some detail about the past and she reflexively said “I’ll have to ask Norma.”
There was a moment of stunned silence that followed that statement.
Norma was never going to be able to remind her again.
That store of knowledge that she relied on about the past was gone, and Norma was the last of that generation. There was no one left to ask.
We Rely on the Environment for Information
Think about it for a minute. Do you really know that recipe or do you just know how to search for it on Pinterest or which cook book it’s stored in?
Do you really know how to replace the brakes in your car, or do you just have a friend that you can always count on to come over and you get the job done together, or a favourite how-to resource?
Do you really know where your keys are right now or do you just count on the fact that you always put them in certain spot?
These are silly questions and I probably didn’t ask the right one for you but if you think for a minute you’ll probably find a number of examples of things that you don’t really know, but are just encoded in your environment.
Being an introvert is dumb
The reason it’s dumb to be an introvert is because other people are amazing sources of information. We are enriched when we connect and we expand our knowledge and capabilities when we interact and form relationships with people.
Don’t worry introvert. I could also assert that being an extrovert can also be dumb if we always rely on other people for information and never learn anything ourselves. That’s a topic for another time.
We need a little of both introversion and extroversion in our lives. I hope this opens your eyes to see a bit more how you’re part of a system. You and your environment are one.
In a different environment you know different things and are capable of different things.
Look around today and express gratitude for your environment and the people around you.
What if today you invested in someone and encoded something valuable with them? It will be there for you later.
