Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

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Same sentiment exactly. Not to sound rude, but I don't -want- more friends, and it feels bad rejecting people who reach out. I already feel like there aren't enough hours in a day, and selfishly want to hoard my time to myself.

My wife and I are polar opposites in that regard. She can never seem to have enough friends, and they talk often. I think one big difference is how people are with nothingness. Because no matter how busy our day is, there's always periods of downtime...on a bus, on a walk, before bed, etc.

For example, I could sit in a chair and stare at nothing for a long time and not get bored. Mind always wondering, planning, thinking. She on the other hand gets bored and stir crazy in short order. And having people to reach out to chat with is a good cure for that.

I'm not suggesting one is better than the other, of course, just another difference in people.

All of that is to say, people like us who at least -say- we don't want more friends make it harder for people seeking, by removing ourselves from the pool so to speak. And I'd imagine between marriages, kids, work, etc... there's a lot of us like that.

We introverts have an easy life with ourselves, completely at peace with oneself, never bored. Extroverts dread this, they need external stimulus to feel alive, alone they get bored and depressed quickly. Hand in hand with that go things like imagination, alone you simply have much more time to train it.

As I grew up, I realized how stupid and immature it is to try to blend with the rest of the crowd, where extroverts naturally stick out and introverts feel like they are doing something wrong and should emulate more visible ones. Embrace yourself as you are, focus on aspects you don't like yourself but enjoy the rest, it can be a real strength if you use it well.

Friends and family are one aspect of it, but also how you approach hobbies, traveling etc. Ie my extroverty boss can't simply go to gym, he has to go with some friend. So he goes rarely and he sucks in it. Bunch of friends simply can't travel alone, while I repeatedly explained to them that ie backpacking around the world alone is extremely positive and character-building experience that can't be achieved in any other way. So eventually one of them went, but for 2 weeks only to effin' Singapore and not a step further, to hang out with former colleague for 2 weeks. While having amazing places to keep discovering all around him, or ie jumping on a plane to Bali/Lombok/Gili islands for a week.

> Ie my extroverty boss can't simply go to gym, he has to go with some friend

I would venture to suggest even that your boss can't simply go to the gym because he doesn't actually want to go to the gym. He wants to socialise inside a gym.

I remember at some point (as an introvert) my mental model of extroverts flipped and I suddenly began to see them not as super humans but almost like disabled people. Unable to function independently because of a severe deficit in their mental makeup that makes them unable to sustain happiness without supplementary support from presence of other individuals. I still envy them in certain ways but now I have a much more balanced view of it than when I was younger and I really felt like something was wrong with me.

Unless you mean that you eventually grew out of the view that extroverts “suffer from severe deficit in their mental makeup”, I wouldn’t call your position “balanced” at all. You’ve just swung from one extreme to another.

I don’t know you, but I have a feeling that you’ll eventually come to understand “extroverts” better than this.

One thing I learned from reading Jung and not just the MBTI stuff based on his work is his core distinction between introversion and extroversion:

Introverts have an inner model of the world. Extroverts rely directly on the world.

It doesn’t mean that extroverts like people more or that introverts necessarily prefer being alone. It’s just that for extroverts, when nothing external is happening it’s like a little death. And for introverts, we need down time to reconcile our inner model with all of the day’s external stimulation.

Recommend a book? I never knew where to start with jung. Also, was his work research based or was it mostly speculative?

Not OP but I really enjoyed Jung's: Memories, Dreams, and Reflections. I haven't read any of the rest of his work so I really can't say if this is the best place to start with him but being totally new to Jung, I took a lot away from this book. The book touches on many of his theories and gives you an idea of the arc of his life which is nice but also provides great insight into Jung's inner world which is what I found most fascinating about the book. I've never read anything else quite like it.

I believe the book introducing his theory of introversion/extraversion was Psychological Types based on his own clinical research. It's a theory, not a law.. :-)

But certainly extroverts must have an inner model world, otherwise how can they have a System 2 or do any kind of analytical thinking? Or is it that they do have one but only engage it when actively trying to solve a problem?

This definition of introvert seems closer to the term "need for cognition".

You could put the people who reach out into contact with one another, since obviously they have excellent taste.

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