Also, it's unfair that "extravert" sounds cool, like "extra". They should be called "outervert" or "surplusvert".
2003-07-02 - 6:48 p.m.

A couple of interesting articles. Quoted by the ever-wonderful zeroreverb7, Caring for Your Introvert by Jonathan Rauch. Because us introverts need to stand up for each other's rights. Or sit quietly in the corner for each other's rights. But it makes some good points about how some people need to have time alone, and find company exhausting, and:

"Introverts," writes a perceptive fellow named Thomas P. Crouser, in an online review of a recent book called Why Should Extroverts Make All the Money? (I'm not making that up, either), "are driven to distraction by the semi-internal dialogue extroverts tend to conduct. Introverts don't outwardly complain, instead roll their eyes and silently curse the darkness." Just so.

The worst of it is that extroverts have no idea of the torment they put us through. Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves. Still, we endure stoically, because the etiquette books�written, no doubt, by extroverts�regard declining to banter as rude and gaps in conversation as awkward. We can only dream that someday, when our condition is more widely understood, when perhaps an Introverts' Rights movement has blossomed and borne fruit, it will not be impolite to say "I'm an introvert. You are a wonderful person and I like you. But now please shush."

I'm tempted to email the article to my girlfriend. But I don't know if that would be impolite.

Also, my attention was drawn to an article in the Guardian entitled Feminism: outmoded and unpopular. In some ways it's just another in a long line of articles about how feminism doesn't seem relevant to ordinary people (i.e. that sector of the population which isn't employed in liberal arts academia), but it's also clear in describing a situation where people feel they just have to shoulder their burdens and get on with it.

The attitude describes seems to be very sad and fatalistic, but also pretty typical. People are so caught up with being individuals (whether that's because marketing folk are trying to sell individuality, or because we're reacting against the conformism of society - and because society is less conformist than ever, I tend towards the former explanation) that they're incapable of seeing wider patterns, of relating their own lives to anyone else's.

This also relates to the decline of political parties, the decline of labour unions, etc. Because you have people in an almost solipsistic state where they say "I have problems". But they can't really do anything about it until they look at the wider world and relate their own experiences to other people (whether that's by gender, socio-economic group, occupation, ethnicity, or whatever). One unhappy person is a freak or an invalid or a curiosity; a million people unhappy in the same way have a common bond, and can work to understand this commonality and reach a solution.

Ick, two contrasting events over the next 2 days. On Friday I've got the letting agent coming round to inspect my flat as one of their regular checkups. This will mean concealing or talking around the crack in the sink in the toilet, and the black mold growing underneath the sealant round the bath (if it was on top of the sealant, it could of course be removed.)

Thursday night is Eels at Glasgow Academy. I've still not sorted out who I'm going with. Or how I'm getting there (it'll be a rush after work). But at least I now know where the place is (just over the Clyde from Central Station and down a bit).

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This entry is Also, it's unfair that "extravert" sounds cool, like "extra". They should be called "outervert" or "surplusvert".
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