How the Savants* thinking pattern relates to introversion/extroversion modalities

OK. The SECOND best personality typology in this world is, of course, the Myer-Brigg Personality Typology, based on the Jungian archetypes. (I am not ashamed to say that I had a little something to do with this in my previous lifetime. Haha, hence the absolute brilliance of it. 😉 I don’t actually know HOW MUCH influence I had on it, but some. Anyway. Moving riiiight along:)

Introversion and extroversion are, in the base of it, a fairly complete misunderstanding of how an introvert thinks and what it is. Extroversion is quite well understood, but introversion is quite a fun thing. In fact, neither is a permanent part of one’s personality. (And to be fair, the Normal Person* thinking pattern is also not about a person’s personality, it’s just an easier sell that way, psychologically speaking.)

Everyone turns into an introvert in a crowd where they feel out of place. It’s just that people who attach that label to themselves have been born in an environment created by a group of people who they cannot relate to. If you take a common the Normal Person* Extrovert into a group of specialized the Savants* who have their own thing going, the Extrovert will quickly shut up and withdraw. If this setting is permanent, they will turn introvert permanently, or for the duration of that setting to stay in place. “An extrovert” who is used to always getting a great reception when they walk into a room will try and entertain and be the lovable centre of attention they’ve used to being for some time in a foreign environment among similarly-thinking the Savants*, but they will soon notice that they receive nothing but mild interest from others and will “feel stupid” among the people who think differently. They will find they have nothing in common with these people and… quite possibly they will start thinking that “they don’t like people,” a feeling so very common with people labeled introverts. Any shrinks reading this, please feel free to conduct an experiment and tell me what you found.

Just imagine this: You have an extrovert who has a very good, solid and excited attitude about normal aspects of life; raising a family, general education, light political views, popular hobbies, and interests, is active on Facebook, generally knows what is ‘in’ and ‘popular’ or at least holds a good interest on what the kids are doing these days and what is the ‘thing’ to know. Now, put this person in a room full of coders and scientists who are generally introverted, and see how fast the extrovert feels out of place and completely stupid. Who is the first one to leave the situation? The people who would normally avoid company like it would give them the plague, would now be very likely to stay socialising and exchanging contact details, while the extrovert couldn’t wait to get out of the situation because they feel uncomfortable to the extreme.

The extrovert would probably attempt to divert the conversation to Facebook – the nerdiest thing she or he knows to talk about, and sure, the nerds would pick up on that, discussing the programming of it, the algorithms used to handle a user’s feed and, of course, the many security issues associated with the platform. Then, the conversation would probably quickly divert to their own projects that they are working on, the potential of collaborating on something, and general marvelling of new innovations that are just coming to market hopefully pushing Facebook where it belongs; ancient, embarrassing history of technical humanity.

The social code of these people is vastly different to the general extrovert who is used to keeping the conversation light and, essentially meaningless to anyone to whom it is not of great importance. An extrovert would now ask, how do you consider your children of no importance? An introvert points out that not everyone has kids, intends on having kids, and, to a lot of people, their kids are no business of a complete stranger, and they are certainly not a tool to fill up uncomfortable silent moments with people you have otherwise nothing to talk to with. (They love their children too much to talk about them in a casual context with people who they don’t know for certain are safe to discuss these things with… Say, a potential child molester¹ nearby, silently waiting for clues on how to make friends with your kid… Just to make a point that talking about your child may not be quite inconsequential. So the silent one in the room might be a child molester or a person too conscious of the possibility of a child molester in the room. 😉 )

the Savants* are also generally speaking more intuitive than the Normal Person*. The reason why the Savants* do not simply “jump in the conversation” is because they don’t want to. They already know everything they need to know about the people in the room based on their intuition. Where the Extroverted the Normal Person* Personalities need to talk to people in order to see if they have anything in common, the Savants* trust their intuition more and keep their distance until something tweaks their interest… Or, they are simply used to not find much in common with people or they’ve used to finding the commonalities insufficient to be worth forming a relationship over. (Enigma phenomenon.) the Savants* might not get too excited over people too easily, so they simply wait to find something of interest rather than actively seeking for new connections.

here

1. I use the term deliberately as opposed to a pedophile, the reason will become clear in another context. ↩

Subscribe to get a Daily Message