Hello everybody! Get yourself a cappuccino, café au lait, espresso, maple latté or whatever your particular poison, find yourself a hotspot and settle in to read my blog. I plan to use this space for regular editorial comment on whatever issues are on my mind. At first, I'll likely post quite frequently. Later, once I've gotten off my chest those issues I feel most strongly about, I may be posting less often. Today I want to talk about introverts. During my school days, also known as the 1960s, it seemed that the kid in the class who got the "leadership" or "citizenship" award of the year was always the bossiest, showoffiest kid in the class. As the youngest of four children, one of my pet peeves was, and remains to this day, bossy people. Being introverted is not necessarily the same thing as being shy, though the two traits may go hand in hand. They certainly did in my case when I was younger, though as I grow older and care less about what people think of me, I'm less shy though still introverted in that I get my energy and my best ideas through solitary reflection and listening to others, not from "thinking out loud" as some of the more extroverted folks are always urging me to do. When I was in kindergarten, being too timid to respond "here" or "present" when the teacher did roll-call was equated to being stubborn and was punishable by being stood in the corner. Is bashfulness a "choice"? I think not. On the other hand, I deplore the way ordinary personality traits such as shyness are now being pathologized through psychiatric vehicles such as the DSM, as if we humans had NO control over our own behaviour, and almost no free will whatsoever! I cringe when I hear "psychoses" labelled with names like "borderline personality disorder" and "oppositional defiance disorder". Years later, in what (or so I thought) was the more enlightened 1990s, my daughter was auditioning for a spot at our local arts high school and I recall the drama teacher telling another young hopeful that maybe if she was too shy to go through the audition, then drama was not her thing. I thought what a terrible thing for ANYBODY, but especially a drama teacher, to say to a child. And I don't think it's true, anyway. If anything, one would think that the ideal actor would be able to behave in a slightly autistic fashion, shutting out the audience altogether and becoming totally absorbed in the fantasy of the story he or she were acting in. That may possibly not be true for certain modern drama, where the actor actually goes out into the audience and interacts with its members but for traditional plays I should think it might be. Around that time, when I was working at a large government library (which, shamefully, is to close its doors at the end of this month), I selected for purchase a book called something like "Why Should Extroverts Make All the Money?" It wasn't only about monetary success, though - it talked about other aspects of success and overall "fit" in the workplace. According to an article by Angela Hill in yesterday's Ottawa Citizen, (see http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life ) introverts are getting more respect these days thanks in part to a couple of new books on the subject. About time, I say! Hill points out that schools often encourage "group projects" and workplaces use the open-office approach to encourage teamwork, which is anathema to the creativity of an introvert, who prefers having a door to close. When I was still in the workforce, it seemed the worst thing someone could say about you was that you weren't a "team player". Another popular slogan was "There's no 'I' in TEAM". But of course, while some office tasks are best done in groups, others demand privacy or space for solitary reflection. Still, is it really true that the modern world is geared to extroverts? I wonder. The tendency in government and large corporations these days is, if anything, to move AWAY from face-to-face service. They encourage you to access them via your computer or telephone (which increasingly may be the same device)and now that I'm retired, I have to MAKE occasions to talk to real human beings. All that controversy over Muslim women and their niqabs and the self-righteous assertion that "In our culture we show our FACES to get service" is so hypocritical. Really. When I need some kind of service relating to my pension, for example, I need my superannuation number and I have to either go online or phone up a number and go through an electronic voice-menu tree of options. I really think they care more what your number is than what your name is. Just before I retired, I found government to be obsessed with PROCESS at the expense of CONTENT - and by content, I mean not just memorizable facts, but also professional skills, judgement, knowledge, wisdom, you name it. At one of those infernal management retreats I was "invited" to one time, I recall one regional manager having the temerity to lay bare his frustration with having to "raise a ticket" on the intranet, when the network was down, to request a minor office move that was to happen that afternoon! While I listened silently in sympathy and recognition, most of the folks there were tripping over themselves to criticize him because he just didn't "get" the process or the corporate culture. Consider too the other things we do in day-to-day life. When did you last go to a bank in person to withdraw money? Don't you just use an ATM? Even at the grocery store, there is increasing pressure to use the automated checkouts instead of interacting with a real human cashier. So maybe, all things considered, the world IS becoming more geared to hermits and introverts. I'm not opposed to automating certain functions, I just often feel that we are becoming the servant of the machine rather than the other way around. We are slowly but surely suppressing those things that make us uniquely human. We try to eliminate "human error" but in the process, we eliminate human CORRECTNESS, human VERACITY, human ESSENCE. So here I am, an introvert who nonetheless requires a certain amount of human contact and interaction. I think it's very important in maintaining perspective and not losing sight of what is important in life. Thankfully, that perspective does seem to come with age.