I have, more frequently than is altogether justified, read a book that I might have known would not live up to my expectations, without ever bothering to adjust those expectations in the least, and been disappointed as a result, and more surprised than was in any way justified. Such was my experience of The Introvert Advantage (Dr Martin Olsen Laney), which a friend recently lent me. The really surprising thing about introversion, so far as I’ve observed, is that we still manage to be surprised by it, even though some third to half the population is of this temperament. I’ve never heard of anyone who was surprised by the existence of extroverts, however perplexed they might be by some particular representatives thereof. Nobody writes books, wondering what extroversion has to offer the world. This, I suspect, says something rather peculiar about the culture we currently inhabit.

The tenor of the questions underlying The Introvert Advantage and Introverts in the Church is that of people who thought that they were deeply inadequate because they sometimes prefer books and tea by themselves to making small talk with near-strangers. They are even a little puzzled that they should prefer a more sophisticated conversation with two or three friends to a superficial conversation with a dozen acquaintances. Neither of which is, when I put it that way, so very puzzling. Nor is it so very puzzling that someone else might have the opposite preference. While it’s sort of interesting to know what people’s brain chemicals and neuro-transmitters are doing on those occasions, it’s not so important to the central question as Laney makes it out to be. After all, simply as a preference, why would we assume that it’s better to like small talk more than a book, especially after spending twelve years systematically encouraging the reading of books, often at the expense of the small talk? A rom of one’s own may be, historically and statistically speaking, a luxury — but doesn’t that all the more prove it to be desirable? Time to oneself may also be a luxury — and it’s a luxury because it’s desirable. Taking a walk alone or with one or two close companions is generally held to be a pleasure, even if some people don’t find it so.

What Laney (and to a lesser extent McHugh) does is to turn a pleasure into a psychological need, which I find misguided, not only because most pleasures become less pleasurable when indulged for the sake of health, but also because there are surely people who must make do with much less time and space than they would like, for circumstantial reasons, and it seems a bit uncharitable to regard as necessary in one’s own case that which is a luxury to so many. Laney likens her introverted reader to a tulip, and then suggests that they bring a small heater to work because their ideal range of temperatures is quite narrow. It’s not a terrible idea, but I bet a cold room is distracting to anyone, and humans in general have an amazingly narrow optimum temperature range. She has her studies; introverts may be even more sensitive than extroverts — but I doubt it’s so dramatic as to suggest anything we didn’t already know from near universal human experience.

What seems a greater oddity than anything is the way in which we moderns seem to need to justify and rationalize our desire for the simplest, oldest, most obvious and natural of human pleasures, not even with poetry, but with psychology. I’m not very poetic, but even I recognize the beauty and joy sometimes evident in solitude, surrounded by gorgeous or even barren Nature, and don’t really need a psychologist to tell me that many people (I doubt it matters so very much what category they belong to) are greatly benefited by a greater acquaintance therewith. It doesn’t even need a psychologist to recognize that some people are naturally more gregarious than others, even within the same family.

The real problem Laney seems to be addressing, and which does need to be addressed, though perhaps not psychologically, is the judgement, apparently drilled into her and McHugh, that socializing is always more valuable than whatever one might be doing instead of socializing; that going to a party is better than whatever it is you might rather be doing at home; that speaking up quickly is better than considering thoroughly; that a tweet is better than a journal entry; that knowing many people is better than knowing a few, and so on. And in response to that, I don’t believe that either goes far enough, because you can’t combat value (perhaps even moral) judgements with brain chemistry and genes. As apologists never tire of saying, ought and is are altogether different categories, and you can never get from is to ought with reason and facts alone. In order to show that contemplation can be just as valuable as companionship, McHugh has to show, not that introverts might prefer contemplation (for that devalues it to a mere decoration or hobby) , but its true value — which may well be a difficult and arduous theological task. In order to show that “slowing down” is something of value, it’s necessary to demonstrate that value, not psychologically, but at something positive, not the mere absence of frantic motion. To demonstrate the value and place of silence and space, they must be known to be not only an absence, but also a fullness. Food is not simply (or even primarily) for “refueling,” and solitude is to the introvert not simply an opportunity to “recharge batteries” — what an impoverishment of thought and feeling! Food was meant for communion. solitude was meant to be a kind of fullness. Silence and space also allow for a kind of fullness that are not simply (or fundamentally) about ones self, and the slavery of constant self-care (which Laney’s books simply reeks of), but about the beauty or truth that is encountered therein, and cannot be known so fully in company.

Which is, ultimately, why I had no business expecting so much from this book as I did. Jung can expound upon the value of the numinous and make distinctions between introversion oriented toward archetypes and deep things hidden in the collective unconscious, because he was willing to assert such things to exist. Even McHugh can assert that contemplation is ultimately valuable because of Him whom we are contemplating, and that makes all the difference. Laney can’t or won’t assert any such thing, and even suggests that “spirituality” is something nice for one’s own psychic balance, which may well be more blasphemous than the kind of atheism that takes spirits seriously enough to disbelieve in them even to our own ruin.

Jung, in writing about the introvert “undervaluing his own principle,” suggests that, in fact, it is not all the same whether there really is something to be contemplated and appreciated in the underlying nature of things or not. If there is nothing there but our own thoughts and feelings (as Laney says that Jung said, and which he manifestly did not say), then introversion is egotistical, because if the only things there are are objects and the ego, how could it not be? I had a similar experience when I once had to write a philosophy of education using a great writer, and chose Rousseau’s Emile. He doesn’t even imply, but says outright and insists in the strongest possible way, that he does not mean to say anything about teaching in schools, because that is not something he much believes in, and he has nothing to say about it — and yet I wrote an essay about how I might use his ideas while teaching classes at school, and felt a little slimy while doing so. Reading Laney on Jung is a similar experience. The reason why he can assert introversion (in his meaning, as orientation toward the object) to not be egotistical is precisely because it is about something with much greater depth and reality than one’s own thoughts and feelings. And Laney says that introversion is, precisely, about an orientation toward one’s own thoughts and feelings, without any thought at all concerning the existence or non-existence of some substratum of the soul which would make that not-egotistical, which is exactly where she asserts that Jung was right and Freud wrong. Freud may have been wrong, but at least he was consistent and knew how to reason from his own premises, which is more than I can say for Laney (who doesn’t seem to have any definite premises).

In other words, while it has some mildly interesting objective findings, I object to The Introvert Advantage for its deep and abiding philosophical sloppiness, which can only possibly be excused by the evident fact that she was unaware that there was anything philosophical at stake (chiefly because she defined her term away from its original philosophical implications, but in so doing she made it fit very poorly with experience, and boring as well).

Christ is baptized in the river Jordan!

I, on the other hand, just slept for a ridiculously long amount of time, and am watching Liturgy on the TV, like one of those people. Those people being, I suppose, people who are either disabled or very lazy. I’m obviously in the latter category. And, yes, they do broadcast the entire Liturgy, with commentary, on feast days — kinda like a sporting event. In Georgian Theophany is Nateli, which means, “light” — so the holiday is, I suppose, “enlightenment.” The Greek means something more like “the showing forth of God.”

Speaking of Georgian words, I’m unfortunately a little slow on the uptake. After having a terrible time remembering the Georgian word for Orthodox, which is martlmadidebeli, I suddenly realized a couple of months ago, while talking with another TLG volunteer who’s much better with languages, that it’s just a literal translation of Orthodoxy. It means “true-teaching.” Actually, -doxy means both teaching and glory. At which point I realized that I use all the time martali (truth, but a different kind from when they say “truly” — it becomes martla for “really”), dide (glory, greatness, I suppose from didi, big, great — which we use all the time), -beli, which is a kind of suffix, I think for “convey” — because it’s used both with teacher (mastavlabeli = conveyor of teaching, I think), and train (matarabeli — I have no idea what matara is; I suppose it’s the stuff conveyed by a train). So I suppose a super literal translation of Orthodoxy in Georgian would be “conveyor of true glory,” which is simply a super literal translation of the Greek.

English usually import Greek words by simply importing them. Georgian seems to prefer to import them by translation. I wonder if, in addition to the historical reasons for that (Georgian was a language contemporary with Greek, whereas English came much later), theres a linguistic reason for that. English doesn’t lend itself to compound words like “conveyor-of-true-glory” — we can make some compounds of our own, but it’s awkward, and becomes nearly impossible with more than two words together. Apparently German isn’t like that; you can just stick them all together like legos. Georgian is apparently much more adaptable when it comes to constructing compounds, perhaps because it’s inflected? So it can create most of the same combinations as ancient Greek, whereas English does a very bad job of it. When we try we get things like Christ-follower for Christian — a hyphenated word rather than a simple one — which is decidedly less graceful.

Anyway, winter break. I was, as I suppose you know, in Tucson during Winter break. Mostly I remember sleeping a lot, and then chastising myself for sleeping, watching TV on the computer, and then chastising myself for that as well. Otherwise, I saw some friends, went to Yuma with my parents, had Christmas with family, enjoyed the weather and the cactus, and wrote angst-ridden blog posts. (You see how I had to hyphenate angst-ridden? I bet in German or Georgian I wouldn’t have. Especially German; it’s possible that there isn’t a literal translation available in Georgian. They don’t strike me as an angst-ridden sort of people.)

I had a seven hour layover in Istanbul, and proceeded to spend it in the most absurd manner possible. They have a respectable public transportation system which connects to the airport. Unlike in Tbilisi, they are kind enough to print free maps for tourists, and put up large maps in all the stations. That didn’t prevent me from simply hopping on the first train I saw, however — I suspect that I’ve learned very bad travel habits from living in Georgia, where it’s not even possible for Georgians to figure out the train or marshutka schedules with any reliability, and foreigners just have to show up with time to spare and hope for the best. They do post schedules on the train station walls, which might or might be reliable, but which are nearly impossible to figure out, because one must already know the routs and how long it takes between stops, before consulting the schedule.

Anyway, Istanbul isn’t like that, but it took me a while to remember that, at which point I had already started navagating like I was in Georgia: by walking up to the first person I saw on the metro and asking how to get to the city center. He asked someone, who asked someone else, who consulted with someone, who didn’t speak English, but said to get off at her stop. I suspect that she was Georgian. Not only did she operate like a Georgian and look kind of Georgian, but I heard her saying things like gamarjoba and ra vitsi, ra? (what do I know, wot?) on her cell phone. In true Georgian fashion, rather than showing me the map of the metro lines at our destination and pointing to things, she took me to find a marshutka. On the way there she bought a wallet. I tried asking if I might take the metro (because it is possible), but, no, we were at the wrong stop. She found a marshutka to Taksim, which I had never heard of, and then went her way.  I suspect that the driver was also Georgian, because he said things like ra ginda, ra? (what do you want, wot?) on the intercom. Anyway, we eventually got to where we were going, which turned out to be a square next to a crowded avenue with a bunch of shops and restaurants on it. I realized that that was not in fact what I had wanted (I had apparently wanted to see some cool architecture, but not enough to bother looking at the tourist map the airport had given me, so I figured I deserved to end up in the wrong place). I walked about for a bit — up the street, back down the street, down another street, got a bit lost, asked my way back, asked after the metro, bought a cup of coffee and some Turkish delight, tried to find a promising domed thing, failed, was surprised. because it was quite large with domes and towers, and since I was right next to it, it didn’t seem like the sort of thing to hide; realized that it was behind a two-story opaque metal gate; went back to the metro, and tried to follow the map back to the airport.

I accidentally ended up getting on a commuter ferry to the Asian side of the Aegean, rather than the light rail that goes by all the fabulous architecture. Cool as it is that there are commuter ferries at all, one might suspect that it would be easy to tell them from a light rail. One would be right, but somehow that didn’t occur to me until we had already embarked. I spent most of the trip staring at the map, trying to figure out where we were, and where we were going. Fortunately, a nice man who spoke good English decided to help me out; he explained how to get back, and then wrote directions on my map, in case I forgot. There was another ferry in ten minutes, and I spent the trip back taking pictures of my reflection in the window, and reflecting that I can probably get away with more than I should as a feckless traveler, being a young woman. Following the man’s directions, I did in fact get back in less than two hours by tram and metro, and on the tram I caught sight of the cool architectural things  might have taken a closer look at if I had been a more mindful traveler. I got back to the airport with a couple of yours to spare, exhausted, and took a bit of a nap.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about my visit. On the one hand, it was very silly. If I hadn’t been alone I certainly wouldn’t have done things that way. Nor if I had somewhere (an un-hyphenated compound word, but they’re each only one syllable; that does happen a fair amount) in particular to go. On the other, I don’t know whether I like looking at the outsides of cool architectural places (I think I may have caught sight of the Blue Mosque while on the tram — at least it was the most impressively domed mosque I’ve ever seen) better than I like getting lost and then un-lost again. The one place I would really have liked to have visited was the Hagia Sophia, but it would have been closed by the time I got there. Well, if I ever go back during day, I’ll pretty much know how to get there. And how to take a commuter ferry as well. Getting lost in public places, when there’s certainly public transport nearby, isn’t so bad really — it’s kind of fun in its way. I do wish I hadn’t had some 15 lbs of bags with me, though.

My plane got into Tbilisi on time, at 3:40 am. There were no signs to public transport (I was in Georgia now). There may or may not be a train very near the airport. Well, there certainly is such a train, but the people there may or may not know how to find it. There are busses, starting at 7, which may or may not take me anywhere where I would want to be. There are also taxis, which cost twice as much to go to Gori as if I were with a Georgian. Being crabby and tired, with two heavy suitcases and two bags to lug around, I sat down and read a George MacDonald fairytale and wait for the bus. It’s called Day Boy and Night Girl, and is quite odd, but charming. Four hours later, after starting The Princess and the Goblins as well, I felt much better, and went out into the cold dawn air with my suitcases and insufficient clothing to figure out how to get to where I was going. After about a minute, I thought: I don’t know where those busses go. Nobody here will tell me where they go. These bags are heavy. So I took a taxi to the marshutka station. I’m pretty sure that was for the best. A friend in Gori helped me get another taxi, and I went over to her house for breakfast. Her husband is having a godson baptized today (glory to God!). Then I went back “home,” unpacked, lit some candles in church, stopped in at an English class, and returned. I slept for an absurdly long time, ad ended up missing church this morning, because t was so very cozy beneath my huge, heavy blanket by the heater. So here I am, and school starts tomorrow or Monday. Everyone thinks it starts tomorrow, except for G, who actually goes to school there, so perhaps it does start, but nobody bothers actually going there? I’ll just have to show up and see if anyone’s there. How extraordinarily Georgian.

The Liturgy is over on the TV, and now they’ve switched to the post-liturgical videos of icons and domes, with chanting and occasional narration. It looks old, a bit crackly, and sort of reminds me of the end of the film Andrei Rublev.

Last summer I moved to Sakartvelo for the summer and fall semester. I’m planning on going back, but it’s likely my own experience of that will be quite different, because I know some people, and have some regular activities more or less arranged. Anyway, I moved there last summer, and in addition to a lot of lovely , interesting things I wrote about at the time (teaching police officers, attending supras, meeting nice people, roaming the hills, etc), I also had an ill-defined question which I poked at, but could make nothing of — or nothing that I could articulate in a way that would be interesting to anyone besides myself. Even I would have admitted, if someone had asked, that I was pursuing it in quite an odd way. The question had come from the culture of the evangelical church I belonged to as a teen, especially from the reports that came back from short term missions, and most especially from The World Race. I ignored many things about these reports: the part that was interesting and perplexing might be described as the “international missions as therapy” aspect of them. I’m not sure, at present, whether it’s actually the case that people were actually more engaging when recounting this part of their mission trips, or whether I found them more interesting for other reasons. In any event, I found them so.

I was struck, for instance, by the blog of an acquaintance I knew in college: the therapeutic posts with messages like “I’m learning to overcome my depression” not only had more literary sparkle than posts like “a man was raised from the dead” — but so much more that the resurrection story was downright dull; I could hardly read it. On the surface of things, that’s a little surprising, but it is true, because the latter story wasn’t personal; she reported it because it’s surprising, but it’s obvious that it didn’t have much lasting meaning for her (or, by extension, the reader). From another blog, I was similarly struck that the writer’s realization that she is CHOSEN (her caps) was a great deal more interesting and perplexing than anything she said about any of the places she went, people she met, or activities she engaged in — it had real energy, even if it’s also a cliche, whereas the other posts lacked something in personal interest and narrative structure. Reading that post, it’s not too hard to see where it fits into a story, and what kind of story it’s part of.

Those blogs were showing, I believe, the way in which a story, even about something that’s not in itself shocking, is usually more interesting to both reader and writer than a fact, no matter how surprising, the story of which we are not privy to. K knew her fight with depression as a story lived over some fifteen years, and so when something shifted she knew how to value the importance of that. S likewise had lived long enough with her self-definitions that a change came as a revelation (directly from God, in her words). On the other hand, if you take a moderately uninformed American, and plop them into a different country and culture, of which they don’t know very much, and then remove them from it just when they’re starting to get settled and become sensitive to what’s going on — then it’s hardly surprising that they’re unable to say anything interesting about that culture and community that’s not ultimately about themselves. They simply don’t have access to the nuances of life outside their mission group — which is not necessarily wrong; it can simply be surprising to people like me. Besides, evangelical culture teaches us how to construct personal narratives (both by imitation, and in actual lessons), but doesn’t necessarily teach us how to do the same with the world outside of ourselves.

Aside: That’s interesting in light of how “extroverted” that same culture is. The hypothesis I was exploring in my previous post was that an extroverted style is mostly about the object, sometimes to the detriment of the subject, whereas I just observed that these accounts are all about the subject, with relatively little interest in the object. My best guess is that there were a lot of other accounts which concentrated much more upon the object (the work done, number of converts, etc), which I didn’t bother paying attention to, because I found them to be rather boring, except as something to argue with.

In any event, I found those kinds of accounts interesting, and decided to explore them where I was, with my own utter unconcern for external details. By details, I mean huge, obvious differences in circumstance and intent — especially the difference between participating in a highly planned, concentrated mission program with a core group of enthusiastic volunteers from one’s own cultural background, and participating in a rather lax, undemanding “program” with a great deal of freedom and very little contact with either directors or other volunteers, a rather vague target, and a great deal of personal flexibility. That’s really quite important, it turns out, because being in a close-knit group of enthusiastic, focused people is a hugely important thing. Being given topics to focus on can be a hugely influential thing, as it’s meant to be. When one is pretty much left to themselves, they have to either recognize a story for themselves, or make do without one.

I seem to do this to myself on purpose. Jung would probably say something about the Unconscious. Many Christians would say something about God’s will. I’m somewhere in the middle. I have developed a pattern of thinking about highly structured, guided activities and experiences, while rejecting them, fighting against them, and making major life decisions that distance me from them. I choose extremely open-ended jobs, education, or activities, and then wonder why I have to figure most everything out for myself. I’ve been known to whine that TLG gives a LOT less training and direction than the Peace Corps, but when I’m being honest with myself I’ll admit that they also offer a LOT more freedom, and that if I had to choose, I would pick freedom over preparation in the vast majority of cases. I’ve been known to complain that art teachers have to design their own curriculum, but when I’m being honest I’ll admit that I tend to re-design actual curriculum, because I like designing, researching, writing, and organizing information better than I like teaching, way better than I like getting young people to do things, and way, way better than trying to adapt myself to someone else who’s trying to get me to do things in a certain way.

In any event, I have learned some (personal) things this past half year, mostly from not being in a tight-knit group. For instance, I had always had the vague notion that “we” were the team, organization, or church; the people who are from the same place and speak the same language. That’s not entirely untrue, if only because it’s hard to get to know people you can’t properly talk to. It’s not entirely true, either. There are Georgians who don’t speak English, but who are easier to appreciate, and with whim I share more of a common culture than a lot of Americans I’ve met; even Americans I’ve known for some time and share a lot of life experiences with. There are people who go to church, pray, and read, and who are easier to talk with, even without many shared words, than people who speak very decent English, but who want to drink at bars.

I should, of course, have known that. After all, I’ve read a lot of books in translation, and outside of a few very specific linguistic issues (ousia, for instance, or Tao), I often come away with the impression that I understand the person, and that if they would give me some time (which they might not, since I’m a woman, in a lower class, and a foreigner) and we learned each other’s language, we would really have things to talk about, and I would have something to learn from them (and not only psychological truisms). There are other people who live in America and speak very decent English, and who belong to the same religion, but who I think it would be much more difficult to have a conversation, because we’re thinking in different directions and with much different intentions. In Tuluksak I met two traveling Alaskan Natives who were really more interesting than anyone in town, and a few in town who were more interesting than most anyone else. That’s a function of education and temperament, but also it’s the case that some people are simply more interesting than other people, and everybody from any country might notice it.

Upon consideration, I don’t know how I couldn’t have known that, for instance, certain Georgians might be more attractive and make more sense to me, not only than certain Americans, but than many other Georgians. Or that the same is almost certainly true of Africans, Chinese, or any other nationality or culture. On the whole, the difference between people can be greater than the difference between cultures. I would have known that about British people, I hope, but apparently I had somehow forgotten.

I wonder if thinking too much about one’s own team has a kind of blinding influence upon some of us, so that it becomes unexpected that, for instance, if I were doing World Race stuff I might happen upon an African bishop that I would want to spend all my time watching and listening to, so that I might become greatly tempted to neglect what my team was doing, and be really sorry to move on. If I take an honest look at my actual life, however, that’s much more likely than most of the stuff I’ve heard from church mission teams or blogs.

I’ve been impressed with this in part because of the places I’ve been (Syria and Georgia) and the way I’ve been there (at the invitation of Bishop Saba, and then the Georgian government), and the people I’ve been introduced to (the ancient monasteries of Syria and the Patriarch of Antioch; the president of Georgia, the bishops of Nikozi and Gori, a number of policemen, and a small liberal arts college; along with a lot of very nice, welcoming people in both places); in other words, in both places we were treated as invited guests, and introduced to loved and respected local leaders, often in what has been a position of authority for millennia. The people around them, responsible for looking after guests, are likewise good, thoughtful, respected people. Both Syria and Georgia also have a culture where looking after guests is important; the Georgian proverb is “guests are from God.”

Almost more even than the extraverted is the introverted type subject to misunderstanding: not so much because the extravert is a more merciless or critical adversary, than he himself can easily be, but because the style of the epoch in which he himself participates is against him. Not in relation to the extraverted type, but as against our general accidental world-philosophy, he finds himself in the minority, not of course numerically, but from the evidence of his own feeling. In so far as he is a convinced participator in the general style, he undermines his own foundations, since the present style, with its almost exclusive acknowledgment of the visible and the tangible, is opposed to his principle. Because of its invisibility, he is obliged to depreciate the subjective factor, and to force himself to join in the extraverted overvaluation of the object. He himself sets the subjective factor at too low a value, and his feelings of inferiority are his chastisement for this sin. Little wonder, therefore, that it is precisely our epoch, and particularly those movements which are somewhat ahead of the time, that reveal the subjective factor in every kind of exaggerated, crude and grotesque form of expression. I refer to the art of the present day.

The undervaluation of his own principle makes the introvert egotistical, and forces upon him the psychology of the oppressed. The more egotistical he becomes, the stronger his impression grows that these others, who are apparently able, without qualms, to conform with the present style, are the oppressors against whom he must guard and [p. 498] protect himself. He does not usually perceive that he commits his capital mistake in not depending upon the subjective factor with that same loyalty and devotion with which the extravert follows the object By the undervaluation of his own principle, his penchant towards egoism becomes unavoidable, which, of course, richly deserves the prejudice of the extravert. Were he only to remain true to his own principle, the judment of ‘egoist’ would be radically false; for the justification of his attitude would be established by its general efficacy, and all misunderstandings dissipated.

–Carl Jung, Psychological Types

Redmarble asked me to clarify my motivation in the last post, and especially how it applies to situations outside of Education. That’s difficult for me to answer, since I have more experience in education than anywhere else, whether as a student or teacher. I have a wee bit of experience as a Christian as well, but that’s more complicated, because God is also involved in ways we may have difficulty appreciating, or may easily misunderstand. I was motivated, first, by observing that I consider myself to be rather clearly an introvert (though not a very shy one much of the time), but that I do sometimes find interaction energizing (talking about ideas, for instance), even when I’m talking a lot; and that I find certain kinds of solitary activity draining (writing lesson plans, for instance); that I find certain kinds of loud noise delightful (large bells), and some other peculiarities. So my question was something like: how do I account for this? Additionally, I observed that there’s something which I would define as “extroverted” in many educational and church activities, especially trainings and conferences, but also books, but which do not necessarily involve any more (quantitatively) social interaction than other similar situations that I would not characterize as extroverted. Why is that? Jung’s distinction between psychological orientation toward the subject vs the object to be an important starting point.

I took Education as my central illustration because, as I said, I’ve been involved in it for a while, and it’s sometimes awfully unbalanced, but also because it’s the field that struck me with another, related oddity: why is it that certain kinds of thought take a way huger psychological toll than other kinds of thought, even though they are, objectively, easier to understand? Most of the stuff we learned in Education school wasn’t hard in the way that, say, Jung is hard: they aren’t conceptually hard. They’re hard, and require an enormous amount of energy, primarily because I was always (literally, every single class) confronted with an inner (subjective) sense no, this isn’t right; this isn’t what’s important about learning. I’ve learned things, and this isn’t what was important in my teachers; these weren’t the activities that have been important for me as a student, and that was never freely discussed or acknowledged as important. In other words, I was putting an enormous amount of energy into reconciling the subjective experience of being a student with the objective data and theories based on behaviorist principles. Because to the introverted thinker, “results” in the form of tests and jobs are not theoretically or conceptually important parts of learning to draw or write or think. And because of the way I was taught, this was a nearly continuous problem, because if someone’s strongest “psychological function” is introverted thinking, then extroverted thinking (the kind of thought that cares a lot about getting people to do things, along with certain kinds of results, demographics, and the facts “out there in the world,” as such) is not only weaker, but is much, much weaker, and, if Jung’s right, mostly unconscious as well.

In answer to Redmarble’s challenge: there is a similar oddity in evangelicalism, but I wasn’t involved in evangelicalism as an adult, and so I’m less able to assess it from the inside, and it doesn’t exist in Orthodoxy as I’ve encountered it. I couldn’t quite articulate why; it has something to do with how the part of it that’s not aimed exclusively at the head (which is most of it) doesn’t have “mysticism” (a focus on sacraments and union with God) as something that’s “nice for people who like that sort of thing” (which is how I’ve heard it represented within protestantism, and even Catholicism, even by those who do “like that sort of thing), but as… something much more fundamental. And, indeed, it is much more fundamental — than temperaments, or preferences, or any other personal differences. My most pressing complaint with Adam McHugh’s book is that he treats things like sacraments, spiritual father or mother hood, worship, and contemplation of God as being in the same category (ruled by preference) as communication style or career choice, which they are not; especially sacraments. He asked the readers of his blog if they were contemplatives as one might ask whether someone considered themselves a sports fan; as though it were a nice hobby. Prayer is not simply a nice hobby, and contemplation of God (supposing God presents Himself to be contemplated) is most certainly nothing of the kind, and is quite surely not about temperament.

In any event, if I wanted to go there, I might suggest (and have suggested in the past) that there may be something temperamental, and strongly linked to the in- or ex- troverted thinking I’ve been discussing, in something Redmarble has often brought attention to in the past: the problem in postmodernity of the subjective and objective themselves, especially as they represent Truth. Philosophically, this problem is very long and complex, and there’s much of it I don’t know, but the part that Redmarble brought up is one of the results or symptoms of that problem. We postmoderns aren’t comfortable with calling beliefs true and meaning it. We’re apparently worried that someone will think we mean by “Christianity is true” (a statement about the truth of the claims of the Church), “Christianity is true for me” (a statement about the truth of my convictions). Some of us react to this by modifying “true” with all sorts of hedges: “objectively true,” “truth claim,” “infallible,” and so on.

In the terms from above, introverts are often concerned (and can be paranoid) about the objective engulfing the subjective. We’re not on very close terms with the world of objects, and don’t want it to encroach too closely on our inner worlds. We can feel the faint whiff of manipulation from a mile away, and if the objective does impose itself too strongly, we feel like our world is collapsing. Because of the philosophical history mentioned above (ever since Descartes?), we have recently become equally concerned that the subject might swallow up the object: that we might cease to believe that there really is a world out there to relate to. What if there aren’t real Things in Themselves out there; objects with being to them, apart from how we perceive them?

What if the extent to which a person feels personally threatened by “subjective truth” (not the extent to which he believes it to exist) is strongly influenced by his initial relationship with the “objective” world? In psychology that’s his level of in- or ex- troversion. My hypothesis is that an introvert is more likely to feel threatened by serious interaction with anything remotely manipulative, such as certain kinds of behaviorism, teaching, marketing, or religious instruction (cults?) that takes after marketing; an introvert, because it encroaches upon the inner world (the subjective), and that’s what they care most about. The extrovert, meanwhile, might be pretty oblivious to faintly manipulative activities (because they tend to put up less of a barrier to begin with), but would be similarly threatened by anything that encroaches upon the solidity of the objective: and few things encroach so far as doubt concerning the “objectivity” of truth, morality, history, belief, the Bible (if you’re a Christian) — the vast majority of everything human. That’s not to say that the extrovert might not condemn manipulative tactics, or the introvert disbelief in the actuality of the objective; only that their disagreement is less personal, because to the extrovert, “subjective truth” lacks actuality (it lacks something even for the introvert, but is at least somewhat substantial).

I also bought a Kindle, and read Outliers by Malcom Gladwell, author of Blink, and The Tipping Point on it. He is a highly entertaining writer, and I read the book in about a day and a half, but I’m not sure what I’m left with after reading it. Gladwell’s premise is that “outliers” — those who’s achievement lies far beyond the norm — are not only ambitious and hard working (though they are that), but that the things that make them outliers, rather than moderately successful, are matters of chance from history, gifts, and cultural heritage, allowing them an opportunity to excel in ways equally brilliant and hard working people could not. He presents a series of stories of Jewish lawyers born in the 1930s, hockey stars born in January, computer tycoons with access to time-share computers in 1970, mathematicians who’s parents tended the rice paddies of South-east Asia, children attending New York KIPP schools, and others. In addition to entertaining his readers (at which he succeeds), Gladwell’s intent seems to be two-fold: to expose the enormous exaggeration of the American myth that “anyone can be president” (or an astronaut, or a billionaire, or whatever), and to suggest that we might increase children’s chances of success by looking more closely into external factors that promote or stifle that success. On the whole, it is an interesting and well written book, though not  lastingly so unless one either buys into the myth of the “self-made man,” or is interested (as the KIPP teachers are) in the difficult and lengthy task of instilling the cultural traits and habits of success in people who might not otherwise be trained therein.

I’ve also been looking through Carl Jung’s Psychological Types, where he first defines the terms “introverted” and “extroverted,” and how those can combine with the innate preferences measured by the MBTI to form specific “types.” Without this book, it’s probable that all our modern talk of “extroverted-thinking” and whatnot would look quite different. It’s more interesting than most of those tests, self-help books, and so on, and also much more difficult to understand. More importantly, he seems concerned with quite different questions and concerns than later psychologists, but I’m not quite sure how, yet. Basically, the MBTI folks and authors of pop psychology books on introversion take a few of his neatest, shiniest ideas, and flatten them substantially to be easier and more flattering. For instance, introversion. When I read through books like Introverts in the Church, Psychology Today’s Introvert Corner, Introvert Power, or The introvert Advantage (I haven’t finished the last two), it’s obvious that they have to flatten a lot simply to reduce their scope to introversion alone, but they do something else as well: they have a different understanding of the relationship of subject and object, which is the absolute center of the opposition in Psychological Types.

The modern definition of introversion and extroversion, respectively, goes something like this: the extrovert is energized by social interaction and drained by reflection, while the introvert is energized by solitude and drained by social interaction. That’s it. Then there are all sorts of consequences of that dichotomy, which tend to be culturally harder on the introvert than the extrovert, because American culture values frequent interaction very highly. Jung doesn’t talk like that. His main concern is not with levels of social interaction. That bears repeating: it’s not about energy in social interaction. That’s is absolutely essential and quite difficult to remember, because for modern pop psychologists that’s precisely what it’s about. For them it is about the college student who doesn’t much care for parties, the pastor who dreads coffee hour, the overwhelmed, overstimulated introvert craving to rationalize his need for personal time and space.

Jung, as I say, doesn’t talk much about that. He would probably acknowledge that it’s related, as he notes in passing that someone of a given natural temperament can be exhausted by operating in opposition to that, but it’s not his central thesis.  His central thesis (as regards introversion and extroversion) is that these two temperamental categories are about the orientation of the subject toward the object. The subject is the Self, or in a neurotic, the ego (they are different), and the object is the world out there. Anything in the world out there: other people, places, things, and ideas. That strikes me as essential and utterly neglected by those other writers. “The Objective” is not simply other people. Data is objective, for instance, and other people’s beliefs or judgements; indeed, one’s own system of values and beliefs can be seen as objective by the extroverted thinker — and that’s important. Anyway, extroversion is an orientation toward the object, and introversion is an orientation toward the subject. They each have normal, healthy ranges, and neurotic ranges, and for Jung, the neurotic ranges are opposed by the unconscious, leading to all sorts of psychological problems.

This distinction is, I believe, important, because it leads to quite different emphases. It’s important, I mean, if you entertain the possibility that the originator of a theory might have important insights into that theory that others can lose to the detriment of that theory — and I do happen to think that. Aristotle is generally both more interesting and more profound than Aristotelians, and Plato is much richer and deeper than most Platonists. I’m going to suppose that there can be things in Jung which jungians forgot to their detriment.

In any event, consider the difference between the dichotomies “alone vs social” and “subject vs object,” if one is considering a fundamental psychological orientation. The second is not only wider, but an entirely different category. One can be an extroverted thinker thinking about his objective world alone, or an introverted intuitive, trying to get his best friend to get a glimpse of his subjective world, and they might both be energized. At this point I’m willing to entertain a disagreement with the definition of pop psychology governing collecting or spending energy. If the most important categories are subject and object, than this is possible, and solves some peculiarities of experience. For instance, supposing that I’m moderately introverted (and I do suppose that), then consider the thinking function. It’s not precisely that I think better alone than in company, or that I process information better silently than verbally. Sometimes that’s the case — there are certain situations where the social dynamic makes constructive thought extremely difficult — but there are other situations where a discussion is much more fruitful than an essay; even a times discussion among some 20 near strangers. There are cases where the discussion also costs less energy. It’s not just that some discussions cost less energy than other discussions (as one would expect), but that some discussions cost less energy than other kinds of thought pursued alone, or even the same kind of thought pursued alone (because the other people are working as well, and I don’t have to do all the thinking myself). It’s easier to talk about Aristotle than it is to simply think or write about him, but it’s easier to write about him than it is do do a dizzying array of activities, posters, presentations, games, and whatnot about his work. That’s the wrench in the system that made me find a great deal of what the writers on in- and ex- troversion (why can’t one simply say troversions?) to be nonsense. The reason why a Saint John’s seminar jives with introverts and an educational training doesn’t is not (I will assert) for the reason given in the definitions from those books: it is not because of loss of energy through social interaction, because a seminar is social interaction, but because of something I can’t articulate yet, but which I do believe Jung observed more accurately than anyone else I’ve read on the subject. Certain styles of teaching (not only in school, but in religious environments as well) are perceived by someone like me as not only being tiring, but as threatening. They’re tiring because they’re threatening; because it costs a kind of defensive energy. What’s more, individual assignments can be threatening or non-threatening in the exact same way as social interaction, leading to the conclusion that the distinction is not where the pop psychologists have put it.

For instance, writing about this doesn’t cost me all that much trouble and energy. It takes time, of course, along with attention and space, and I will probably get tired of it in a few hours or days, but it’s a pretty low energy activity. What’s more, talking about the same topic is, for the most part, also a fairly low energy activity, even if I’m doing a good deal of the talking, and even if I have to think on my feet (which are both posited as introvert drains). On the other hand, trying to apply this stuff to a lesson plan in alignment with data, best practices, state standards, and so on would be extremely draining, even if all I had to do was listen to someone else tell me how to do it, or talk with one other person about it, or even if I were simply writing an essay about it. Somewhere in that distinction, I believe, lies the Jungian distinction between an introverted and an extroverted thinker, and not in social interaction. Jung’s distinction between introverted and extroverted thinking is between thinking that is ruled by and concerned with the objective, and that which is instead ruled by the subjective. The objective thinker is primarily interested in what’s out there (the object); it’s data, facts, statistics, demographics, polls, shared opinions, factually based beliefs, and “true truth.” In education, the objective thinker is the person who sees no oddity in treating teaching (the other side of which, learning, is extremely subjective) as a scientist; they are the behaviorists, the standardizers, the masters of method and data, who are comfortable with altering those methods to obtain the best objectively measured results. They’re the kind of person the current educational establishment is most comfortable with. The pattern is similar in other spheres: in political science they’re into demographics (Hugh Hewitt, for instance); in church they’re the growth experts, the people who count their conversions and analyze what external factors influenced those results; they’re the list writers and get things done-ers; they’re often concerned with legalism, because taken to an extreme, that’s what they’d tend towards; they’ve got to fight against that, because it’s an actual temptation.

The introverted thinker, meanwhile, is also interested in “figuring things out,” but introspectively. They keep a close eye on their own psychological processes (and are therefore more likely than anyone else to be interested in this stuff), and pay a lot of attention to internal distinctions, words, or meanings; they might like philosophy or logic, but certainly not demographics or data analysis; they’ll always be trying to turn their results toward the subject, and hypothesizing the inner state of whatever it is they’re studying. In education, they’re the professors who will say things about human experience that make their students gasp: what! You too? They’re harder for me to identify, actually, both because I’m not myself inclined to be surprised by them, and because they’re more interesting on close acquaintanceship. Carl Jung? Jacques Barzun? My art history prof at NAU? Robotictree? Theofan? Rebmarble? They’re the person in the meeting, mind whizzing away wait… does that make sense? Perhaps… but there’s this other distinction; they missed a distinction, and it’s thrown the whole system off! They’re the person at the religious gathering who’s counting the number of times the speaker says “Lord, just…” or ill-defined terms, and intensely interested in why, and what it means, and whether it’s a fluke, or what it says about these people, himself, language, and this community. And, yes, it probably takes an introverted thinker to try to revive a distinction made by an outdated psychologist, and contrast it with anomalies caused by a more modern approach which has shifted to an easier to define focus.

As an experiment, if I were to design for myself and my imaginary products a brand, what would it be like? Truefaced, which got me thinking about this, has a slick, corporate kind of image. We’re a reputable company; buy our products. Because of their message, they have awkwardly combined the impersonal but trustworthy corporate persona with the vulnerable teller of personal secrets. For me, it doesn’t work at all. You can’t have it both ways. Either you are being open, vulnerable, and unsure; or you are carefully crafting your image so that people will buy your product. Seth Godin’s website works, because he’s a marketing expert who’s carefully crafting his image, but he’s crafting it transparently, as a marketing expert. He has the premise that “masks” can be a good thing so long as they’re in some sense transparent masks — so long as the image and the thing are in some accord. He would probably argue that one’s public persona should be balanced by personal intimacy, but that whatever’s going on at the level of personal intimacy should not be confused with one’s public persona. Christianity isn’t part of his public persona, however. There’s no conflict, because his message recommends doing the sort of thing that he’s also doing.

There is a conflict in Truefaced’s persona, I would argue, and in the Eldridge’s as well, and perhaps also in Donald Miller’s. There’s an inherent conflict in thoughtfully marketed authenticity, wherein the authors choose to tell stories about themselves (like a Truefaced pastor who blogged about how he sprayed his neighbor’s dogs to try to get them to stop barking, lied to his neighbor about it, and never did apologize for the spraying or the lie, as of the public blog post) which can turn an unresolved lie into an interesting anecdote, where one’s readers are likely to congratulate them for their courage, when they’re in no real danger to begin with. Trying to market authenticity by telling stories of times you were inauthentic is like trying to market humility by being humble about all the ways in which you’re usually proud.

Welcome to one of the most profound journeys this life affords. We are about to embark on a glorious ride of profound discovery and a new way of seeing. It is not new truth, but for many of us, it will be a new experience. In astounding and unusual ways, God appears to be revealing to the body of Christ, in this season, the power, healing, and freedom of trust-triggered grace.

– Trufaced Experience Guide, Introduction

It sounds like a ride at Evangland. They then go on to make a series of assumptions about their audience — about how we’ve been hurt, don’t trust, cliche, blah, blah, cliche. I didn’t even have to find that; it was the very first paragraph of the introduction. Compare this to a writer who’s not spectacular, but is solid and sane. After telling a short story about getting up in the middle of the night to look after her baby:

About fifteen years ago I started to use the Jesus Prayer during these mid-night hours: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” This very simple prayer was developed in the deserts of Egypt and Palestine during the early centuries of Christian faith, and has been practiced in the Eastern Orthodox Church ever since. It is a prayer inspired by St Paul’s exhortation to “pray constantly” )1 Thess 5:17), and its purpose is to tune one’s inner attention to the presence of the Lord.

Frederica Matthews-Green, The Jesus Prayer, Introduction.

Nothing terribly shocking there. There’s a better book on the topic, which she relies upon heavily. But it’s just what one would expect: she gives her premise (saying the Jesus Prayer is a tested way to focus one’s inner attention on God); an example (I pray when I have to look after my children in the middle of the night, and it’s easy, so I can say it even when I’m really tired); a bit of history, and some of the reasoning behind its use. No manipulative second person enthusiasms needed. Meanwhile, she still does mean to sell her book, and is presenting it positively, as writers are expected to do.

I care about this because of the countless hours I’ve spent trying to figure out what’s wrong with a book, or what’s wrong with me, or what’s wrong with a Bible study, because some heavily advertised “program” turned out to be pretty irrelevant to my actual life, however helpful it might have been to someone for whom the stuff addressed there was really a big deal. Rightly used advertising connects a product to the people who should have it; poor advertising makes a mad dash for the entire market, no matter how unhelpful it may be the the majority. Ministers: stop supporting crummy marketing tactics.

Having a coherent character, honesty, truthfulness, openness, and so on are constantly discussed in certain Christian circles, and I have found them nearly impossible to discuss meaningfully. It puts a reasonably honest person at a disadvantage, should things get at all personal (as they’re supposed to. It makes the reasonably honest person feel like he’s trying to solve one of those “Epimenides says that all Cretans are liars. Epimenides is a Cretan. Is he lying when he says that all Cretans are liars?” paradoxes.

It’s bad etiquette to point out faults that one does not suffer from very much. It’s poor manners, for instance, to respond to a sermon on honesty by saying “actually, I think I’m pretty honest most of the time.” One might alleviate the awkwardness of such a statement by softening it: “In fact, I think that I’m habitually honest, but also that I haven’t spent much time in threatening situations that would test my honesty. It’s quite possible that if I ever were in a really threatening situation, I would fail — but it would because my cowardice was stronger than my honesty, which is not quite what you are talking about.” This is an oddity because, assuming that this person is really honest, he would have to be honest about that and admit it to be the case — which might be socially riskier than admitting that he’s a chronic liar, in the midst of a group that is trying to encourage greater honesty. That’s partly because of ego (I don’t want to talk about my faults with someone who doesn’t share them unless he can help me), but more for social reasons: if we’re talking about overcoming our chronic dishonesty, and you’re not only honest, but have never been fiercely tempted toward dishonesty (because then you might help the rest of us), then how are you going to be a part of this conversation. Probably in an honest, but not particularly vulnerable way, which will change the dynamics of our conversation, and might be pretty awkward if we’re trying especially hard to be open and vulnerable together. You might try being vulnerable about what a slob you are to prove that you know you’re a sinner too, but that’d be an intrusion. I don’t find this to be especially helpful. Confession is much more helpful, and is also a sacrament.

Of course, it is true that there are other, more fundamental things going on, underneath masks or vulnerability: there’s a human person’s position as a created but not quite completed being, who does not yet know his “true name” and deepest personhood, because he is not yet fully united with God. The reasonably honest person could go there to try to redeem himself from the disgrace of not having anything really interesting to confess, but they’d have to know quite a lot more about that than I do.

I went to the website for this book, and it’s a pain. A major pain. There isn’t a single sentence that sounds like it’s written by an actual person who’s interested in convincing another person that his book will be informative, helpful, and perhaps even wise. Instead, it says things like:

VISION: We restore the Original Good News to marriages, families, leaders, and cultures who are looking for a cure from the deceptive snare of sin-management.

Is it possible to present a more content-less “vision” for a book than that one. I don’t care. I want to know what your book is about.

TrueFaced: Experience Edition Book 

Healthy relationships can exist when you feel free to peel away the masks and become who God created you to be. In TrueFaced you’ll discover God’s love and grace in a new way, giving you freedom to live out your identity in Christ and extend that same love and grace to those around you.

There’s… just nothing I can say to that. I think that’s the sleaziest description for a mainstream Christian book I’ve ever encountered. Oh, wait. It’s not a book, it’s an experience. I’m actually a little shocked and horrified by this website, even if the book is decent (and my friend says it probably isn’t), because it’s one thing to say that your idea will cure all our interpersonal ills, and then tell us what your idea is. Or to tell us what kind of book you’re writing, and the basic premise behind it. Or even to craftily hide your premise in clever marketing, while writing a book about marketing. But to write a book about being honest, grace-filled, and truthful, while using every sleazy marketing tactic available (it will change your life! The true meaning of the Gospel has finally been discovered! We wrote an accompanying “experience guide,” retreat manuel, CDs, DVDs… indeed, a sizable brand around this) is… just so transparently bizarre. How is this not transparently bizarre?

Aside: They have a different meaning of grace than I do. That’s to be expected, but still not super great. Grace is a super important word to Christians, and Orthodox mean by it, very specifically, “the uncreated energy of God.” Protestants mean something more like “unmerited favor.” You see the difference.