An Introvert on the Prejudices of Psychologists

Introverts are the most misunderstood category of people. It is supposed that an introvert does not talk. Such a person keeps to oneself and does not seek company. Many go to the extent of considering an introvert to be arrogant. In schools, introverted children give a favorable impression to teachers. They think that if a child is quiet, he/she is well behaved and more likely to be studious. This is an automatic assumption and a psychological one. This assumption can be dramatically different if the teacher insists on team work. If the child is uncomfortable working with other children then they tend to think that there is significant discomfort and goading is the need of the hour. If a child is active and cannot sit still in class, teachers tend to view that as an aberration. It can get to a point where parents take their children to psychologists and they are often diagnosed with attention deficiency hyperactive disorder. It does not occur to teachers and parents that children have a certain natural tendency and to force them to behave in a manner that is incongruent with their natural inclinations is hazardous to their well being. There are ways of nurturing them. It takes time and children are not nurtured in a day. This applies to adults as well. If the education system is such that time is of the essence and teachers are under pressure to complete the syllabus within a time frame, then quite obviously the system is flawed. 

Introverts are viewed differently in different cultures. In some countries, introvert is seen as socially underdeveloped and in some they are seen as being more focused and stable than extroverts. There is also a gender bias involved. In so called liberal countries and also countries that are midway, introversion in men is not considered desirable. In women, it is considered by such societies as more acceptable. The reason is that men were always considered to be dominant on account of primordial instincts and it would interest the readers to know that this belief is also entertained by developed nations with or without their knowledge. With blind dating and the capitalistic idea of free press, the stereotypes of masculinity and femininity have reached an all time high and intellectual acumen has hit an all time low.  

An introvert is reflective and derives strength from within. There is a stronger need for solitude and it is in silence that an introvert recovers from the vicissitudes of life. To conclude that such people do not want friends is a mistaken notion. There are introverts who seek like-minded company. They may not participate in interactions with people but they can be unusually observant. Those who engage in interactions do not have the distance to notice subtle variations in people. This distance proves to be a natural advantage for individuals who would much rather watch a social game than play it. 

Psychologists, parents, teachers and peers harp on the need to have self-confidence. If there is a word or phrase in the English language, I do not like, it is self-confidence. Confidence does not refer to anything specific. There is only a context against which it is measured. Usually glamour obsessed people judge someone as confident by looking at their mannerisms and body language. This does not make someone confident. In fact it tends to amount to stupidity. What people see is a reflection of who they are. What they can see is a reflection of what they want to see. 

Psychologists and personality developers especially in India tend to lay greater emphasis on the importance of such projections without delving into details. You can only be confident about what you know. To be confident about what you do not know is a sign of insecurity. There is a tendency among people of fashionable dispositions to pitch style over substance. This is detrimental to the development of their psyche and the collective psyche of the masses unless the latter is beyond the influence of the former. 

Psychologists have yet to understand the nature of their own misplaced sense of moderation. They swear by the idiom that anything in excess is bad. This is limiting as a masterpiece is always borne out of the excesses of a vibrant intellect. People with moderate constitutions have never produced a work of art of any significance. Masterpieces have been produced only by minds in frenzy. Take any artist as an example and recoil in horror.

To define is to limit and psychologists have made professions out of defining human behaviour. They have to be rejected if the potential of your being has to blossom.

‘’Be as you are” is not just a book by David Godman. It is necessary to understand yourself better and realize your full potential. History is full of theories but no theory has survived history.      

The Mistake of Intelligent Design

It is generally supposed that God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. If he was omnipotent he should have the ability to correct the flaws in the universe. I personally do not see him doing any of those corrections. The distinction between good and evil is at least in a profound sense blurred. It is difficult to say for sure if you can rest trust on any one individual including your ‘self’. The self is constantly changing and so are the emotions that accompany it. The Hindu thinker says that if there is one aspect that never changes, it is the ‘self’. We will weigh this statement a little later. But now if you take into account the experiences that you go through in life you cannot be impervious to the fact that there are so many flaws in the world around you. One part of the world is well off with high life expectancies and the other part is the exact opposite. Animals get killed by carnivorous animals. No one can blame them because it is not in their design to find alternate sources of nourishment. If they are not to blame then there is only one person and that is nature or maybe even God.

It may even be a fallacy to suppose that there is a God because there are so many logical contradictions in the possibility for the existence of God. For one it is difficult to conceive of a perfect being creating an imperfect world/ universe. The other argument which is a bigger contradiction lends itself to a question, “what did God do before he created the universe?” We can see around us that the living beings and even inanimate matter change through a process of conflict and struggle. The process as observed is self-sufficient. There seems to be no need for any intervention. 

The fact of the matter is that the cosmic force is impervious to the destruction as a result of the conflict which is all pervasive. So God as a being full of compassion is a matter of doubt. Is God omnipresent? If he was then the universe may as well worship itself. God would have been the other to man and man the other to him. There seems to be here a duality that challenges creationism.

Observations tell man that what happens around him is unjustifiable. You take for granted your existence as the self to the other and you observe the universe as a phenomenon of duality. You cannot observe otherwise because it is as much impossible to deny yourself as it is to deny experience or sensation. The only time when sensation is denied is when you are not conscious.

The state of nothingness so to say only exists as a concept. This in itself is a flaw in ontology. You exist as a self and you exist as the other to the other self and what you have to justify existence is a circular argument. Existence is an a priori phenomenon as a result of sensation. The mistake in intelligent design, if at all there is an intelligent designer is to create life out of contradictions. A life out of contradictions can only produce ethics out of contradictions and the duality is itself the dwelling centre for the impasse called infinite regress.

On ‘the Search for Happiness’

One emotion that unfortunately does not have a clear meaning is happiness. Although it is considered a desirable state to be in no one is able to explain without ambiguity what happiness really is. Some say it is a state of mind; others say that it is a euphemism in some sense for the word ‘pleasure’ which is normally a word used in the context of human or animal instincts and there are those who say that happiness in the ideal sense is an illusion. But whatever be the specific meanings that people ascribe to it, it remains a word of the heavens. By ‘word of the heavens’ I mean something that does not have an earthly place as it is not a plain emotion. Yet people are searching for it hoping that they will find it sooner or later. In the struggles of their situations some may give up the hope of finding happiness and be content with their predicament. This is a rather unusual state to be in because on one hand they have not found the state of mind that they are looking for and on the other they give up the search accepting what little they have and they find it! But there is a pathetic fallacy associated with the search for happiness and it is that one usually does not know to what extent happiness is possible and how to preserve it till the end; yet one wants it quite desperately. 

From time to time it has been observed that we go through happy moments now and then. If they are outcomes of the dreadful word ‘success’ then you can be quite sure that it is subject to insecurity. Preservation of a success induced joyful state is by no means happiness. Happiness is a joyful state which is experienced for its own sake or when you are involved in an activity that you like without any intentions of benefiting from it in the future. Happiness from this angle never exists in the future. Attempts to discover happiness only leads to creating techniques that will have to be applied to be able to find it. But application is a process which has nothing to do with the end result, which in this case is happiness. There have been people who write about happiness; psychologists who research on the subject and find only their own perspectives of it. Whatever be the attempts to find the heavenly state and preserve it till kingdom come, you should be spared the vanity of associating it with success or priggish talks. It must be noted that one who experiences anxiety does not want to be unhappy but is desperately trying to find this heavenly state of mind. One who is anxious is not just tired but is terrified at the thought of consequences of not finishing the line or entering mainstream. He is anxious and not unhappy. 

The only person who really is unhappy is one who is able to see that nothing in life can ever bring him happiness. If nothing can bring me happiness even from within then I would not want to keep searching for it as it is a waste of intrapersonal effort. If I am unhappy then I may consider not looking for happiness at all and this unhappy mind does away with itself. It has let go of my unreasonable search of that which I cannot describe. If I cannot describe it and have no idea of what it is then it does not exist in my being. If someone else finds it in common pursuits then I can be quite sure that that is not my concept of happiness because I cannot find it. Happiness is simply a myth.

Show Me The Exit Clause

 Show Me The Exit Clause

I wish time comes to an end

So that loneliness may perish

The part that makes a difference burns

The source of life, vitality, happiness

And everything that follows crumbles

Before a trembling idea of the future

The path of good hope can never be paved,

For it is not here and now.

The path of hope is never buried

You come to life every time you realize

There is a new tomorrow

But it is this tomorrow that lies buried

While you live in the moment

Where you are just a plastic doll

A puppet of trust and circumstances

Tomorrow is dead and today no more

I am here under the morrow

Beneath every subtle desire and instinct

My loneliness is all I have to dedicate to you

The living moment is a fortress

In which there is no awakening

The rigid cell of my body from you

I cannot partake.

And separate the pillar from the open air theater

Like my loneliness that keeps my wishes

From crumbling

A puppet of trust and circumstances

Tomorrow is dead and today no more

There is no exit where there is no door.

I have filled the open air theater

With voices louder excitement greater

There is no exit there is no door

Where tomorrow is dead and today no more.

Rage Against Reason

Close your eyes to the image

The words you hear are harmless

Listen to tunes of thin air

Insulate you from the fear

 Of good hope

The rhythm of your nature is preserved

While inhibition gives way to restitution

Of despairs of an existence

That can only be repaired by exaltation

Of the free spirit

You realize that you were never who you are

Was it the maple syrup in your oats

Or your tongue she tasted sweet?

With red pepper in your hopes

You begin to weep

Likewise without the image of what you see

You are likely to experience in reality

A certain idiosyncrasy as it may appear to the age of reason

You realize that science all along was intellectual treason.

Ambiguity in Faith

Predominantly one tends to be preoccupied with thoughts relevant to the demands of the immediate present. This immediate present does not give too much time for your mind to speculate as you need to do what is necessary ‘now’. Needless to say, there have been several books written on the need to give ultimate importance to the immediate present. If you venture to open a bank account in a relatively new bank you would not find yourself raising metaphysical questions. You would worry about questions pertaining to the immediate present. This is because the immediate present needs you to engage with the situation you find yourself in without compromising on your attention. It would be wrong to conclude that metaphysical questions are absurd as when there is little to do there is a lot of room for speculation. You ponder, reflect and raise questions when you are marooned in time. It is similar to being marooned in an island.

One question that I have had recourse to raise is regarding the nature of belief and faith in God. It is a rather difficult question, I have found and to answer without any trace of ambiguity is even more difficult. This, for some reason or the other is unpalatable for many. The confusion in question has a lot to do with the lack of understanding of the word ‘agnosticism’ which is not quite the same as ‘atheism’. You tend to lose grip of the significance of this difference as you may find it to be, nothing but splitting hair. The word ‘agnosticism’ has its relevance when it comes to the subject of how much a human being can know about the nature of the universe. In simple words, if I am not all knowing how can I be certain of my beliefs, especially the metaphysical ones such as the validity of the existence of God. 

There is however, one way of avoiding the well of absolute skepticism and that is the immediate present which you cannot deny. In fact even this is trivial and does not get you far in understanding the nature of your faith as you have only solved one problem effectively, which is not really of a philosophical nature. It may interest you to know that there is an extension possible and that is the concept and reality of ‘evolution’. If you are not sure about whether or not God exists, you may want to wait till you gain more knowledge, wisdom and experience. You then look at intuition and extrasensory perception a bit more seriously. You also start developing an appreciation of wonder and insights which are ahead of the curve of common logic. This position may be termed as ‘evolutionary mysticism’ which by no means is vague and is in harmony with your reasoning and state of mind. There is then less justification for jumping to conclusions without having sufficient data even when it seems more comforting to make a black and white decision. It is this ambiguity in faith that one tends to fill up with words. These words do not reveal exactly the nature of one’s metaphysical position. There is dynamism about the state of mind which indicates the mental process of evolution where answers are not quite as clear cut as we would have liked them to be.  I for one find ample grounds for respecting ambiguity in faith as it is ‘evolutionary mysticism’ in disguise.      

 

 

Zen

Apprehensive sunlight

Throws little light

For humans to move.

 

The Picture of a Timeless Young Man

I spent an evening in the drawing room and this is what I realized. You cannot insulate yourself from who you are for way too long. Despite your efforts to deceive yourself, the real ‘you’ remains unscathed. I chanced upon the eyes of hell and what did I see- a dark blue book that has a picture of a retiring gentleman who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally. There was a sense of mystery when I looked at that book. It filled me with profound thrill so much so that I could not articulate what it was, that threw me in a state of wicked frenzy. To this day when I examine myself, I am all the more certain that this dark moment marks the turning point of a dangerous kind of innocence. It is unknown and unheard off. It is revealed only to those who wish to reject the tree of good and evil and discover the tree of life. 

The Picture of Dorian Gray is in the mirror. It is sufficient to open your eyes to the mental sensation. There is no need to visualize the descriptions of the passages in the novel. Wilde is not quite at home with his sensitivity because he feels that the world is not ready for the poetry of warm emotions. Yet he cannot deny them. How does he bear this conflict? His novel is testimony to how the split occurs. Does it occur in one’s psyche or is there a conscious sense of disparity in one’s being? How would acceptance follow? His only novel undresses the binaries that human beings have come to sublimate. It is more than what Wilde could be because ‘’mystery is in the visible and not in the invisible”.   If you cannot see, you do not know what is there. If you can conceive of that which you cannot see, then it exists devoid of enigma as an idea in print. If you can see an image and would like to understand it, you would like to judge it all the same. It is enigmatic and hence arrests your curiosity. 

In ‘’The Picture of Dorian Gray”, Lord Henry is a hypnotic cynic who speaks to the young male reader. His words are at once flippant, witty and petulantly profound. He mocks at the tendency to worship virtues that are simply practices of convenience. This work is relevant even today when old dogmas are replaced by new ones. What was considered noble, is now barbaric; what was once considered romantic is now perceived to be a sign of weakness but one gets the feeling that beneath the tough exterior of the machine age, there is a craving for the natural processes that keeps us warm devoid of the alienation that we have hitherto come to experience. 

Hypocrisy in contemporary times lies in denying this craving for personal reunion and holding in high esteem professional supremacy. The smart phones, social networking sites and instant messages have substituted personal interaction by promoting technology-enabled extroversion. We live thus in monumental stereotypes groping in the evanescence of trends worshiped and fashioned by the dictates of commerce. In so doing, we lose all vitality and synthesize our appetites. Thinking has taken a back seat and the new age iconoclast is a human being of quaint tastes inexorably socialistic. Such has come to define the times we live in. We do not know what anti-hypocrisy is because we never fully understood hypocrisy. A nice individual is considered to be a confidence trickster. Hypocrisy has merely assumed different forms. These forms are more complicated than ever. Duality of Victorian England that Wilde reveals is just fundamental to the complexities governing our existence. They multiply with experience till sincerity becomes elusive. As Wilde himself says, “Little sincerity is a dangerous thing; too much sincerity would prove fatal.” Every time I read this novel, my perspectives only increase because there is in it a thought much larger than what a message can convey. It is inconsistent and inconstant, which is why it cannot be brought down to a terrible moral that Wilde said would be revealed not to the puritan but only to those who are pure at heart. It is the picture of a timeless young man.