Why Modern America Hates Introverts

Almost two years ago I wrote an article describing the "plight" of the introvert today. This is a phenomenon that continues to fascinate me because it says a great deal about what America has become. The people who ventured across the ocean and into the American wilderness -- severing all ties to the world as they knew it -- were extremely independent, serious, and pious. Such attitudes today are disfavored and associated with dour introverts, not the happy-go-lucky, back-slapping, "well-adjusted" extroverts, who flit about in a society founded by the very sort of people they disdain. Indeed, I often wonder whether a typical mother and father today (to the extent mothers and fathers even still cohabit) would prefer a perfectly healthy introvert for a child, or an extrovert with lobster-claw or Down syndrome.

To me the answer is fairly simple. As I've remarked on numerous prior occasions, this is a consumer-driven "culture" that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. People and things are judged by their outer appearance rather than their inner qualities, since the latter are revealed only through effort that few are willing to expend for anything anymore (besides chasing money or tail). With the explosion of technologies that perpetually engage our senses, people have lost the capacity to use the mind or engage in abstraction. The extrovert is a Vaudeville act, engaging the senses and performing for all the world to see. The introvert is a book, but nobody reads anymore. They see a hard cover and shrug their shoulders, moving along to the nearest sensory diversion. Of course, the extrovert is completely unaware of this and concludes merely that the introvert is a dullard or a snob, not worth wasting time on. 

But it goes deeper than that. Extroverts do not respect introverts because introverts do not go around demanding it. But demanding things is the way of the needy, not the self-sufficient. Of all the people I've ever known or run into, the ones who thumped their chests and demanded respect the loudest were the least worthy of it. If someone truly is excellent, he knows it and does not desperately seek validation from others. True respect is quietly commanded; once again, though, this requires effort and reflection, so it has little purchase in the modern mind.

At bottom is the hatred of introverts, agitated by a creeping suspicion that we indeed are independent, capable, and don't really need you. To the extrovert, not being needed is a death sentence, thus unforgivable.