Shallowness
Hypothesis: Extraversion is shallowness.
Shallowness, for purposes of this page, is interest in the lowest common denominator of human concerns, especially social status.
The shallow side of life comprises: concern with looking beautiful or attractive to others, physical stimulation and pleasure (hedonism), winning at competition, one-upmanship, being an important person (i.e. more important than other people), social dominance and power over others, accumulating material wealth far beyond what you need for physical well-being, being thought intelligent/deep/insightful by others, getting your way right now simply because it's what you want (and so not listening to objections), keeping up with the Joneses, being a slave to fashion, saying politically correct things that you don't believe in for fear of losing the loyalty of your friends, getting away with unethical things as long as you're sure you won't get caught or you're sure that your friends will approve or wink in admiration (using social approval as a substitute for your own ethical judgement), sacrificing everything for the sake of a higher salary, making legalistic arguments that technically make sense and "win" in some recognized court but disregard the matters of real concern in a conflict, refusing to change your mind for fear that others will stop perceiving you as an authority, narrow-mindedness, limiting your company to people who agree with you, conspicuous consumption, judging people on the basis of things like whether they're wearing a brown belt with black shoes, vanity in general.
Interest in these things is particularly shallow if taken without regard for how they relate to the reasons why these things are valuable: physical beauty achieved through huge amounts of make-up, thus breaking the connection between beauty and health; using big words that the people you're talking with don't understand, to make them think you're smart rather than to share knowledge; earning a higher salary without contributing work of more value, such as through stock manipulation.
It's easy to put down the shallow concerns of life, but in a way they are what life is about. Deeper concerns that don't connect in any way to economic wealth, social status, physical pleasure, etc., are not really deep but pointless. The shallow concerns all pertain to the lowest common denominator of human life because they really are the basic fabric of everyone's life. They're concerns that everyone shares and that everyone can easily understand.
The word "shallow" is an interesting choice. We call the above concerns shallow, at least when taken to an extreme, because they involve seeking to display a sign without regard for the meaning of the sign. Making a big salary and driving a fancy car is a sign that you're contributing to your society in some important way, so important that other people are willing to pay lots of money for it. Means of becoming wealthy that don't involve constructive contribution to others' well-being play to the popular perception that money is good, but without the goodness.
Orienting by how people instantly perceive a sign is extraversion. It's extraversion taken to an extreme when the publicly accepted meaning of a sign is taken as the only reality, so that displaying those signs (and craftily maneuvering to get to display them) is all there is to life.
What good is introversion?
The above might shed some light on the question of what benefit is there for extraverts to gain an introverted perspective, or even what benefit there is for introverts to have an introverted perspective. Shallowness is not sustainable. An economy based on acquiring money without producing life-sustaining benefit will crumble; unchecked hedonism will consume all resources and destroy the infrastructure and environment that make it feasible to produce new wealth; beauty and fashionableness get attention but ultimately people see through these things and you get judged on what you do; abuse of power triggers resentment, revenge, and revolt; social status exists only as long as other people are willing to play along with it.
Out-of-balance extraverts--those who lack an introverted perspective--have a distinctive way about them: they appear to be gigantic faces with no person inside. When they don't get instant respect, they seem to say, "But look, I'm putting on this gigantic face! You have to treat me as I say!" It works for a while, which is why they're baffled when it mysteriously stops working. It stops working when people see through it--that is, when the truth comes out that there's nothing behind the mask except a desperate grasping for social dominance and recognition.
Gaining an introverted perspective would thus be to gain some depth: doing something that doesn't bring an immediate payoff and that others might not recognize the value of, because you see the value of it--and fully accepting that perhaps no one else will ever appreciate it. Gaining depth means learning something about why the things that matter so much to you really matter: to become aware, for example, of how benefits that are easily measurable, like salary, are benefits only because of how they relate to the organic totality of life, which we can only experience all at once and does not submit to simplistic measures (see Extraverted Thinking and Introverted Feeling). Or cultivate genuine knowledge and wisdom instead of the mere appearance of it (see Extraverted Sensation and Introverted Intuition).
The extraverted path for introverts
When introverts find themselves irrelevant, dissatisfied, powerless, and feeling like there's no hope of resolving some impasse in life, the basic Lenorean thesis would suggest that they try consciously cultivating shallowness. The words "introversion" and "extraversion" have come to mean "personality types" in popular usage, and are hard to understand even in Lenore's writing. A clearer formulation might simply be: depth and shallowness.
To cultivate shallowness, go after social status. Learn what triggers people to thoughtlessly obey or pay attention, and exploit it. Learn what is popular and imitate it so you can be popular, too. Experiment with superficiality: Don't Just be Yourself. This will feel like you're selling out. But it won't be, because your basic alignment with what really, inalterably matters will still be there. The power you gain, you'll use for genuine good. The difference will be that you'll accept that other people will not be responding with total understanding or appreciation of what you're doing and why. You'll be aware that they are responding for rather simplistic reasons. You'll play along with that part of the world knowingly instead of helplessly. You'll know that you can't control this part of things, you can only do your best in the face of it. Ultimately, you'll discover that you've been a part of this all along. You'll gain true awareness of your place in the greater world.
The problem I see with some of the ideas on this page is that it doesn't differentiate between unconscious and conscious extraversion for the introvert. I don't think cultivating shallowness as this page suggests engenders differentiated extraversion for any function for the introvert. It also seems a bit like inferior Feeling to me. And I'm no writing that because I know the author's type. Extraverts can be extremely extraverted when they're alone because extraversion is more than social. Constraining extraversion to social status is a bit Kierseyan for my taste for this wonderful wiki! --Gib
See also: Lowest-Common-Denominator Logic.
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