Seeing the Past in the Present

"...this plague of extroverts — the showoffs, risk-takers, salesmen, charmers, charlatans and politicians. They may not be responsible for all the evil in the world, but they did give us such pernicious results as Enron, Hollywood, the financial crisis, Washington, infomercials and Harvard Business School." - Kyle Smith.

It is sometimes possible to discern the history of something from the present. It is possible to see the past from the present. Not always, of course, but often.

Take dogs, for example. Even before genetics became so advanced it was determined all dogs are descended from wolves, I thought they were. German Shepherds look almost exactly like wolves, so I thought they were evolved from wolves. Even pugs and French bulldogs, which are my favorite dogs, would have to be bred from wolves, since they're dogs just like German Shepherds.

Now as for pugs and the other lapdogs, they were clearly bred to look like babies, with their smallness, big eyes and pushed-in faces. So you can assume people like babies. These dogs are also bred to be funny, so it's obvious people like funny babies - which most babies are.

Why do I think about these things? Because I'm an introvert - intellectually curious, imaginative, disciplined, brighter-than-normal.

I've also wondered why introverts and extroverts exist. This is an overgeneralization, but not much of one: introverts create and extroverts destroy.

Extroverts are impulsive and don't think. Low-IQ ones end up in prison and higher-IQ ones become politicians. The most murder-loving of soldiers and bullying of cops are low-IQ extroverts. Either way, they destroy. They make society go backwards.

Introverts, on the other hand, are the creators. Without introverts we'd have few scientists, musicians, writers, painters, artists and just creative intellectuals in general. They are the ones who preserve and advance society. As Winifred Gallagher wrote: "The glory of the disposition that stops to consider stimuli rather than rushing to engage with them is its long association with intellectual and artistic achievement. Neither "E=mc2" nor Paradise Lost was dashed off by a party animal."

I use the example of the extroverted King George III, who wouldn't let the Colonies go and started a war. His advisors, who were clearly introverts, advised him to let them separate, but he didn't listen and started a war than England lost.

When extroverts destroy, introverts gather into monasteries and preserve the knowledge. This has happened over and over throughout history. Albert Jay Nock called these people the Remnant and estimated they were ten percent of the population (introverts are 20 percent and extroverts are 80 percent, so Pareto was right and we're clearly outgunned by the Stupid).

Even among animals there are the sitters and watchers (introverts) and the impulsive let's charge-in-and-get-wounded-or-killed extroverts.

I also noticed, starting in middle school, that whatever bullies that existed were always extroverts. They tended to go after the introverts. From that I concluded that extroverts (and extroverted society in general) is set up to kill introverts.

I find that bizarre. The only people who defend, preserve and advance society are the ones society tries to destroy. How this evolved I do not know. That is as far as I can go with seeing the past from the present.

I also conclude the Cycle of Destruction is always caused by extroverts. If you want to read The Mote in God's Eye sometime, you find the cycle of the Moties has gone on for at least 100,000 years, and when society collapsed, knowledge was always preserved in museums.

I also conclude democracy will always fail. The eighty percents of non-thinking, impulsive, childish extroverts will always destroy society, despite the best efforts of the ten percent or so of smart, knowledgeable introverts who want to preserve it.

I also conclude that anarcho-capitalism will cannot even get off the ground, because it is an invention of the more naive of introverts and doesn't apply to extroverts at all.

Introverts should be the ones who rule and extroverts the ones ruled. Extroverts should not be allowed political power at all. I guarantee you that Satan, as portrayed in the Bible, is an extrovert. I also guarantee you that Jesus and the Buddha were introverts.

Introverts gain their self-esteem from within. Extroverts gain it from without, from other people. They go with the flow, whether it's good or bad. They are the Sheeple/Borg who don't want to think, who want to lose their consciousness so they don't have to make choices, and who seek security above liberty.

This is why introverts must learn to be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves.

I sometimes think introverts and extroverts are different species.