Maybe it's because I don't really have any hope, at all, of succeeding in life since being introverted and having feelings of rejections are the biggest obstacles in my life.
I do believe that highly capitalistic societies, where each individual has a bank account and property, seems to be exclusive societies. The age of life in communities has really ended. People used to live in tight communities, never excluding family members, always using available arms for something. Now corporate jobs are nearly mandatory.
I think even vagrants and wanderers were friendly enough to either live together or to speak to people.
Since my problems at school and in family, my conscience has entirely refuse to socialize or to be part of a group. Now the consequence of this are quite dire, but I doubt society can really realize exclusion is a problem, or really do anything about it just because psychology shows it.
You can easily succeed. It's about focus and determination. An introvert must shake off the constant demands to conform by society while staying focused on what matters. Introverts must be determined to overcome their introversion through mastering some discipline(writing, coding, painting, etc.). The lower on the totum pole, the more people will push conformity as a way of life. I think that's why most of the doctors, lawyers, c-level execs Ive met have been pretty introverted and independently minded.
Chances are if you're an introvert, you're stuck with the wrong group of people simply because you're not skilled enough to hang with the masters(which requires intense focus and determination).
It sounds to me like you're making excuses for giving up and sitting on the couch because you're introverted and have had some bad relationship or social encounters.
Everyone other than lifelong hermits has experienced social or romantic rejection. There are plenty of introverts who are successful in capitalistic societies.
You don't say where you live but I assume it's in the USA or some other western capitalistic country. Get out of the house, get some therapy if necessary, but don't give up. There are too many oppoortunities at your fingertips even if you're not a type "A" extrovert.
I hate when people write to strangers on the internet like they know better.
I've stopped anti depressants. I live in france. No degree, no job experience. Got programming skills. Got many interviews, not one hire. I see a psychiatrist every month. I managed to get help from government funded job programs to get a degree, it was a 8 month procedure, I'll get an answer the incoming month, but I'm not very optimistic. I'm in the most unemployment plagued region/city.
I do feel like I'm a miserable individual, but in my country I don't sense there is an honest economic opportunity. My parents gave up trying to help me and cheer me up. They're now both broke.
> It sounds to me like you're making excuses for giving up and sitting on the couch because you're introverted and have had some bad relationship or social encounters.
It's not just "bad social encounters" why do you just assume you know what my life was? I got hit by my mother in law when my father was not there, while I was getting bullied at school. This lasted for more than 6 years, and I grew up knowing this woman for 20 years.
Maybe people with depression or social phobia also make up excuse, is that what you think ? Why are people always assuming unemployed people can't have mental illnesses or crappy personality without being told they're making excuses ? Do you really think I made excuse my whole life ?
If there was a real exit to my life, some opportunity to pick up garbage, I would do it, but france is entirely anti liberal, it's nearly soviet minded here.
Sometimes people make these remarks because they mean to be encouraging. There is a lot that is in your control. Resisting these well-meaning comments is a symptom of the issue: depression. It makes everything seem impossible, and every relationship not worth the effort.
Communities really do still exist. My advice is travel through the developing world for awhile... you'll see the difference. I also find big-city western lifestyle suffocating.
You're probably going through a phase. I've seen people like this (including me) and my view of things have changed. Even though I agree that current societies aren't really connecting people, but you're relationship with other may change in the future, in a good way.
There are a couple aspects of the problem to consider.
The first is that the article seems to focus on the results of torturing extroverted people by preventing them from socializing.
Which seems to be about as bad as torturing more or less introverted people by forcing us to socialize. I find socializing absolutely exhausting when done in person. Although the article didn't discuss this, I'm sure some will use it as an "excuse" to "fix" introverted people by torturing them on the assumption that to an extrovert its literally unthinkable that being alone might not mean being lonely. I'm actually not alone most of the time, but I am extremely picky who I socialize with in meatspace beyond mere trivialities like hiking club or coworkers or whatever. It works for me and I'm happy.
You probably need to clarify in your head the difference between feelings and goals. Perhaps I'm misreading but you want to be extroverted but you're acting introverted although you're not really introverted at all, its just a skills issue or whatever. Yeah that might be a big (edited: fixable) problem. So fix it.
So think about going to a bar and hanging out until closing time. I'd be fairly well horrified and would avoid that if at all possible, and in fact thats exactly what I'm not doing tonight, and I feel great about that, in fact I'm going to have a lot of fun tonight with a carpentry project and hanging out with my family, totally non-extroverted. Not entirely sure how you'd feel or what you'd do, but I get the impression you'd want to go to the all night bar but wouldn't go and would feel quite bad about that mismatch. If your feelings don't align with your goals then you got a big problem beyond the HN gossip level. Luckily the pros supposedly can fix that with or without pills.
Also agumonkey has it right that you don't stop changing till you die, so don't assume your temporary response today is somehow your identity. Ask any "old" person, about all that stays the same is your actual identity. Your current collection of goals and feelings are hardly permanent, so if you don't like them, changing either or both of them is quite possible. In fact if you're not changing your positions as you age you're probably doing something really wrong.
Finally as a trivia point corporate jobs are going away. The world of my kids and future grand kids looks a lot more like perpetual consulting and contracting rather than cube dwelling. Corporate jobs might be mandatory for middle class lifestyle, but we're getting rid of that as fast as possible too, so that's not incompatible. A lot of salespeople use "community" as a scam to make money, just like whenever someone mentions religion, watch your wallet when someone mentions community.
>The social experience that most reliably predicted whether an HIV-positive gay man would die quickly, Cole found, was whether or not he was in the closet.
>While Cole discovered that loneliness could hasten death in sick people, Cacioppo showed that it could make well people sick—and through the same method: by putting the body in fight-or-flight mode.
>A longitudinal study of more than 8,000 identical Dutch twins found that, if one twin reported feeling lonely and unloved, the other twin would report the same thing 48 percent of the time.
>The article's explanation of "heritability" of human behavioral traits is poor. For four years now, I've had regular in-person interaction with a "journal club" of researchers and graduate students who are deeply involved in the Minnesota Twin Study...Your attribution of causes for human differences (e.g., human differences in IQ) is also heritable. Your opinion about regulation of the Internet is heritable. Everything about human behavior is heritable, including the tendency to loneliness mentioned in the interesting article submitted here.
Maybe it's because I don't really have any hope, at all, of succeeding in life since being introverted and having feelings of rejections are the biggest obstacles in my life.
I do believe that highly capitalistic societies, where each individual has a bank account and property, seems to be exclusive societies. The age of life in communities has really ended. People used to live in tight communities, never excluding family members, always using available arms for something. Now corporate jobs are nearly mandatory.
I think even vagrants and wanderers were friendly enough to either live together or to speak to people.
Since my problems at school and in family, my conscience has entirely refuse to socialize or to be part of a group. Now the consequence of this are quite dire, but I doubt society can really realize exclusion is a problem, or really do anything about it just because psychology shows it.