The wanderer took renewed interest in this new personality theory because it relieved pressure long felt over so many years to understand why if the glyphic reality was active from the beginning, from early awakening, why had no action really been prompted by it, why had it never expressed itself in any important move? What had done so over so many years, so strongly that it felt like a long and familiar form of expressive behavior was something the new theory, call it for now, the otroic or the othroic, features right at the outset. This from the website (as we wait for the book itself to arrive, now that it is on its way we can't wait for it): "Unlike introverts, they are not shy or quiet, and do not quickly tire from one-on-one socializing. Yet in large groups they feel uncomfortable, alienated, and alone." Do not quickly tired from one-on-one socializing. That is the key. How often over the years either in my office with one student or at a gathering where I stay with one person for as long as possible while the party swirls around me without tiring of being with that one person has this been the case? And how it has explained everything about the engagement with the person, even when strong feeling has been the case, usually because strong feeling has been the case, but how rarely if ever (I can think of only one instance where the "rule" was broken) was there any physical reaching out or movement of any kinds. Conversation was always more thrilling and satisfying than anything else that could have been entertained or imagined.
Let's see if Kaminski agrees here. Meanwhile I can keep reading his site. Now I did just notice that he claims atheist is part of the picture. But he is not familiar with Burke and has a psychologist's shortcomings when it comes to language, symbol and drama. And to the ways Beckett and all the other writers of mid-20th onward have handled these things. Handke our current hero in this regard. Just noticed the other day that one of his recent short works is a voicing of one of Beckett's characters who is silent in Beckett's work. So to Kaminski atheist fits necessarily with belonging to no groups but agnostic fets better and believing fits fine so long as believing is signed as believing? and in who? and in what?
Unknowing as a perfection of belonging-not belonging, or perfection? How often Handke's narratives, especially in Moravian just recently, proceed less and less by statement but by questioning. Handke I'm sure is Otrovert par excellence.
But I may have him wrong. After all his sense of belonging to his home village, to his birth landscape and language haunts him all his life and he finds he does go home againg and longs to go home forever.
"Otroverts rarely feel lonely. And they don’t belong to any group, family, nationality, or ideology. They are not part of a group or a circle of friends. They have friendships with individuals, they can be deeply connected to a life partner and are likely to be very loving parents, but they are eternal outsiders. Once they understand their otherness and stop trying to “fit in” and be communal, they can enjoy a life of productive individuality with few but warm and authentic relationships."
This does give me some pause. Perhaps I am wrong about myself after all. When the book arrives and I go through it slowly I will go back and forth and forth and back. If not fitting in is key then reading a book we will not want to have the book figure us out either; I refuse to fit in to what the expert propounds as the proper ways I will not want to fit in.
"It is hard for otroverts to experience and connect with what attracts and preoccupies a group. Consequently, an otrovert is an observer but never a true participant." What comes most clearly to mind here is that one time I served on that large committee examining Greek life on campus. At the first meeting I said to the group---we can save ourselves a lot of time if we write the report we are expected to write now and forget the silly idea of interviewing lots of people. We know in advance what we will say, why bother with lots of meetings and discussions. They all looked at me as if I were from another planet. We had weeks of meetings, so many people spoke, we eventually wrote the report that was wholly predictable from the first day. I had no idea of how the group behaved as a group and wanted to do so.
"an otrovert cannot help but feel lonely." "However, in a group, where a sense of belonging is the cement holding a group together, an otrovert cannot help but feel lonely." vs "Otroverts rarely feel lonely."
"the risk of being seen as controversial, subversive, or even insane in certain circumstances." Who was put into a mental hospital twice? the whole religious life chapter of my life---the greatest mistake I made in my life---demonstrated once and for all the dynamic over which I nearly indeed almost killed myself even if I thought I was taking it lightly and not seriously. But in fact I did climb onto the window ledge, luckily it was a large one, and could indeed have fallen had I not been cautious. True I was on those medications, did they help me be more cautious? maybe so. But there is that exception where I did take explicit, physical action, so rarely and was it not because one person was down on the lawn below mowing the grass? It was an action in the direction of one person, not towards the whole group. My actions in that drama were away from the group even while I could not say that to anyone (there was no one to talk to and the official psychologist made all of that even worse---withl him there was no emotional connection because he was the official face and voice of the group life).
"Otroverts are risk-averse, apprehensive, and insecure outside of their comfort zone. The same daring spirit that takes them to unchartered regions of thought is absent from the experiential side of life."
The horror and adrenaline overdose of our whole road to Coroico adventure! A lifetime adrenaline trauma still felt in my chest memory.
