
Why go out? - reidmain
http://www.brickmag.com/why-go-out-heti
======
josiahq
“You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at
people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or
arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel
plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes
instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with
an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail
to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them
wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get
them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else
about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally
goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion. ... The
fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway.
It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong
and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we
know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being
right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do
that -- well, lucky you.” ― Philip Roth, American Pastoral

------
haberman
The author sounds like she suffers from crippling anxiety and possibly
depression, and I am incredibly empathetic because I have lived through
similar things. I can understand from personal experience how a person could
come to the conclusions she does.

But I hope that she manages to find the solution that frees her of this
burden. Whether it's meds, lifestyle changes, or moving to a place that gets
more sun, I want to believe that there is a solution out there for her. For me
it was quitting drinking -- I never had a drinking problem in the traditional
sense, but what I didn't realize was that it was making me emotionally very
unstable.

It's hell being the kind of person who spends weeks reacting to one mean
comment. It is the worst thing ever. But living a life that's free of that is
the best thing ever. It's worth doing whatever it takes to find out how to
achieve it.

~~~
WiseWeasel
You might be projecting the putative "crippling anxiety" into her words. I
think she was trying to write something worth reading, and so naturally
dramatized her story a bit. I thought it was well-written, displaying a
healthy level of self-observation and satisfying developmental progress for
the length of the piece.

~~~
haberman
"But let me assure you, this conceptual poet was digging his nails into my
heart—he knew it, and, five minutes later, I suddenly felt it too—which led to
a week and a half of fuming in bed, unable to sleep, my declaring this man my
enemy, the reconceiving of a magazine article I was writing in such a way as
to include a subtextual layer that would annihilate conceptual poetics, a week
and a half of going out every night and talking through the insult with each
of my friends—what am I even saying? It took leaving the continent for the
insult to finally recede into the background of my days, and for me to regain
my equilibrium."

\---

"And then . . . I destroyed it. I met someone and then another person and
before I knew it, all the chaos of life came back, along with all my self-
doubt and anxiety and fear."

This is not normal.

~~~
WiseWeasel
I dunno, I read it as her just being dramatic for effect, but you could be
right. I am skeptical that someone truly this anxious would willingly share
such intimate thoughts with us.

~~~
bgilroy26
I think of "sharing your thought process directly" as being a major facet of
anxiety, a la Notes from Underground --Fyodor Dostoevsky

------
Coatsworth
On a Night of Snow

    
    
      Cat, if you go outdoors you must walk in the snow.
      You will come back with little white shoes on your feet,
      Little white slippers of snow that have heels of sleet.
      Stay by the fire, my Cat. Lie still, do not go.
      See how the flames are leaping and hissing low,
      I will bring you a saucer of milk like a Marguerite,
      So white and smooth, so spherical and sweet--
      Stay with me, Cat. Outdoors the wild winds blow.
     
      Outdoors the wild winds blow, Mistress, and dark is the night.
      Strange voices cry in the trees, intoning strange lore;
      And more than cats move, lit by our eyes' green light,
      On silent feet where the meadow grasses hang hoar--
      Mistress, there are portentas abroad of magic and might,
      And things that are yet to be done. Open the door!

~~~
waqf
The concept of this poem is not bad, but the writing is atrocious. Where did
you get it?

------
Swizec
"Never mind, I replied, turning the key, for my curiosity surpassed my fear."

And with that the author sums it up for me. I'm curious. I want to know. So I
go out.

~~~
piaskal
It's so easy to access all kinds of information from home nowadays, it can be
better at fulfilling my curiosity than going out.

~~~
bgilroy26
I think that is a key problem in the Internet age. I would argue that
cigarettes were so powerful because they make social interaction easier.

The Internet brings the cost of social interaction -- communion -- far lower
than cigarettes ever did.

Because it is so valuable to so many people, lowering the cost of communing
can incentives some terrible things by accident.

------
cpfohl
What a horribly sad way to live your life. People are no addiction, they're a
necessary (and awesome) part of life. Regardless of your spiritual bent:

Athiesm - We evolved from social primates into other social primates. You're
adding a lot of psychological stress at a fundamental level when you don't
live the way you're bred.

Christianity/Judaism - God made us for community. "It is not good for Man to
be alone".

Budhhism - Everything is interconnected, including other people.

Sikhism - All mankind is a universal brotherhood.

Shall I continue?

~~~
mhartl
People differ greatly in their appetite for social interactions vs. solitude.

    
    
      I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.  We are for
      the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our
      chambers.
    
      —Henry David Thoreau
    

Do you agree with Thoreau? Probably not. But some people do, and there's
nothing wrong with that.

~~~
kstenerud
I do agree with the first part. I once spent an entire year alone in my
apartment, never speaking to anyone and rarely even going outside except to
get groceries and go to the family Christmas get-together. It was heaven, but
it couldn't last because my money wouldn't last, and so I returned to the job
force. My need for money outweighs the draining effect other people have on
me.

However, I can't speak to the second part because I don't understand
"loneliness", since I've never felt it (at least I don't think I have).

~~~
zanny
Loneliness can be compared to other withdrawal symptoms. People that are used
to and expect a lot of social interaction enter a negative mental state to
being without it.

When you don't find the social contact addicting, and do not engage in it
much, you never are exposed to the "withdrawal" symptoms.

------
dtbx
I think she is a little bit neurotic, and she missed all the evolutionary
stuff - that we are hardwired for social interaction.

I live an overly solitary life, and I crave for company. My social circle is
nearly empty, no GF, and almost all my friends have moved to other cities, so
I have just one close friend.

Damn, I need to go out. I need more human contact, not less.

~~~
CamperBob2
In her case, she doesn't seem to have any neuroses that couldn't be fixed with
perspective. Instead of brooding about a perceived insult from some
experimental poet guy she met at a bar, she could try volunteering in any
number of capacities, from neutral social/cultural organizations to civil
libertarian causes to overt partisan activism. You can't look closely at the
lives and roles of others without seeing your own in more detail.

Somewhere in the Universe a supernova or a gamma-ray burst probably wiped out
a dozen advanced civilizations between the time I typed 'Somewhere' and the
time I typed 'typed.' Fretting over anything less is, by definition, sweating
the small stuff.

~~~
scotty79
Brooding isn't voluntary. Bad experiences with people don't fade away with
time and can return in flashbacks many years after when your mood is down for
whatever reason. I perfectly understand OP as I'm also the kind of person that
has this strange memory for people doing me harm by what for most people seem
nearly benign act.

~~~
CamperBob2
Perhaps, but still, it seems like a lot of people are confusing the introvert
<-> extrovert axis with the self-centered <-> socially-conscious axis. They
are in fact highly orthogonal in my experience. At least insofar as it's
possible to judge someone's psychology from a blog post, she would score far
into the "self-centered" region of the latter axis, while being somewhere on
the introverted side of center on the former... even if she doesn't recognize
it.

I don't expect a leopard to change its spots, but at the same time I believe
it's possible to consciously nudge yourself in one direction or the other on
both axes.

------
drusenko
This article seems to be written from a completely different perspective than
my own life experiences. Perhaps it is introvert vs. extrovert, or perhaps it
is something else entirely.

I was called an introvert all throughout high school because I was quiet.
Everyone was certain of it. I knew I wasn't an introvert because I gain energy
from being around other people. When I am alone, I get tired and depressed.
When I am around a few others or in large groups, I am happy and gain energy.

Probably the reason New York City has so much appeal to me.

~~~
jmduke
People have often wildly conflicting views on what it means to be an
introvert.

I subscribe to the definition that an introvert is someone who primarily
derives validation and worth from himself, rather than external people or
stimuli -- think staying late to solve a tough problem, rather than staying
late to impress a boss.

I'm definitely an extrovert, despite being relatively quiet and thriving in
private situations. That being said, I still love 'going out' in the broad
sense; our minds thrive on novelty, and people are definitely part of that.

~~~
StavrosK
I don't know why we have to bin people like that. I love staying in to
program, or read, or whatever, but I need to go out a lot (every day, or more,
if I can help it), because I love hanging out with friends, meeting new
people, doing new things, etc.

Intrinsic vs extrinsic validation doesn't really factor into it. I just like
hanging out with friends and making new ones.

~~~
saraid216
We bin people like that because, before the bins, we just assumed there was
one and that people who weren't in it were bad. Now we know there are two, and
people might simply be in a different "good" rather than out in the "bad".

~~~
StavrosK
Well, enough of that. Here's a new theory: There are no bins, there's a
continuum of behaviours, and there's no good or bad.

~~~
okamiueru
I think, (and I'm being presumptuous here), everyone knows there are no true
'bins', and that people are complicated, and every characteristic is from in a
continuous metric, and there is no good or bad.

I also think that this is why bins are used. It's not an attempt at correctly
describing people, but rather a simplification, using general terms in order
to communicate the traits in a, best-effort, meaningful way.

I could never adequately describe how I _truly_ am as a person. All I can do
is draw on gross simplifications that you yourself can translate to a
meaningful metric based on your own experience.

~~~
StavrosK
Sure, that makes sense, I'm just of the opinion that scales describe people a
bit more accurately than bins, e.g. the Kinsey scale:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_scale>

I think you're right, though, most people probably use it as a sort of
description rather than a hard categorization.

------
calydon
Mirrors are not the only way to gain insight from an externality - other
people hold up mirrors we can't see.

After the perceived slight from the conceptual poet, I would have pointed out
that their question might not be a challenge or putdown but an invitation to a
debate - best answered with another question. "Why would you think that your
work is not intrinsically interesting to everyone?" etc. This insight did not
and probably could not have come from within.

And again, "whenever I go out into the world, whenever I get involved in a
relationship, my idea of who I think I am utterly collides with the reality of
who I actually am."

That's at least one great reason to go out.

------
shabble
This is off-topic regarding the actual article, but has anyone else noticed
the keyword stuffing spam in the page footer if javascript is disabled?

I sent a quick email to the site contact address describing the problem, but
I'm curious if anyone has any better ways of informing people about this sort
of thing?

I've tried a few times for different sites in the last few weeks, and I never
hear back; I assume the words needed to describe the problem are themselves
liable to get spamfiltered and so nobody even sees my mail. Or it looks like a
phishing/scamming attempt itself (although I'd like to think with better
spelling & grammar), and gets binned for that.

~~~
snapdata
I am amazed that you looked through the source code of the page. It seemed
like a pretty bland/generic site to me, not worth checking out what's going on
under the hood. Good find though.

~~~
shabble
Nah, I found it because I generally browse with Firefox + NoScript which
disables most javascript, including the little snippet that this spamblob uses
to hide itself with css. So it appeared black and bold in the middle of the
page footer :)

~~~
snapdata
Ahh, haha. I'm using chrome :S We have a rip off of NoScript called 'ScriptNo'

------
xefer
I don't think there's any desperation in her voice at all. She sounds
genuinely bored with something she has plenty of - and no trouble getting -
other people.

To be honest she comes across as a rich person complaining about the
shallowness of people seeking money.

------
schme
Back in high school I felt the same way. I couldn't understand why I went out.
When I didn't I felt bad and as if I was doing something very unnatural. I
come from a smallish town where everyone knew each other. After awhile I got
to be known as the boy who didn't go out, which hurt. After a few years I got
over it. I realized I didn't dislike going out per se, the people in the small
town just weren't people I liked, we never 'clicked'. You can't like everyone
and as I realized this I started going out and being with friends and doing
all the stuff I had missed out on.

It's not about being an extrovert or introvert, it's more about not
understanding why other people and/or yourself put certain demands on yourself
when you feel like something else. Nowadays I don't care about what I 'should'
do or what I'm expected to do. Not doing something like going to someones
birthday party has certain implications to people, but I understand where it's
coming. Now I make a choice between the consequences of my actions, not
because an abstract idea of having to do something.

------
roryokane
The author starts off with a nicely logical analysis of whether companionship
is worth it, backed by anecdotal evidence from her life. I think she doesn’t
give enough evidence for her conclusion that people don’t “provide
satisfaction and relaxation” – she only mentioned one story, and didn’t
describe any times when people were good – but at least she tries to base her
decisions on evidence. And then at the end she says “ _perhaps_ our solitude
is just saving up energy for companionship” – and then stops there, assuming
that that first hypothesis is right (and concluding based on that assumption
that being around people is worth it, after all). Where did all her logic go?
She has given no evidence of any kind for that, unlike everything else she
discussed before. She’s wasting her previous painstaking analysis by ending
with an unsupported storybook, feel-good decision. That’s too bad; it makes
this article significantly less useful as a guide to deciding whether going
out is worth it in my case.

------
sopooneo
I am surprised at how often neurotic artists and writers seem to think others
are like them. It's perfectly fine to feel the way this writer does, but does
she realize it is unusual? Or does she assume others feel the same way but are
just faking it? Lives of quiet desperation, etc?

------
GigabyteCoin
I go out to enjoy the scenery, get exercise, interact with people, catch up on
fashion, check up on prices, try new things, golf, hike, and just enjoy life
in general.

Unfortunately most all of those things listed above that I love cannot be done
inside one's own home.

------
brittohalloran
What I got from the article

i. Childhood issues

ii. Possible serious psychological disorder

iii. Appreciation for my enjoyment of people

~~~
calinet6
This is the correct interpretation. Congratulations!

I read the article and thought, "Wow, there are people like this?" I mean, I
relate to a few of the issues, some social anxiety here and there, some
wondering how I'm viewed in social groups, etc. But to this level?

Let me make this perfectly clear: _I have nothing against these kinds of
people._ Not in the least. I know a lot of you out there will relate to this
article and that's perfectly fine. Good for you.

But please, don't take it as some kind of validation or good advice. Be
yourself, don't be a dick, stop worrying, get out and see the world, and live
how you want to live. It is simply not as complicated as this author makes it
out to be.

The advice you could take from this article is, _get help_ if you need it.
Honestly. You can get past anxieties, social and otherwise, and sometimes
there are things you shouldn't just accept as "who you are." You can always
better yourself.

~~~
Sumaso
Really?

I disagree, perhaps that's what the difference is between introvert and
extrovert.

I find that I need some time to myself, to do my own things, or else I get
perturbed.

For a while there in university I would spend even 2 or 3 day alone in my
apartment, without speaking, texting, or IMing anyone. Just coding an
assignment, playing video games or fooling around in Linux.

Completely giving up people didn't see terribly insane at the time.

Of course this is a moot point since I now attend a Unix group meetup every
month and actually look forward to the social interaction.

~~~
calinet6
I am an I :) There's introversion (the natural preference/energy focus) and
then there's verging on sociopathy (lack of empathy, inability to relate to
others). I think the author is closer to the 2nd, but I don't really know.

Just be aware that I fully understand introversion/extroversion and all the
shades in-between. And still hold to my interpretation of the article...

~~~
spacemanaki
You "fully understand" of all the shades of introversion/extroversion and yet
you thought "Wow, there are people like this?" after reading it? I think you
might need to expand the range of shades you understand. Nothing in the piece
suggested to me anything verging on sociopathic.

------
mattpru
Q: "Does anyone actually enjoy more than one party in six?" A: Yes.

------
c0balt279
I don't wholly agree with the contents of the essay, but that was so
delightfully well written!

We have evolved to be social being. Being independent and content with
yourself is a good thing, but total isolation can have disastrous effects on
the human psyche (Look-up reports of POWs who were kept in isolation for
extended periods of time).

~~~
ams6110
Prisoners are not in isolation by choice. It's uncommon, quite rare even, but
I don't think you can deny that there are a few people who find happiness in
solitude.

------
Toucan
I first heard this (or an adaptation) on the CBC podcast Wiretap:
[http://www.cbc.ca/wiretap/episode/2012/05/04/hell-is-
other-p...](http://www.cbc.ca/wiretap/episode/2012/05/04/hell-is-other-
people/)

I'd recommend it if you enjoyed reading this, it often carries features of a
similar calibre.

------
dsirijus
My best friend is a rabbit.

------
AnthonBerg
Unusually well written.

~~~
yic2
Agreed -- unusually well written. A pleasure to read a logical analysis of
sociological behavior. Except for the very end, which was disappointing.

~~~
AnthonBerg
Interesting - the end is love or hate. Me and a friend really liked it,
another friend was pained to read it.

------
nerdfiles
I first simply want to address the smoking bit. _Something_ about smoking is
habitual, or rather, not to see that a drug addiction could instantiate or
engender a habit which itself re-enforces the addiction, might be the main
problematic of 'quitting advice.' Rather, ignoring that cigarettes prompt a
way of life only suggests to me that said advice treats an idealized person,
or biological system, a model.

We are not models. In my comment history I've noted that Juan Enriquez talks
of 'living organisms,' not 'life.' Again here I wish to point out a semantic
mix up. We are a mix where the advice is technically valid: we have a bio-
logical imperative as an organism to reduce or differentiate carcinogen-
affected cells, waste, etc. Our bodies do it and so basically we are duty
bound to respect, or harmonize, with our more basic functions. 'Just quit'
ignores the basic psychological component of smoking, even if that component
cannot be exhaustively explained as habit. Habit has two primary forms,
situational and dispositional.

When we say, 'Just quit!' We suggest that the dispositional habit is indeed
ficticious. It _is_ an addiction. Being internally compelled implies a form of
determinism that the agent in truth has no basis for judgement. To suggest
that one has such a habit implies a personal capability to predict the
conclusion of one's own habit. That being said, one only admits to the
internal rules which drugs instantiates within the biological system of the
agent. To one must accept the imperative, should one say it is a habit of this
sort.

However, a situational habit is different, a more robust problem. At first
prompt, we are forced to investigate all the various ways in which cigarette
smoking enters public consciousness. To 'quit,' indeed, in similar fashion
blocks any fruit that may be drawn from the situational benefits of a
situational habit.

I, for instance, often decline cigarettes from close friends where the
situation prompts a longform discussion. Another friend has mentioned, in
passing, "I don't trust anyone who does not smoke." Andy Clarke has been
lauded for his smoker's style. I personally took rolling on as a Special
Interest: I can roll a perfect cigarette, reliably, almost systematically. And
if anyone ever asks me to do so, I religiously oblige. This is not an internal
habit, but it makes sense to describe it as habtiual in _some_ sense. I might
share in some activity with this person, call it 'smoking'.

What I am not doing is romanticizing smoking. What I am suggesting is that
'cold turkey' advice should be replaced with descriptive or behavioral models
which may lend to therapeutic or narrative models for therapy. 'Just quit'
isn't diagnostic, and attempts to reduce the solution to smoking to our basic
biological imperative. Fair.

Also, easier said that done. -- So actually work to make this advice relevant.
It's blindly proscriptive, where integration and therapy should accompany.

I mean, may I just put it so prettily: "freedom from slavery"? Slavery isn't
anything like a biological function of nature. When one quits cigarettes, one
is avoiding something external to one's self. Slavery isn't some inevitable
feature of, trade, or political systems, that one chooses or does not. The
whole way of putting it, as freedom from slavery, does more harm than good. I
think it misleading and sensationalist. Cigarettes are evolutionarily novel,
indeed, but what still remains is that they are a feature of civilization, the
mix of the raw forces of selection and human intelligence.

~~~
ams6110
_Slavery isn't some inevitable feature of, trade, or political systems, that
one chooses or does not._

I don't know if it's inevitable, but it's only been for the last couple of
hundred years of human history that it was not very commonplace.

~~~
ricopags
And by 'not very commonplace' do you mean 'more common than ever'?

As industry has expanded, so has slavery.

<http://slaveryfootprint.org/>

~~~
icebraining
Bunch of crap. They're not slaves, they're people living in extreme poverty,
to whom those jobs are the only way they have of getting out of it, and those
self-righteous idiots are their worst enemy, because they're actively trying
to remove their possibility of having a better life. Krugman's article
explains it well: <http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/smokey.html>

I think C.S. Lewis' quote is completely appropriate here:

 _"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be
the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under
omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep,
his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our
own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of
their own conscience."_

