On people

Introduction

It remains a controversial matter to categorize people into groups. After all, "we are all individuals". Still, it helps to categorize people based on a known behaviour, in order to find tendencies of an individual, as a rough estimate of what we can expect from that person. Exceptions to our expectations do exist and we should still watch out for them.

Intra-personal qualities

The “introverts” and the “extroverts”

We could roughly divide people into:

• introverts (those who prefer independence from others)
• extroverts (those who prefer to interact with others)

Introverts prefer to find peace by disapproving more unwanted interactions. One might even think of introverts as “alone-time hoarders” or even “relationship minimalists”. Introverts praise the technology of writing and the internet. These technologies allow them to seek entertainment without interacting with other individuals. They love asynchronous technologies like text messaging because those technologies give them time and space before having to respond.

Extroverts find comfort through more interactions with others. One might even think of extroverts as “interaction hoarders” or “relationship maximalists / extremists”. Extroverts praise the technology of the telephone because it allows them to seek other individuals more effectively and synchronously. Once an extrovert gets that phone call connection, he knows he has attention!

Of course, not everyone can fall neatly under the labels of “introvert” and “extrovert”: a person might feel very comfortable around a certain set of people, including strangers (e.g. random people at a bar after a few drinks). On the other hand, the same person might even appear abjectly shy around a different set of familiar faces (e.g. bosses, managers, world leaders)!

The “seekers” and the “receivers”

People also come in two other varieties:

• seekers tend to look for things on their own as a reason to exist
• receivers merely want to have life come to them from other people

Seekers might overlap with introverts while receivers may overlap with extroverts.

Introverts often “live alone”, so they have to seek stimuli. They love the internet more where search tools provide the key to unlock vast amounts of entertainment.

Extroverts tend to become receivers, as they would prefer to enjoy what others enjoy. They prefer to have life "come at them". They feel that if they seek anything “unusual”, it would waste their time because nobody else would enjoy it. In that sense, they want "shareable experiences".

That said, in a pre-internet world, introverts would have preferred to receive because they don’t want to ask anyone else for obscure material. Extroverts would probably enjoyed being seekers in a pre-internet world, but seekers of people, of course.

Inter-personal qualities

The degrees of approval

No matter how introverted or extroverted the individual, a person will react to interpersonal interaction with one of the following:

• approve whole-heartedly ("shut up and take my money!")
• approve with conditions ("yes, but for a good price!")
• approve reluctantly ("yes, but only because I get paid!")
• disapprove ("no, I'm not paying for this!")
• condemn ("you couldn't pay me enough to want this!")

The levels of competency

• superiority : mastery of tasks both basic and advanced
• competency : decent at all tasks, mastery of the basics
• mediocrity : decent at some tasks, unwillingness to perform advanced tasks
• inferiority : decent at a few tasks, hesitancy to perform any tasks
• incompetency : dysfunction at all tasks
  • greater incompetency : willing to perform
  • lesser incompetency : unwilling to perform

The hierarchy of society

Schools normally teach us about only the primary, secondary, tertiary and maybe quaternary “industries” but we could lay it out like this: