How it started:
I woke up with the idea of it on a morning in January 2021. With the pandemic not over yet, I had been thinking about how things had shifted that first couple of months in March and April of the previous year. Of how the skies had cleared and people were commenting about how it was showing to us the things we really could do without. Of how come that summer and state and federal governments were beginning to talk about phasing back into life as usual. About how little I precisely wanted that. About how ‘new normal’ was being used as a polite way of saying, “You’ll probably have to wear masks and not shake hands anymore for a good little while yet..” rather than a way of pointing to that realization we had glimpsed in our ‘introverted’ state of a life and ways which we could be lighter on the planet, each other, and ourselves, if we could figure out a workable economy and social dynamic to it.
Was our society skewed toward the extraverted? I mused. It might make some sense at least in some ways. The introverted don’t talk as much at board meetings and those board meetings aren’t structured or haven’t been structured as a rule to force this very much.
And why would they be, though?
Introverted enough and you’re not even at the board meeting at all depending on the company or organization and other factors.
Often enough of one’s own decision(s), let alone by any benign structural neglect.
Yet, is it possible that what the introverts have is of more pointed importance for inclusion in the deliberations and decision-making we must as larger social system tackle now?
So, that led me to put out the idea of it, of forming a ‘League of Introverts’ to reimagine the introverts place in their world. Not the extraverts’s reimagined place for introverts in their world. But out of the observations and self knowledge or potential self knowledge of introverts themselves and in and of their own way(s).
So I called a zoom meeting and invited my hundred something facebook friends list with a few thoughts and basic guidelines ahead of time.
10 showed up. Went okay. Partly due to many knowing each other and partly due to size I’d say. 1 self-disclosed being an extravert. 2 essentially declared as ambiverts.
An interesting point, which the declared extravert among us made fairly early in the meeting was that in ways, he saw society as already favoring our introverted tendencies. He pointed to the automobile as a method of transportation, television and the internet as examples.
Coming out of that meeting, we had plans to start a private group on facebook and to have another meeting. In that group, there has been some additional talk about things like how quickly or slowly to open the group, whether there’s an ideal size participants-wise for the zoom or other video meetings, things of that nature.
The link to that facebook group is at bottom of the page as a facebook logo.
We plan to have that meeting and to work toward both opening up that facebook group in some way or ways once we have the ducks.
One idea is to work toward providing guidelines for group sizes, approaches, processes etc and distribute these so other groups can also test and refine.
More to come, All to be Refined –
Chad Klapes Jan 27 2021
UPDATE Mar 25 2021:
Still filling out pages but launching what there is so far. These materials are lagging right now a little behind the experience.
So a soft launch now if one will.
Have one core test group which has been meeting every other week for an hour via web, since late Jan. Beginning ‘onboarding’ meetings to welcome those interested in joining / forming groups of their own. Will be report more soon and expect more pages to be filled out here.
– ck