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Showing posts with label introversion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label introversion. Show all posts
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Friday, March 7, 2014
Poem of an Introvert
I am not a person to say the words out loud
I think them strongly, or let them hunger from the page:
know it from there, from my silence, from somewhere other
than my tongue
the quiet love
the silent rage
I think them strongly, or let them hunger from the page:
know it from there, from my silence, from somewhere other
than my tongue
the quiet love
the silent rage
—Keri Hulme,
from “Against the Small Evil Voices,” in Strands (Oxford University Press, 1992)
Thursday, August 8, 2013
The US Extrovert Ideal According to "Quiet"
From Quiet by Susan Cain:
"(Dale) Carnegie's (1888-1955) metamorphosis from farmboy to salesman to public-speaking icon is also the store of the rise of the Extrovert Ideal. Carnegie's journey reflected a cultural evolution that reached a tipping point around whom we admire, how we act at job interviews and what we look for in an employee, how we court our mates and raise our children. America had shifted from what the influential cultural historian Warren Susman called a Culture of Character to a Culture of Personality--and opened up a Pandora's Box of personal anxieties from which we would never quite recover.
"In the Culture of Character, the ideal was serious, disciplined, and honorable. What counted was not so much the impression one made in public as how one behaved in private. The word personality didn't exist in English until the eighteenth century, and the idea of 'having a good personality' was not widespread until the twentieth.
"But when they embraced the Culture of Personality, Americans started to focus on how others perceived them. They became captivated by people who were bold and entertaining. 'The social role demanded of all in the new Culture of Personality was that of a performer,' Susman famously wrote. 'Every American was to become a performing self.'" (21)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"One of the most powerful lenses through which to view the transformation from Character to Personality is the self-help tradition in which Dale Carnegie played such a prominent role. Self-help books have always loomed large in the American psyche. . . ." (22)
"But by 1920, popular self-help guides had changed their focus from inner virtue to outer charm--'to know what to say and how to say it,' as one manual put it. 'To create a personality is power,' advised another. 'Try in every way to have a ready command of the manners which make people think "he's a mighty likeable fellow,"' said a third. 'That is the beginning of a reputation for personality.' Success magazine and The Saturday Evening Post introduced departments instructing readers on the are of conversation. The same author, Orison Swett Marden, who wrote Character: The Grandest Thing in the World in 1899, produced another popular title in 1921. It was called Masterful Personality." (22-23)
Cain, Susan.Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. NY: Crown Publishers, 2012.
"(Dale) Carnegie's (1888-1955) metamorphosis from farmboy to salesman to public-speaking icon is also the store of the rise of the Extrovert Ideal. Carnegie's journey reflected a cultural evolution that reached a tipping point around whom we admire, how we act at job interviews and what we look for in an employee, how we court our mates and raise our children. America had shifted from what the influential cultural historian Warren Susman called a Culture of Character to a Culture of Personality--and opened up a Pandora's Box of personal anxieties from which we would never quite recover.
"In the Culture of Character, the ideal was serious, disciplined, and honorable. What counted was not so much the impression one made in public as how one behaved in private. The word personality didn't exist in English until the eighteenth century, and the idea of 'having a good personality' was not widespread until the twentieth.
"But when they embraced the Culture of Personality, Americans started to focus on how others perceived them. They became captivated by people who were bold and entertaining. 'The social role demanded of all in the new Culture of Personality was that of a performer,' Susman famously wrote. 'Every American was to become a performing self.'" (21)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"One of the most powerful lenses through which to view the transformation from Character to Personality is the self-help tradition in which Dale Carnegie played such a prominent role. Self-help books have always loomed large in the American psyche. . . ." (22)
"But by 1920, popular self-help guides had changed their focus from inner virtue to outer charm--'to know what to say and how to say it,' as one manual put it. 'To create a personality is power,' advised another. 'Try in every way to have a ready command of the manners which make people think "he's a mighty likeable fellow,"' said a third. 'That is the beginning of a reputation for personality.' Success magazine and The Saturday Evening Post introduced departments instructing readers on the are of conversation. The same author, Orison Swett Marden, who wrote Character: The Grandest Thing in the World in 1899, produced another popular title in 1921. It was called Masterful Personality." (22-23)
Cain, Susan.Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. NY: Crown Publishers, 2012.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
"Quiet" by Susan Cain
Last year my daughters in Seattle AE and KA gave me the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a Word That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. It has taken me awhile to read it, but now I am glad I spent the last week reading it. It is well-researched and well-written about a subject that describes me, an introvert.
Since I have not been blogging much lately, I am dedicating future posts to quotes and thoughts about this book.
Susan Cain also gave an excellent TED talk:
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