Many people treat introversion as though it were a symptom
of self-absorption. It is not. There is a common saying pervasive of all
mystical religions that if one thinks that one understands God, one doesn’t.
Yet one can have a good hunch. Some extraverts dabbling in religion may tend to
develop a very social attitude towards what “spiritual” behaviour is, and that
comes with a dogmatic disdain for “non-spiritual” or “egocentric” behaviour.
Introverts may do this as well, but usually for different reasons. Spirituality,
however, is concerned with wholeness, and in many historical instances, it was
a form of counterculture. The mind that is thoroughly socialized tends not to
think spiritually but practically; its entire view of the Universe is based
upon external success and context. If it turns inward and begins to study
itself, the whole Universe falls apart at one point, and what had been believed
to have been objective has been proven to have been subjective. The outside was
actually the inside, only the illusion was convincing because all of one’s
peers had the same programming – to put it radically, they were all equally
hypnotized. This realization, when it occurs in the “spiritual” person, is what
mystics across many cultures, whether they be Christian theologians or Hindu
yogis, describe as a leave-taking from God to God: What had been thought to be
spiritual was only a part of the entire thing, and what had been condemned as
egocentric is now recognized as the other half.
Speaking from personal experience, it appears impossible to
draw a definite line between social behaviour and narcissistic behaviour.
Narcissists treat other people as an extension of themselves, often presuming
that all people see things in a manner akin to them. To be social is to do
that, and it is often determined by one’s existing social disposition; in other
words, you will tend to see life, socially, through a lens shared by people of
your own economic class, ethnic background, and occupational interests. This
form of conditioning, whilst comforting, is not very effective towards
establishing connections with all of Humanity, much less the Entire Universe.
Hence it is said that extraverts tend to excel socially whilst introverts tend
to excel spiritually.
A good example of a social misfit motivated by spiritual
values is Holden Caulfield from J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.
The prepositional clause “by spiritual values” may be disputed, but there is no
doubt that Holden is a misfit and an introvert. At one point, he asks a taxi
driver an innocent question, “Where do the ducks go when the lake freezes
over?” (This is paraphrased here.) The driver is frustrated by the seeming
pointlessness of the question, but this is nothing compared to how affronted
Holden feels when no satisfactory answer arrives. Some may argue that he is
entitled to an answer, and his sense of entitlement is narcissistic and typical
of an infantile egoic activity. One must, however, consider the writer’s
background and the various layers of meaning in the novel. In the first place,
the question may be concrete, not symbolic: Neither the author nor the
protagonist means anything by the question outside of its literal
meaning. Maybe there is a symbolic meaning as well, and maybe the ducks are symbolic
of Holden wondering where he will go now that he has been kicked out of school,
but it is unlikely that J.D. Salinger, who has expressed in other works,
sometimes through the voices of other characters and sometimes the author’s
tone, which we can only guess at, a passionate disdain for psychiatrists, would
offer such an explanation for Holden’s “motives” for the question. Maybe,
indeed, some symbolism is intended, but the genius of Salinger would be in that
the literal meaning equally stands.
From the perspective of Zen Buddhism, a major influence upon
Salinger’s work, the question may be almost akin to a koan. A koan is
a simple question that cannot be understood intellectually (e.g. “What is the
sound of one hand clapping?”). It is meant to bring about in the individual who
ponders it a mystical realization wherein the world is seen in an ineffable way
that cannot be rationalized. Salinger uses the aforementioned koan as the
epigraph to Nine Stories.
Holden’s question has no meaning outside of itself. He is
not interested in establishing a conversation with the taxi driver, not because
he is disinterested in the man, but because he does not want his conversation
to follow the pattern of a “phony” conversation. He feels an admiration for the
man and a sense of wonder at the man’s very existence, which is something that
the taxi driver probably has little knowledge of. Yet it is this sense of
wonder, typical of so many introverts, that dooms Holden. He is uninterested in
socializing with the taxi driver, for it would only mire him and the
driver both in a fairly uninspiring account of their personal memories of the
day. He is much more interested in where the ducks go, a question which, whilst
not serving any practical social purpose, be it the advancement of oneself in
the fulfillment of a social skill or the affirmation of one’s worldview in
agreement with another, is the kind of question that can be asked just as
comfortably of an African child as of a seasoned American male. It is, whilst
appearing marginal and almost insultingly irrelevant to the taxi driver, a
simple, direct question that the more tender will discern as crushingly
innocent and pure.
Speaking logically, one can presume that Holden expects to
gain nothing by it except knowledge about the world around him; it is an
example of disinterested learning. Who is entitled, therefore? Is Holden
entitled for posing a question that can be asked of all of humanity(, given
that the human spirit is incarnate in anyone living in this area of New York)? or
is it the taxi driver, who wants only to talk about things pertaining to his
way of life and his own social role in his particular society? Yes, only those
who have lived in this part of New York would presumably know the answer, and
yet it is unnerving to Holden that he cannot find one person who does know it.
Holden mentions, early on in the novel, that people “never
notice anything”. Given the style that Salinger employs in all of his published
writing, this may be construed as the author’s personal voice: One that is
incredibly perceptive of detail. The Zen Buddhists make a point to notice their
surroundings and to marvel in little things. Holden, whilst having this
potentiality spiritually, lives in a society wherein he is faced with the
shocking prospect that not one person he encounters has the time to answer this
basic question. It is entirely counterintuitive that they would not, and the
novel seems more or less, if one is to discern a single central theme from it,
to deal with his horrifying realization that people do not in fact care about the
things that he cares about. But does that make him narcissistic? No. It makes him
spiritually aware. He wants to know where the ducks go, and he wants to pass
this knowledge down to all children, but there is no room for him in this
society. In a story from Nine Stories, “Teddy”, Salinger
illustrates a young spiritual genius who claims that he had been an Indian holy
man in a prior life, but that he was reincarnated in America as bad karma for
falling in love with a girl. He makes the statement that America is the worst
place to advance spiritually. Since most of Salinger’s characters are based
upon his own reflections upon his own personality, this may in fact be the
author’s point of view.
dm.A.A.
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