Future of us:

Are Aliens Introverted or Extraverted?

If they come here to uplift this planet with their presence — how social will they be? How social we will be?

Logic tells us — if extraterrestrials already managed to get here, they would be either very much social or have some serious causes. War and resource harvesting causes if You will. But how our society should move forward with this? Should we focus on introversion? Or extraversion?

When You look at the current state of internet and memes — You can’t believe the actual data which suggests that introverts can make up 50.7% and extroverts 49.3% of our general western societies. But would that change as technology progress?

What do sci-fi writers think about this?

If we believe one of the biggest sci-fi stars there is — Isaac Asimov we are bound to go solo. Moreover, if we rely on the book that touches this topic quite a lot — The Naked Sun — You should be ready to see as Your grandchildren might grow up without almost any real human interaction. It’s not that people would not participate in communication it’s just that communication should be expected to be impersonal.

“Without the interplay of human against human, the chief interest in life is gone; most of the intellectual values are gone; most of the reason for living is gone.” ― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

If You think that the idea of people growing up without touching or actually meeting any other person in their whole lifetime is scary, think it from a smaller perspective… Think about now! That perspective being today — most of us already have shivers when the phone starts ringing. Who is insane enough to call? Can’t they just write? Imagine how it might change in 100 more years of technology becoming more and more convenient.

I know this because I also have this. As time goes by and social media takes the real social element from our lives, the unknown becomes more and scarier. Especially when we are talking — unknown contact with unknown people. Social anxiety is here to stay.

Robot servants might be the hell You don’t want

The thing about social isolation is that it’s a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we all love it. We love to have everything convenient. We work just so we could not work later. We just love it — sleeping in and not needing to meet anyone for days.

On the other hand — we keep our sanity by doing stuff. We keep our sanity only if we are being stimulated. 3 days without any interactions and completely isolated can start harming Your mental health.

“…how can somebody who gives you whatever you want be a bad guy?” ― Eric Cartman, South park

Whenever I see somebody referring to Christian heaven I always am very interested to find out what they believe that heaven is. Because from where I stand — it just might be that getting whatever You want and doing whatever You want whenever You want it, might be worse than hell.

Solitude of recharging

One more way to look at this — when You are alone You start hearing Yourself. In Your solitude You are less distracted, so mind nasties are there for You to spectate them. To learn about Yourself. And to take action. Later.

The problem with this now is… You are never actually alone. Unless You work really hard for that. Generally, we don’t allow ourselves to be alone. Not while Wi-Fi is on, for sure.

You watch videos that supplement and trick Your brain into thinking You are communicating when in fact You are not. You are chatting and reading memes and getting the same effects again. You are together alone. You are writing messages into the cyber abyss, You post stories on Your feed that nobody will actually give any serious fucks about. You will just be alone, still managing to avoid Yourself. As a millennial, I assume that’s one of the main depression sparking reasons among our generation.

Isaac Asimov solves this social problem with people getting truly immersed in their work. Working alone, with thousands of robots doing most of the stuff. We know from many past civilizations (like ancient greek?) — if You turn lazy and just focus on ideas… You collapse as a society.

What should we take from all of this?

Trust me — I know how easy it is to avoid Yourself and try to hide those mind nasties by just making it worse and weird. Nobody should avoid themselves so hard as we do, but yet here we are. Existential dread is real and goes away by facing it. You can do it, my little carbon buddy. Entropy will take us all — but that doesn’t mean You can play this game for some time. Just for fun.

The answer like always is probably balancing it, isn’t it? Make time alone count and socialize responsibly. Quality over quantity.