I am back from a 4 day conscious festival with 3000 souls in Somerset, UK and feel full and satisfied. Like a big hearty meal, real in person connection with fellow human beings is filling, nourishing, life sustaining, it feels healthy.
Helping neighbours pitching tents, sharing food, hugging strangers and working all together into a class experience, to bring and expand individual energies up, is really awesome and clear proof of the goodness and well meaning attitude of people.
This need for community, for the support, collaboration and love of others is as human as breathing fresh air. Naturally embedded in our cultures, regular celebration amongst family and friends brings respite from existential and worldly problems, a cordial for the heart and a balm for the soul.
I suppose Christmas and other festivities can bring up unresolved relationship issues and trauma too. How much those affect the personality of children and, subsequently, the personality of adults and related attitudes towards socialising, I don’t know.
When I hear people saying they love being with themselves, I wonder. Might they be shy, reserved, diffident or unsociable? Maybe they suffered in relationships and they decided to give it all up? Or they just belong to the introverted personality type, and might naturally be careful and balanced in the way they share energy with fellow humans.
As an extrovert who loves socialising and, generally, needs the company of people, the introverted personality type is a bit of a mystery. I imagine this personality business to belong to a continuum, not a black and white thing, and it seems 25% to 40% of the population might be defined as introverted, with a minority being very much so and some just a bit.
In the festival over the weekend, I participated in sharing circles and workshops, hung out (naked) by the fire in the sauna area and spotted quiet and alone people everywhere. I am not quiet and I easily connect with strangers. Because of my intention to write this post, I took extra care to reach out to some of these “quiet” people, the ones whose energy seemed less outwardly focused.
Anyone who made it to such a festival, in these fearful times, must have quite an open, even adventurous attitude to start with, so the value of my research is limited by this obvious fact.
Firstly, I noticed how girls tended to be in pairs or groups, while most lone people were guys. Richard was such a person, he seemed happy enough to do some small talk but wouldn’t properly look me in the eye. What was he doing at the festival, surrounded by so many?
He said he loved the energy of others, not particularly chatting and definitely not being the centre of attention, but nevertheless, he felt good at being part of the festival. Introverts tend to turn inward, focusing more on internal thoughts, feelings, and mood. Some have a very rich spiritual life as external stimulation, for whatever reason, has proven hard to digest and can be taken in small doses only.
This definitely does not mean the need for connection and human touch is less important, the vast majority of people would not thrive as hermits. Moderation and quality is important to me too and definitely to Richard.
As the days went by, I grew my presence and extrovert reputation in the sauna area, a bit of a members club you could access for an extra fee. I took care to softly connect to people there, curious of their thoughts on the state of the world and recent societal changes.
Many interactions followed a similar pattern: I would carefully introduce the pandemic topic, the war and gender issues and people would broadly repeat the slogans and headlines of mainstream newspapers, sometimes very confidently, other times feeling not at ease, even a bit nervous.
Well knowing people usually do not like to discuss such topics, I probed and inquired about their personal experience, using my best tactical skills. I saw this conventional outer layer gently fading, some would lower their voice and start opening up to me more and more. Complaining of the boredom, worries and sadness of lockdowns, the lack of trust in the media and institutions, the craziness of some of the current narratives.
I remember this young lady coming out of a certain workshop and wanting to buy a rape alarm, as the world was full of predatorial and malevolent men. She was rather awed by my backpacking in South America, certain adventures I experienced on solo travel in Colombia and Buenos Aires in particular when I had to quickly grow street smart to avoid immediate and obvious danger. Was she planning to do any travel?
She’d love to go to Cuba and Peru, she mentioned. She always wanted to experience other cultures and by her confident and outspoken demeanour, she seemed like a full extrovert to me. We discussed personal boundaries and individual attitude to risk taking, and I had the impression the idea of the rape alarm was an acquired, intellectual ideology more than a truly held fear of others.
I also met Kevin, who came to the festival alone and was then planning to travel across the UK and sleep in churches, something called champing, “if they bother to take me in”, or some nearby field as a fallback. Wasn’t that dangerous? He laughed out loud and said there was no one able to hurt him or put him in prison for the simple fact he existed, in this or any country!
With the advent of the internet, the 24 hour news cycle, social media and increasingly, the metaverse, the individual is instantly connected with every part of the world. Yet, we act more fearful, we are more separated and lonely than ever. Large family units have turned into single living, the busy-ness of work and life leaves little space for hobbies and socialisation.
The power of the algorithm is evident and not enough seriously debated. It is now increasingly clear that less real, in person interaction and more trolling and instagramming means less authenticity in socialising with others, more polarisation, less communion which is the base of community, more mental health issues.
It doesn’t matter if you are an extrovert or introvert on the spectrum of personality types. In this high tech and safety conscious world, the need for others hasn’t gone away, it has increased instead.
In one of my favourite books, Aldous Huxley’s utopian novel Island, a low tech but psychologically and spiritually developed society lives in harmony with nature. Trance states are self induced for super learning, conscious drug use is ritualistically adopted for enlightenment and social bonding, group living and group parenting a normal feature, expressive sexuality encouraged. The individual retains the freedom to opt out and choose what’s best for themselves, while cooperation and communion flow as a matter of course.
What would you rather have? A new BMW or a close, intimate relationship with a gorgeous human being? Other people is the best thing in life.
