Quiet: Book Discussion

I’ve been pretty introverted my whole life, so when I found quiet at half price books, I knew I would read it. I do think people in our culture find extroversion to be key in creating a life for ourselves, just as the book states. Even as I read this one of my coworkers thought other people would use this book as an excuse to not do extroverted things. And I’d have to disagree.

This book taught me that is okay to need alone time. And I think allowing ourselves to acknowledge that can lead to more productive social interactions in the long run.  The book also talks about how introverts like deep and meaningful conversations -which doesn’t necessarily mean that introverts don’t want to socialize.

In high school, I usually stuck with one group of people, my parents pushed me quite often to get involved in all kinds of school activities.  We even had meetings at our school with kids and students talking about how we need to get involved in all kinds of school activities otherwise, we’d regret it.

Honestly, I don’t regret much in high school. But if I had one it would probably be that I didn’t spend much time with my friend group. My school was pretty big and I had different classmates in each class, so I didn’t want to take part in school activities just to meet more people I didn’t even know. I think schools push kids to be super social and I think that needs to change. So, with that being said, here’s my list of questions:

  • Has social media made it easier for introverts to talk to people?

 

  • As a society, should we push for a balance between introversion and extroversion?

 

  • Evangelicalism is becoming a popular branch of Christianity, what is the author bias and what might the relationship between evangelicals and your own ideology be like?

 

  • How do we help kids embrace their personalities? How will we fulfill the needs of both introverted and extroverted kids?

 

I do think in some ways socail media has made it easier for introverts to want to commuicate. We don’t really need to read faces, we don’t have to answer right away and most importantly it doesn’t feel like we have a crowd. However, I do think sometimes are personalties on socail media are different then the ones in real life and its hard to switch between the two. Trying to be as real as we casn helps, but I think on socail media we can only be so authentic.

As for pushing for a balance for introversion and extrovesion I’d have to say that we are probably better off not doing that. I think allowing people to be who they are, for the most part, will make it easier for everyone in our community. And remember that not everyone is 100% one way or the other. I think a lot of us are a mixture naturally and we all different degrees of introversion and extroversion that allow us all to do different jobs.

When I read the part on evangelicalism, I honestly wasn’t sure what the others bias was. I don’t remember her stating that she was a thesit in her book or on her ted talk. But she does discuss her jewish grandfather in herr video so she might be jewish maybe? I would like to confirm her ideology and then go back and read certrain parts of her book to see if I can see any kind of bias. However, I do know when she discusses the world of evangelicals, she seems to want them to listen more than they speak.

As for my own ideology, I’d have to agree with the author, but in a different way. I think that many christains don’t see the bible as a whole and for people to believe this and push other people to do the same isn’t right. Faith is like a dog, it can be used to justify anything. While science is like a cat, where rreality is indepenant from what we want -but if we feed we might see like for what is really is.

To help kids embrace their personlities, I think we need to let them take the lead rather than mold them into something they want. I’ve found a lot famlies here in america with sons escpeacially, want them to be into sports. They want them to be the next Joey Votto or Lebreon James, but in the end is that really what they want or is that just something the parnets want them to do. Or in eastern communties, they want their kids to focous on school and look down upon socailiszing too much. I think we need to be aware of our own bias and start asking kids how they feel about what they’re doing. Are they happy to be on the basketball team or would they rather read? Do they really want to do math homework for an hour each day or do they want to play four square with their friends? I think both socailizing and indepentant work should be looked at as tools. Letting kids lean into which ones they want to use might be easier than doing something else since their parnets wanted them to.


 

That’s my spiel for this one, if you’d like to continue the disscussion please leave a comment below!

 

 

Published by Athena Bocock

I am vegan and I like books and writing stories. Recently I've been enjoying romance and animal stories the most.

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