It's an odd thing. Every now and then, whether we like it or not, an extravert (or extrovert, for those who prefer the wrong spelling) sneaks into the Beaker Community.
Obviously, this can cause problems. They'll start going round asking how people are. They'll organise group trips to the pub, when traditionally the Beaker Folk like to sneak up there after Filling Up of Beakers feeling a little bit guilty. I'm not saying they're actually a threat to the community - after all, Hnaef and Young Keith are both suspected of extraversion, and yet manage to survive in the wild without minders. Their wives keep a close eye on them, though.
And we are a loving community and we want all to thrive - to allow a thousand flowers to bloom. A thousand, very similar, flowers. Wallflowers, ideally.
So we have done a limited experiment - for we are scientific as well as spiritual and deeply, deeply committed to long walks far away from other people - to see if we can cure extraverts. Obviously, we're not going to be beating them with sticks. We're not primitive, you know. Oh no. That's for completely different illnesses.
So it was a simple programme. We got five or six Beaker Folk to leap on a suspected extravert, stick a bag on their heads and then hold them down. I preached a sermon directly at them for 20 minutes on "Outgoing is evil. Jesus wants you to be more introspective." And then we chanted prayers for an hour or two to drive out the extraversion.
Sadly, it's not been a success.
In fact, quite a lot of them seemed to like the attention.
Oh, dear. this sounds very much like my MBTI training session, when I told the tutor that the whole business is entirely unscientific and handed her wadges of evidence from wikipedia - while I wasn't leapt on with a bag over my head, I might as well have been. After a withering glance, and put down that wiikpedia was completely unreliable she refused to speak to me or ask me any stupid questions for the rest of that session. Having smarted over that experience for years, and internalising it completely, I realised that I can't be an introvert because I'd have consulted google rather than wikipedia. I consider this a good formational, growth experience, which helped me considerably at BAP. Where my wikipedia research went down like a lead balloon - shows how much the selectors don't know as well.
ReplyDelete