Extroverts and the Concept of ‘Deserval’
We turn on the TV and encountering the concept is inevitable:
“I deserve it.” says a waifish, urban thirty-something woman as she justifies buying that expensive dress or that decadent slice of raspberry chocolate cheesecake in the store window.
“Why pay more? We’ll give you the low price you deserve!” says the affable fortyish car salesman with a silver buckle and cowboy hat during the commercial break.
When we turn off the TV encountering the concept is inevitable:
Most extroverts seem to have a concept that there are things they ‘deserve:’
Lower prices, a raise, free health care, flexible mortgage rates, a pension, a secure retirement, a facial, a new set of power tools, disposable income, a stable career, honest politicians……….
How do they decide what they deserve? Why do they deserve it? Isn’t the whole idea of deserving completely subjective and fluid? Another TV cliche comes to mind:
Henchman: Master, I brought you the power crystal as you commanded! (hands it over)
Cardboard Cutout Villain: Ah, finally! I have it now. Now I will give you exactly what you deserve!
*Henchman greedily anticipates goodies right up to the moment Villain pointlessly kills him with the power crystal*
As an introvert I looked to history and to the people around me without finding any sensical answer. I was confused. Surely the concept of deserving was entirely meaningless. No one gets what they want just because they decide they deserve it! Why would anyone actually be swayed or flattered by a sycophant assuring you that you ‘deserve’ more? Why would someone justify their actions with ‘deserval.’ What do they see in the whole empty idea of deserving something?
I got an inkling when I for a time interacted with kids in a classroom setting. The people I was working for insisted I give the kids points for answering questions in class and taking away points when they misbehaved or didn’t turn in homework. There was an entire elaborate system on the board for everyone to see with a tally of total points for every kid who passed through the room in the course of a day. The kids had created an entire system of social prestige around these point rankings that they took very seriously.
Children have a very strong sense of a primal, tribal level sense of social justice. They would be horrified if they thought one of the students deserved a point and I hadn’t given it.
When given an extra point on accident, even the beneficiary would instantly come forth and tell me to take away the undeserved point.
The kids always screamed for the worst possible punishment for anyone they saw breaking the rules. When punished themselves, they accepted it glumly but without question. As much as they hated punishment, they seemed to concede that they deserved it.
I realized that most of these children, especially the extroverted ones carry some semblance of this tribal level concept of social justice into adult life.
I began to realize I was rather strange for not having an intuitive grasp of ‘deserve.’ Upon further reflection I realize that the whole idea ceased to have meaning for me long ago during my own childhood. Living as an outsider from the outset, I took plenty of punishment just by virtue of being insufficiently protected from the pent up malice of others. It was clear I hadn’t done anything bad to anger those who gave me difficulty. There was no reason for any of it. Whether I deserved or didn’t deserve had no meaning at all.
As an introvert, I was never truly part of the tacitly understood justice system that governed most of the other children. Partly because of my fundamental personality and predispositions, partly because of the isolation created by my predispositions, I never fully acquired the concept of ‘deserval.’ In absence of this tribal justice, I viewed the school world around me in terms of power relationships. Bullies didn’t deserve to have power. They had power because they were able to take power. Really quite simple. I also had an inkling at an early age that bullies would never treat insiders the same way as outsiders. They would even be quite deferent to someone higher ranking. Was there any reason the people the bullies respected deserved respect? Not really. They just had more power.
A group of kids who knew each other in a structured classroom environment functioned well using their inborn senses of deserval. The point system I had to use made abundantly clear how every kid in the classroom was aware of the exact prestige level of every other kid. Each kid had an astoundingly precise mental tally of what every other kid deserved or didn’t deserve in class. Their feelings of justice and injustice were visceral and resulted in emotional protest whenever there was the slightest breach.
Now let’s look at these kids as adults. Most of adult life takes place outside of a structured classroom and they live in a society full of millions of strangers. The tribal level deserval impulse runs amok in this environment. When most people they meet have outsider status, they are not subject to tribal ethics. Furthermore everyone needs to compete to get ahead. Even people who aren’t strangers are often competitors. As pressure increases, everyone has to work hard for survival and for prestige. When people work hard just to make it, the deserval meter goes right off the charts. However, they’re hard pressed to find anyone who will acknowledge the fullness of what they think they deserve. There’s no impartial chief or arbitrator keeping track of points on the board. Most adults get cheated out of what they deserve. The daily flouting of their intuitive systems of justice makes them increasingly sure that they deserve compensation while others deserve punishment. Thus getting what they deserve by any means becomes justified on the most deeply visceral level. Since others do not even seem to acknowledge the intuitive justice system, they are outsiders who do not need to accommodated or given consideration anyway.
This ‘justice gap’ attitude seeps into all of life until a Surface person sincerely believes they deserve to eat raspberry chocolate cheese cake without paying the consequences of eating it. On the most primal level, deserving is about compensation for the crushing pressure and wrongs inflicted by an unjust life. When ‘compensation’ is inevitably canceled out by consequences, the Surface person has been cheated yet again of getting any closer to a measure of tribal justice.
The deep and unobtainable nature of this compensation fantasy makes it ideal content for advertising. What better way to reach people than to promise to soothe their battered egos, to promise to scratch that itch they can never quite seem to reach, to relieve the hurt that nothing seems to cure?
Zygmunt blogs at Kingdom of Introversion (and elsewhere).
Extroverts and the Concept of “Deserval” appears here by permission.
[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]
Zygmunt on 10/17/11 in featured, Politics | No Comments | Read More
