In print | Published October 21, 2004

Dear Editor:

Go ahead, declare me a misanthrope. Write me off as incurably antisocial. But please, dear and doubtlessly delightful Swatties with whom I am yet unacquainted, refrain from randomly saying, “Hello.”

Unexpected greetings plunge me into utter confusion. Countless questions leap to mind: Do I know this person who has inexplicably smiled or nodded in my general direction? Were we introduced by a mutual acquaintance over some long-forgotten pasta-bar dinner? Did we sit next to each other in “Greece and the Barbarians” freshman fall? And on and on. By the time I get around to considering reciprocation of the goodwill gesture, its initiator is long gone, probably feeling devalued as a person by my apparently haughty reticence.

What smacks of arrogance, however, is merely a severe case of introversion. I am one of those individuals who, as Atlantic Monthly columnist Jonathan Rauch so vividly puts it in “Caring for Your Introvert” (March 2003), “growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice.” Rauch paints introverts as “among the most misunderstood and aggrieved groups” in a largely “extrovertist” America, only half-jokingly using phrases like “come out” and “it’s an orientation” to compare their plight to that of homosexuals. So in this week dedicated to acknowledging and accepting alternative lifestyles, make an honest effort to understand this one.

In his op-ed “Would a smile and nod kill you?” (Oct. 7, pg. 16), Alex Ginsberg ‘08 alluded to “an ongoing battle against courtesy.” What, I ask, makes randomly addressing someone — thus perhaps interrupting the addressee’s profound train of thought — inherently “polite” or friendly? What benefit does the greeting confer? If the gesture is not an acknowledgement of acquaintance, what, if anything, does it mean? Isn’t it presumptuous to expect someone to be grateful for your teeth-baring expression of “happiness and approval”? Who are you to float beaming around campus validating other people’s existence? I fail to see why this behavior represents the height of courtesy — and thus why those who do not engage in it are throwbacks to an uncivilized age when “our ancestors were all chilling out in caves.”

A disinclination to wish every living soul a hearty good-morning is not indicative of evolutionary retardation, nor is it symptomatic of deep-seated misanthropy; introverts are neithr devoid of empathetic impulses nor unwilling to aid their fellow man. They hold doors and lend sugar and carry groceries for old ladies just like everybody else. They just might need some alone-time afterwards.

What I found most perplexing about Alex Ginsberg’s op-ed was the apparent desire to be deluded implicit in his closing appeal to readers to “pretend for five seconds that you actually give a crap about the people you share your planet and campus with.” Does Alex really want people to say “hello” to passersby not because they care but out of some perverse sense of duty, because that’s what “you are supposed to do”? Wouldn’t that rob the gesture of whatever meaning it still retained? And what would prevent expressions of genuine interest and concern from getting lost amidst the glut of sham salutations? Practice indiscriminate greeting if you wish, but kindly restrain the impulse to brand me a Neanderthal for failing to do likewise.

Katharine Merow ’06

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