***

According to conventional wisdom, a generic human form is endowed with five senses: Sight, Touch, Smell, Sound and Taste (listed in order of how much they stimulate my sex drive. You’re welcome!). We give some credence to the idea of metaphysical sixth senses—the ability to perceive ghosts, ESP, telekinesis—but unless you’re Hayley Joel Osmond or a member of Sensing Murder (good job on solving all those homicides, team!), or alternately you’re blind or deaf, you will have five senses and these five senses alone.

Unfortunately for the Primary School Syllabus, this is a common misconception. Napoleon, in fact, was taller than most men of his time; chewing gum does not seven years to digest; clicking on that link and watching that video won’t increase your THROBBING COCK’S length or girth, let alone make you irresistible to MILFS; humans possess up to 20 senses, depending on the definition of what a “sense” is.

Along with the usual quintet, the sensation of needing to void your bowels or bladder have been distinguished not just from each other but from the sensation of “feeling”, for two examples. Others include thermoception (recognising temperature), equilibrioception (balance), proprioception (feeling the sensation of pain) and Inception (the unique sensation describing the covert joy you feel after watching a Hollywood blockbuster). So the last one hasn’t been scientifically corroborated (YET: patent pending), but scientific studies conducted late last century showed that, at least for those first three, these senses are concrete and distinct phenomena that intertwine with other senses but are not manifestations of them.

This is of some interest to science (duh), but also to its more philosophy-minded cousin-once-removed. Devotees of British Empiricism claim that all human knowledge comes from sensory experience—we can only know what we experience through touch, smell, sight, and so “reality” is dependent on “perception”. The upshot of more senses? An added insight into how we generate knowledge and experience. The existence of synesthesia must no doubt be exceptionally pertinent to these ideas; it means there are physiological grounds for synesthetic perceptions, an entire reality that non-synesthetes will never be privy to.

I don’t fancy my writing enthralling enough to read entire paragraphs of, so if you’ve skipped a couple of my tangents be aware there is one point I’m trying to make here: our senses, and the idea of what constitutes a “sense”, is way more complex that most of us realise. People with synesthesia complicate matters further, the dastardly rogues, but offer us all a new way of approaching what perception really is.

“The Synesthesia Battery”, an online resource that offers a test to anyone who wishes to determine whether they have synesthesia, defines synesthesia as “a perceptual condition of mixed senses… a stimulus in one modality involuntarily elicits a sensation/experience in another modality.” In less verbose terms, people with synesthesia basically get two or more senses for the price of one; one sense is stimulated, more than one responds. The word’s etymological origins can be traced back to the Greek “Syn” (together) and “aisthesis” (perception), a literal approximation of the simultaneous perception the word has come to mean.

The most common manifestation of synesthesia, and the one you’re most likely to have heard of, is nicknamed “colour synesthesia”. People with this variation always perceive (not see, but perceive—this is important) a particular colour when they see a different letter of the alphabet, character, or number. For some individuals, this extends to moods, concepts and unique words having their own colour. It’s not just that they associate a word with a colour, like we associate red with anger and green with jealousy, say—they actually perceive it.

As the synesthete writer Patricia Duffy puts in her poignant memoir Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens: “I realised that to make an ‘R’ all I had to do was first write a ‘P’ and then draw a line down from its loop. And I was so surprised that I could turn a yellow letter into an orange letter just by adding a line… I suddenly felt marooned on my own private island of navy blue Cs, dark brown Ds, sparkling green 7s, and wine-colored Vs.”

To experience synesthesia, despite its irrefutable coolness and advantages, must be pretty lonely sometimes. The condition is rare, and science has only recently formally—and according to some synesthetes, begrudgingly—acknowledged its existence. Research on the subject is surprisingly scarce. Support groups, where people can share experiences and foster understanding and compassion, are almost unheard of outside select internet forums.

A large amount of misconceptions linger from the nascent days of scientific research. Though the symptoms of synesthesia have been documented for centuries (millennia, according to some sources), synesthetes have been variously condemned as “liars”, “fabricators” and “needy exhibitionists with overactive imaginations” in times of yore. Synesthesia has also been falsely perceived as a delusion and thus a characteristic of severe mental illness.

While it would be soothing to think that these errant opinions have been relegated to history, they still prevail in some scientific discourse. It took me five minutes perusing JSTOR to find two articles published and ratified by members of the scientific community in the last ten years that propagate these archaic conceptions. In one article, published in 2007 by the fucking Stanford Journal of Neuroscience no less, symptoms of synesthesia are conflated with schizophrenia, which is insulting to everyone involved. In another, published as recently as 2010, the condition is characterised as “a mental disorder”.

This categorisation perhaps bears more weight, at least in semantic terms—“disorder”, in its medical-dictionary definition, refers only to something that exists outside the norm. However, in common usage and in basic connotation, the word corresponds with notions of impairment, disability, otherness—even, most pejoratively, freakishness and inferiority. And in its insistence in adhering to the “normal”, the field doesn’t reflect on a difficult fundamental question: what constitutes “normal”? How do you decide what’s “abnormal”, and when does it start mattering? I’ll discuss this in greater depth in a later, hopefully more triumphant paragraph, but suffice to say that when it comes to synesthesia, scientific accuracy is sorely lacking.

***

To help me shed some light on the subject, I met with Tori Bright, a synesthete who experiences a comparatively rare, exceptionally under-researched variant of the condition: Mirror-Touch. Tori is Bright by name and by nature. If you think this is an egregious pun based on her intelligence and thoughtfulness, you’re right, but it also serves double duty by encapsulating her disposition aptly. She hardly needed the coffee I bribed her with; cheery and unassuming, immaculately dressed, on-point nail-polish, I warmed to her immediately as she spilt the beans on what it means to be a synesthete.

What exactly is mirror-touch? “When I see someone touch someone else, I feel it… I feel the sensation. It’s hard to explain, but it’s like… when I see someone tap someone on the shoulder, I literally feel a ‘ghost-touch’ of someone tapping me on the shoulder.” What do these “ghost-touches” feel like? “It’s hard to explain, sorry! The closest thing is pins and needles, but I’ve felt pins and needles before and it’s not like that, just a bit similar. Sometimes I feel the exact sensation but only if I’ve experienced it before, mostly it’s like a tingling, but a tangible one.” I put it to her that it must be impossible to explain to someone who doesn’t have the condition; “you know I can’t feel your ghost-touch, bro” if you will. “Exactly! It’s just like that.”

“I took a film course last year on horror movies, and that was interesting.” Pardon? “Yeah, I only had to walk out of one—Evil Dead. Oh, and Hostel… that scene where the guy gets his achilles tendon snipped? So much pain… I couldn’t walk for hours afterwards because I was afraid it would come back.” The film course must have been an excruciating experience! “Not as much as you’d think—I have what I call a ‘fiction filter’, and I don’t usually feel pain if I haven’t experienced it myself anyway.” I inquired whether the fiction filter was something she developed over time or something she was born with. She thinks a while before answering. “I think it’s something I’ve developed because it’s gotten easier over time, and I think I’ve definitely become more desensitised, but I honestly don’t know. I couldn’t tell you.”

When it comes to more innocuous ghost-touches, I posit that it must be distracting. “Not really,” she rebukes gently, “and why would it? It’s something I’ve had my whole life, so I’ve never had to get used to it. It’s just natural for me.” What about, err, y’know, umm, sorry to ask a salacious question, but, uhh… “Ha, that’s the first question most people ask me: [in dudebro tones] ‘what’s it like when you watch porn?’. I tell them I don’t really watch porn,” she says, laughing. “But again, I don’t know what it’s like for people who don’t have Mirror-Touch, whether they get excited in the same way I do. I guess they must not, that I must get excited in a different way, but I don’t know whether it’s just different paths to the same ending.” Nice entendre. “Thanks! Yeah, I don’t know… if the Mirror-Touch made me feel twice as much pleasure as pain, it would be a lot easier… or maybe not.” We both giggle a bit and I drop the subject.

It would certainly be spectacularly unfortunate if she didn’t feel pleasure or neutral sensations to compensate for the pain, because it sounds bloody awful. “In my first year, this guy was telling us this story about how he broke his arm after falling off a trampoline, and I didn’t want to say ‘stop’ because I was knew at a hostel and I didn’t want to be that girl, even though I wanted to make him stop so much. Every time I’d think about it, my arm would hurt. This happened for weeks” So it’s not just visual, in the moment? It’s your imagination too? “Exactly, yeah,” she confirms. Her right arm is visibly tensing.

***

Tori first realised that she perceived touch differently in the cruel and unusual circumstances outlined in the first paragraph; before that, especially because of her Mum’s similar sensitivity (“I think she might have it, but she doesn’t really want to admit it or acknowledge it, y’know?”), she assumed everyone felt the same. “And then—you know how sometimes you find out about something, even a particular word, and it pops up everywhere you go?”. I do. “Well it was like that—that night I listened to a podcast before I went to bed, to help me sleep, and it was about Mirror-Touch Synesthesia and I realised ‘hey—that’s what I have! That’s me!’.”

A trip to a neurologist, for unrelated reasons, confirmed Tori’s suspicions. She met the three criteria that are required for a formal diagnosis. The doctor couldn’t offer her any more than affirmation. The first medically confirmed case of this disorder, despite its prevalence, occurred in—I jest not—2005. (An estimated 2.5 per cent of a given population experiences Mirror-Touch to varying degrees, though few of this percentile are aware they have the condition.)

As such, very little is known about what causes Mirror-Touch. According to Tori’s neurologist, some research had tentatively uncovered a link between Mirror-Touch and epilepsy—which Tori’s elder sister has. If this hypothesis was corroborated, it would indict the Temporal Lobe as the major culprit. However, other studies have witnessed increased activity in the premotor cortex and insular cortex—among others—in Mirror-Touch synesthetes. Where Mirror-Touch stems from remains, as with other forms of synesthesia, a mystery, the domain of endless hypothesising, aborted research and frenzied debate.

The lack of knowledge affects Mirror-Touch synesthetes in a more personal way. There is no real medical advice, no support groups. Developing strategies to combat the deleterious effects of the condition is very much an individual—and onerous—task. This is not necessarily true in Tori’s case. She grew up in Sanson—a tiny locale near Bulls with “an antique shop, a dairy and a fish and chip shop [according to Tori, the best in the country]”—and attended high school in Feilding. The support services for even conditions as well-known as dyslexia are notoriously deficient in rural New Zealand, but Tori managed by developing coping strategies: going outside and getting fresh air when necessary, focussing her thoughts away from triggering ones, avoiding certain stimuli. While she is nonchalant about these experiences, I suspect that these processes were cultivated in the midst of rather difficult trial-and-error.

Moving to Wellington for university did not bring her into contact with other Mirror-Touch synesthetes. She has met two other people with synesthesia in her life, neither of whom had her particular brand (one had an equally rare type, “spatial synesthesia”, who aligns numerical sequences as points in space in their head). The internet has helpful communities—Tori is especially fond of Reddit’s r/synesthesia board—but even that focusses on colour synthesia, or the kind that makes you smell bacon when you see, say, a fire hose, or taste wasabi when you hear a note on a violin. She’s had one moment of particular pride: she related her experience and someone identified, saying “I’ve always thought there was something wrong with me… now I know there’s not. That’s what it is!”

“And I mean, I know, I don’t know if they were trolling, ‘no-one lies on the internet’ and everything, but still.”

***

What ultimately struck me about Tori was that she was so, well, normal. This is not to say she was generic, or boring—quite the opposite—but that her life has charted familiar territory. She moved to Wellington for the university experience and independence. She has worked in a call centre to help herself out financially. She lives in a grungy but great student flat, drinks on occasion, she wants to study post-grad film in England and travel Europe. She was raised by two Mums—which you can read more about in a tender, heartfelt piece written for this magazine—but aside from that her childhood was typically happy and pleasant. Her experiences mirrored mine, yours, your friends.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that someone with synesthesia is well-adjusted, socially confident, lacking in eccentric bugaboos or picadillos. But the way the condition is framed as a “disorder” lends credence to the perception of synesthetes as some kind of other—maybe gifted, maybe weird, but certainly not like you or me.

These tidy delineated categories belie a weird truth that there is a common humanity running through each of us, no matter how we perceive our external worlds. I was interested to learn that deaf people sign to themselves in the same way that we talk to ourselves; deafmutes utter phrases to themselves involuntarily, no matter how learned.

This isn’t to say that people with synesthesia have nothing unique to offer. While no-one could ever mistake me for a science major, I thought it interesting that Tori mentioned “seeing anxious people play with their hands makes me feel anxious”, especially given that for many GPs in New Zealand, the first port of call when treating anxiety is medication that prevents the physiological effects of anxiety, not the psychological ones. She believes that while she’s not endlessly sympathetic, her physical empathy has translated to advanced emotional empathy—a feeling supported by research that found markedly higher empathy levels in people with synesthesia.

Speaking of research: if you’ve ever felt hunger, there might be an element of synesthesia in your genetic make-up too. According to one group of researchers, “hunger” is a sensation comprised of four separate senses: taste, smell, touch and sight. If the research bears delicious-smelling fruit, it might demonstrate an evolutionary purpose to synesthesia. Shit—it might even support the idea, espoused by Cracked commenter/scientific genius Ricky Zapf, “I beleive that synthesia is the next step in human evelution”.

In a similar vein that can only be described as “buzzy as fuck”, there has been a documented case where a colorblind synesthete has reported perceiving colors she couldn’t “see” in her day-to-day life. This anomaly is of tremendous importance to scientists studying perception and probably a fair few philosophy professors too—it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine one of them crying “the land of the Noumenal has been confirmed!”, spilling coffee down their anorak in the process.

It isn’t only as participants in science experiments that synesthetes make their mark. Nobel Prize-winning mathematician and physicist Richard Feynman saw equations in colour, which enabled him to solve them with increased efficacy. Olivier Messiaen and Pharrell are two synesthetes who have incorporated their condition into music to tremendous effect. Messiaen even created chords based on his perception of colour in music that “he may not have discovered otherwise”.

The classic mind-experiment, usually relayed to me by some body-stoned friend or other, that “what if my red isn’t what your red looks like?”, reveals a harsher truth that it realises. We can never know anyone fully because we can never share their perception, see through their eyes, walk a mile in their feet, listen to that Arctic Monkeys album that you love but they hate, through their taringas. It can be as drastically different as the African tribe who can’t perceive blue but can perceive variations of green that all other eyes cannot, or as close-to-alike as a .05 difference in our short-sightedness. Every synesthete and every non-synesthete perceives an entirely unique world according to their unique brain make-up.

This need not, however, be a depressing or lonely realisation. We are wonderfully one-of-a-kind. The commonalities between the way we use our senses brings us together, inspires camaraderie, even as we are inevitably apart; the differences keeps it interesting. When I asked Tori whether she liked having synesthesia, she replied “I do, I really do. I’m weirdly proud of it. It’s something special about me. I’ve never had trouble making friends because of it, but I have something, something tangible, that no-one else has.

“And it’s a fucking great party trick.”

But it’s more than just The X Factor. The problem is that there’s nothing “real” about these shows. The “homes” on The Block are empty shells, soulless facades. We all know that Police Ten 7 uses green screens; the crims are inserted in post-production. All the “food” on My Kitchen Rules tastes like styrofoam. It is styrofoam—the cauliflower is plainly made of those little foam things that your digital camera was boxed with. Anyone can see that the courgettes are urinal cakes.

Luckily, things are about to change—The Bachelor New Zealand has revolutionised reality television in this country. Finally, this is television with heart, a show in which the hook-ups are real and the rejections count. Reality television, it seems, is no longer a misnomer.

Here’s how it works: 20 New Zealand women and one convicted fraudster vie for the attentions of New Zealand’s most despicable male. Each week the action culminates in a tacky little ceremony in which some of our hopefuls receive a rose signifying their continuing involvement. At the end, one of these poor women will marry this dreadful bastard.

Prior to the two maiden episodes, little was known about our hero. The network was keeping quiet about it, as were most major news networks. In a tantalising series of promos, TV3 showed us that our Bachelor was an equestrian, and that he likes to loiter down at the viaduct. And startlingly, after almost three hours with the guy, we know little more about the Bachelor, other than that his name is Art Green and that he is definitely anything but eligible.

In what is ostensibly a “get to know the Bachelor” section, we learn a little about Art, and it’s all terrible. The Bachelor starts with the basics: “My name’s Arthur, I’m 26 years old, I’m living in Auckland and I run my own health food company.” Unfortunately, there’s almost nothing more to the guy. We learn that he is fond of running on the beach (curiously, Art prefers to run in a singlet but ride his horses shirtless) and that he is better than Mike Puru at tennis. So far, so good. Art mumbles something about entrepreneurship and “pre-orders”, but neglects to mention that the company that he “owns” is in fact run by friend Ryan Kamins and the substantially more famous cricketer Mitchell McClenaghan. Nope, apparently it’s Art’s company. After seeing Art in business and in the gym (presumably the only two places he has been), we’re whisked off to the third—his family home. We meet Art’s family at a mansion so palatial we can only assume the father is some sort of international arms-dealer.

After an interminably long time hanging out with the family Green, we get to see Art prepare for an introductory cocktail evening. The guy lives by the credo “healthy body, healthy mind” but appears to care much less about what adorns his body. His just-been-to-Nepal anklet and third-form-bully G-shock are surely lowering his IQ by at least a bit. Art’s formal get-up is no better. He looks like a middling law student on his way to that ridiculous ball they’re always going to.

At first it’s a relief to see Art with some fucking clothes on, but once he opens his mouth one can’t help but wish he’d just get back on his horse. As Art’s potential fiancées emerge one-by-one from a sleek black rental car, he finds an exciting variety of ways to alienate them completely. Art’s first potential fiancée gets Art’s whole repertoire of “well”, “yeah” and “definitely”, and an indiscrete rubbing of his clammy hands on his rumpled pant leg. Art’s clearly well out of his depth. Upon learning that Danielle had intended to compete in Ironman, he confidently assures her that he once competed in the Auckland half marathon, a substantially less impressive endurance event. Art treats each of his encounters as an opportunity for a disturbing game of one-upmanship followed by a lascivious “checking out” process as each woman hurries towards the safety of the mansion and what is surely better company.

Art, presumably short for Artless, is at best a hopeless fool and at worst a vainglorious arse. The prospect of spending weeks in his company fills me (let alone the women and poor Mike) with dread. Luckily, the show redeems itself—the involvement of Puru and the women (or, as Art and Mike insist, “the girls”) is a real source of hope.

Clearly the product of a deranged mind, The Bachelor is the brainchild of Flipside’s Mike Puru. While the show is ostensibly another MediaWorks production, with Puru as host, it becomes abundantly clear that Mike is pulling the strings. We don’t see a lot of Mike in these first two episodes. He appears when you least expect him—grinning silently beside Art at a Rose Ceremony, or suddenly apparating into a scene to whisk our contestants off to another one of his product-placement-saturated dates.

Obviously a devoted student of David Lynch, every one of Mike’s appearances manages to cultivate a tone of confusion and hopelessness unmatched since Lost Highway. His speeches to the contestants are despair writ large. To put it simply, he’s giving us televisual expressionism of a calibre never before seen in New Zealand.

Puru’s also nothing if not a masterful fixer. In the first two episodes there’s been a flight on a seaplane, an island picnic, and a thrilling jet-boat ride. He even managed to borrow a Russian oligarch’s superyacht for the day, as if the show needed another display of wealth of such disgustingly filthy lucre.

But Mike’s not without his flaws. Completely out of step with the zeitgeist, his primitive view of gender politics ensures that the contestants are constantly being portrayed as “catty”, and he’s done nothing to deter the bumblingly offensive Art from referring to them as “the girls”. It’ll be intriguing to see if Mike can grow out of his regressive views or if they’ll continue to colour his show.

And then there’s the contestants themselves. 21 women, mainly drawn from the upper-crust of the big urban centers, and all a fair few IQ points clear of Art. There’s a real mix of professions—teachers, advertising executives, yoga instructors—but we’re struck by how any of these people could be interested in our glassy-eyed fad diet entrepreneur. Such is life.

Mike’s bold and uncompromising direction meant we got to know far more about some contestants than others:

• Rosie loves danger so much that it has become the guiding principle for her global adventures. She says she has visited both Israel and Jordan and found the thought of nearby gunfire “thrilling”. Rosie’s politics are unsettling but she redeems herself in the first Rose Ceremony by preemptively walking out. Presumably she’s heard there’s trouble in the Crimea and is off to check it out.

• Poppy is an English yoga instructor. She’s got Art performing the “tree pose” within about five seconds of meeting him. “I can see why trees do it.” Poppy gives him the benefit of the doubt.

• Kristie’s a “dog person” from South Otago. It remains to be seen how an animagus will fare. Kristie quickly gets some alone time with Art and says she’s not here to make friends, clearly operating as more of a “lone wolf”. She locks eyes with Art and “time stands still”. We know how you feel, Kristie.

• These contestants are talented! We have a champion in our midst. Danielle, a 35 year old barrister from Auckland, won the National Piano Accordion Championships in 1997. One can’t help but speculate that there are substantially more competitors in this particular competition than there was in 1997—who knows how Danielle will go with so many contestants. In a clever budgeting move, Mike appears to have convinced Danielle to provide the show’s soundtrack, perhaps guaranteeing Danielle safe passage through the early rounds.

• Then there’s the fraudster. One of our contestants, Danielle Le Gallais, was sentenced to 18 months in jail in 2005 for stealing almost $40,000 from a former employer. Danielle has Art sussed immediately, and gets “given” a rose within minutes of meeting him—we can only hope that she has also made off with Art’s gaudy G-shock.

Now that we’ve met these smart young women and this awful man, how are things going to play out? In the early episodes, things begin to settle down into a pattern of set piece dates and talking heads—it’s easy to forget that this thing will ultimately end in a marriage. At first, we find the women lounging nonchalantly on a sort of Bachelorette Band Stand, clearly waiting for someone to come along and say “hello ladies”, which Puru dutifully does. One of them is going to be going on a date! Art has chosen Poppy for a date on Kawau because she “seems like fun”—the viewer is left to imagine Art’s lecherous wink. Poppy’s date goes well and Art gives her a rose. Poppy relaxes a little too much and does a small fart.

Now Mike has decided that Art should take a number of women on what is called a “group date”, which most closely resembles a group interview—Art seems just about to hand the women an A4 pad and a roll of sellotape and instruct them to build a bridge that can support his bodyweight. Some of the women join Art on various vessels as they potter about on the ocean. This group is obviously favoured by Puru, for they are finally given the opportunity to drink out of real-life glass. This time, Dani is given a rose.

While Art is busy with Dani, Chrystal holds court on the top deck, confidently assuring the troops that while women seek emotional security, men are more interested in physical attraction. Chrystal’s right on the money if she’s talking about Art, but Danielle sees her polemic for what it is: lazy stereotyping. “Chrystal was very opinionated,” Danielle (the fraudster, not the accordionist) complains in her piece to camera, “and wrongfully so.” Brilliant. One can’t help but suspect a significant portion of Chrystal’s money could end up in a Swiss bank account at any moment.

This time, Art has only 13 roses for 15 girls. Luckily, Mike has done the arithmetic for us—two more women will be leaving the mansion. Danielle gets the last rose in a tense finale and Puru appears in a cloud of smoke to bring things to a close.

And thus stepped The Bachelor into the hell-scape. Kills and Moon are but a distant memory. The Bachelor is potential realised, promise delivered—the platonic ideal of reality television. One can only imagine what Mike’s got in store for us next week. Thank God for The Bachelor.

That always felt like a misnomer to me. Hell, it sounds like a betrayal even, from the country that for so long was home to Lord of the Rings. Lukewarm reception to The Hobbit trilogy notwithstanding, we all went to great lengths to make Tolkien’s world real, and we went in droves. But now we’ve crossed the Narrow Sea to grittier shores. In part, this is due to the great adaptational skill of George R.R. Martin, David Benihoff and David Weiss, but at the time I didn’t really get why Thrones had to aim for things we were trying to get away from in the real world: cynicism and moral grayness, rape and misogyny, cruel backhanded politics with far-reaching consequences we’d rather not think about. To my mind, fantasy is meant to be a break from reality, not a cruel reminder of it. But maybe I was looking at it the wrong way. I decided to do some digging into the worlds of Tolkien and Martin, and see where the appeal for “the real” in fantasy lies.

***

Tolkien lived through both World Wars, serving as a lieutenant in the first and writing throughout the second from his post as a professor of language at Pembroke College in Cambridge. It was there he published The Hobbit and the first two installments of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien would spend his vacations in the English countryside, where he took rest and respite; he came to loathe the rapid industrialisation that was occurring through much of 1940s Britain, turning the dales and rural villages into bustling towns and roads. He made such a point of not getting with the program that never drove or purchased a car, instead opting for a bicycle.

Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit went on to reflect the values of their time. Tolkien touted the ideal of the rural middle class of England being the-best-society-of-all, as symbolised by the hobbits, and elevated the ideal of quaint domestic life to an idea of bliss, under a stable and tidy monarchy as embodied by Aragorn. Coupled with his experiences during the war, the predominant narrative of his works was that when all was said and fought for, you retired to domestic stability, to home and hearth with family and good company. As much attention is dedicated to feasts and parties and social gatherings as it is to adventuring and fighting against the menace of that industrial upstart Sauron and his evil legions. It was on this point that a friend of mine, who has read the books since childhood, used to complain to me that his main gripe with Tolkien was that the adventuring and derring-do often slows to a crawl for the sake of “another fucking feast”.

But an even bigger criticism of Tolkien’s opus is that Middle-Earth’s history is one written by the victors, defending an idealised England that seemed only to exist in Tolkien’s head. There’s a noticeable lack of moral complexity throughout his works and their adaptations. Tolkien took his scope from the poetic eddas of Anglo-Saxon and Norse mythology, but its values are rooted in old J.R.R.’s Catholicism. The good guys are always good and heroic, and while they doubt themselves, it is through their heroism and good nature that they win the day. The bad guys are all obviously evil, with no defectors or sympathetic characters among their number. The good guys are also always white, while the bad guys are described as “swarthy” outsiders intent on reducing the pretty little country to ash. The women sit and look “fair”, and the eagles fly in and wrap everything up in a neat little bow.

When it comes to film adaptations, Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is considered one of the best, but by the time it came around to film The Hobbit, Jackson and his screenwriters realised the dire need for Tolkien’s themes to be updated for a modern audience. The women, for instance, should actually do something, hence the addition of Tauriel and the women of Laketown taking up arms in The Battle of the Five Armies. On that note, it’s the last film in the cinematic Tolkien universe that actually comes close to going against the very anti-war views that Tolkien stood for, turning what was initially written as the inevitable denouement of “what do we do with Erebor now that the dragon’s gone” into an excuse to do a great big CGI battle royale before the rap party in the Shire.

There have been other attempts to retrofit more modern values into the legendarium. Kirill Yeskov, a Russian paleontologist, penned a critical narrative called The Last Ringbearer in 1999. Taking place after the War of the Ring, it completely flips the traditional Tolkien moral perspective on its head. Sauron and his orcs are rational scientists who wish to bring progressive industrialisation to Middle-Earth, which is sorely lacking in innovation due to its stagnant monarchy and medieval technology. The hobbits are non-existent, and Aragorn is a puppet of the elves, who believe that they should be “masters of the world”. They enlist Gandalf, here depicted as a puritanical war-monger intent on bringing “a Final Solution to the Mordorian problem”, and yes, that is a direct quote. While lauded in its native Russia, the Tolkien estate has worked to prevent any English adaptation from reaching England and ruining the purity of the original work.

In contrast to Tolkien, industry was very much part and parcel of what made George R.R. Martin a fantasy writer (other than having two R initials to his name). Martin grew up in Bayonne, a fishing town and industrial hub on the coast of New Jersey. In an interview with New Jersey Monthly Magazine, Martin described his boyhood in the 1950s as alternating between reading and adventure, as he went to explore the junkyards and factories that surrounded his house in the projects.

He could never comprehend how in the books he read, there were just acres and acres of countryside. “I had a hard time picturing that because I would say, well why doesn’t anybody live there? What do you mean, you cross the street and there’s nothing there? You cross the street and it’s the next town. I thought the whole world was one big city,” he says. Martin has been portrayed by fans as a grim reaper killing his darlings, but it’s refreshing to see him as Bran on the rooftops.

While working as a writer for television in the 80s and 90s, he began to pen A Song of Ice and Fire in 1994. The America that Martin lived through was every bit the opposite of Tolkien’s life. The economic scene was one of cutthroat capitalists. Businesses rose and fell on the whims of their rulers, except here the wolves were more Wall Street than House Stark, and the Lannisters never paid their debts. Meanwhile, the burgeoning internet allowed people to connect and better get a look inside each other’s heads, and an increasing awareness for diversity and representation among minorities was taking root.

But what ultimately led Martin to write A Song of Ice and Fire was what he saw in Tolkien, or rather what he didn’t see. Martin has stated that he sees in Tolkien’s work a distinct lack of human perspective, and to address it, he simply looked to reality, taking his cues from the impartial views of historical novels. Some have taken this stance on realism in fantasy in his work to mean bleak moral grayness, but when asked by the Wall Street Journal about whether fiction should reflect reality, Martin clarified to offer a sobering notion of why we engage with these made-up stories.

“I think all fiction needs to reflect reality,” he said. “Fiction is lies, we’re writing about people who never existed and events that never happened when we write fiction… But it has to have a truth at the core of it. You’re still writing about people, you’re writing about the human condition.”

After April 2011, A Song of Ice and Fire became forever better known as Game of Thrones, the big budget television adaptation. Its premiere was met with lukewarm reception, its sets and budgets appreciated, but appearing dry and lifeless upon execution. But when the finale came and showed the execution of Ned Stark, a man so bound to honour he wouldn’t look out of place in Middle Earth, Martin, Benihoff and Weiss’ intentions were clear: this wasn’t your grandfather’s fantasy series.

By that point, it was good enough for viewers of non-fantasy to start watching in great numbers, propelling the show to commercial success while sending the books to the top of the best-selling lists. Dance with Dragons sold 170,000 copies in its first day alone. History may be written by the victors, but in Game of Thrones, the audience knows how they got there.

When I was preparing to write this article, I knew I had to go to a pro to give context to my thoughts. Fortunately, everyone has an opinion on Game of Thrones, so I didn’t even have to leave my flat. When I asked my flatmates what the appeal of Thrones was to them, beyond the immediate response of “boobs” and “sudden twists” (two things that obviously make for great television), they told me that while Tolkien did the admirable feat of building a world from the ground-up, Martin could write characters better.

Which I suppose is where the appeal of Game of Thrones lies. The decisions that transform the world come not from great battles, great men and the legends they inspired, but from the actions or inactions of smaller players all working an angle. Even as he kills or forgets them in equal measure, Martin lovingly built a world in which to fit all his characters, and crafted a narrative wherein every reader got a peek into their heads.

And what a diverse group of heads they are. It may not be perfect—every season seems to get a recap counting the ways in which its female protagonists get screwed over—but at the very least, the show addresses the lack of diversity and perspective in fantasy, which was previously limited to White Anglo-Saxon Tolkienians. If the sheer amount of progressive thinkpieces and fan praise it generates are anything to go by, Game of Thrones is giving context to the very real battles that marginalised groups face in day-to-day life. Gone are the days of the straight white dude as ruler. Now anyone can be king: women, dwarves, bastards and broken things. People who make mistakes and then suffer for them.

“Sometimes what seemed to be a good decision turned around and bit you in the ass; it was the law of unintended consequences,” Martin told Rolling Stone. “I’ve tried to get at some of these in my books. My people who are trying to rule don’t have an easy time of it. Just having good intentions doesn’t make you a wise king.”

Martin may have sacrificed world-building for character interactions, but if his monumental success is anything to go by, it was to his and Game of Thrones’ benefit. You may visit for the world, but you stay for the people.

If you asked me what I liked about Tolkien, on the other hand, it’s always the giant spiders that seem to stick with me. There’s a story that Tolkien was bitten by a “baboon spider” as a child growing up in South Africa, and that this was what led him to create Ungoliant and her evil kin. It seemed an oddity to me that he would elevate such an ordinary creature to supernatural status, and this primal story seemed too good to be true. I later learned the less interesting truth; he wrote them into The Hobbit because his son, Michael, was an arachnophobe. But even if we know the truth, it’s the more visceral story that has already been made legend, which I think says more about how we come to approach fantasy and what we take away from it.

Fantasy is about taking elements from the real world and blowing them up to great proportion, but what we really want, it seems, is the psychological edge that comes with it—one that had been ignored in Tolkien’s day but fully embraced and celebrated in Martin’s books now. Perhaps in time, a new king of fantasy will rise to replace him.

Works can live and die on how they are willing to keep with the times. The social attitudes that influenced Tolkien and Martin alike came to influence their work, and in turn, those who read it. If our society is an organism, with every individual like a cell that produces and consumes, then art is the bile and phlegm that is coughed up to indicate the health of the organism. Your fantasy is more real than you think.

Radio New Zealand reported a 12 per cent increase in international students in 2014 compared to 2013. Of the international students who arrived in New Zealand five to six years ago, 37 per cent have stayed in New Zealand for work.

As well as this, in the 2013-14 financial year 42 per cent of skilled migrants were previously international students in New Zealand.

Education New Zealand Chief Executive Grant McPherson said that the priorities of international students are changing, with employment and immigration becoming more important. Although Mr McPherson insisted that international education providers were not necessarily a pathway to employment in New Zealand, he maintained it was still “a pathway people will think about and explore”.

A representative from the newly-formed VUWSA International Students’ Representative Group (VISRG) agreed that a significant number of international students are currently interested in staying in New Zealand after study.

VISRG pointed out that some international students aim to migrate to New Zealand in order to escape a the a cycle of poverty. Their goals are to integrate with New Zealand society and aid the economy of New Zealand by filling shortages in the skilled job market.

A total of 93,000 international students came to New Zealand in the first eight months of last year alone, with their total spending reaching an estimated $2.8 billion a year.

However, Tertiary Education Union President Sandra Grey expressed her dissatisfaction with the way that institutions were compressing courses in an attempt to suit foreign students.

“This is where the market is driving teaching and learning,” Grey said.

VUWSA President Rick Zwaan was quick to note that market-driven courses were not in and of themselves an issue, but said it was important that academic integrity was maintained in the face of growing profit-interest.

A spokesperson from the University told Salient that international students have the same access to career services and orientation programmes as domestic students, which “helps students adjust to life in Wellington” and equips them for job opportunities.

However, the University declined to comment on whether a focus on courses for international students was fostering profit over teaching and learning.

Others have expressed concerns about the impact of international students on the future job prospects for domestic graduates.

NZ First MP Winston Peters criticised international students as being “unfair competition” for Kiwi workers.

“Student visas should not be used to flood the job market, drive down wages and undermine conditions and increase the already record number of permanent immigrants.”

Zwaan was quick to dismiss Peters’ claims, saying “international students add a whole lot of value to the university and New Zealand as a whole so it’s quite xenophobic to say ‘let’s not’.”

Zwaan said the University was openly developing programmes catered specifically to overseas students.

“I don’t think there’s anything necessarily bad about us attracting more international students as long as we look after them when they get here.”

According to Section 1.3 of Victoria’s Assessment Handbook, assessments should “provide an accurate and consistent measure of student performance”. Assessments should “provide every student with an equitable opportunity to demonstrate their learning”. A good assessment “measures what it purports to assess”. It’s a cute idea, that we are examined by machines focusing only on what matters. It is also, of course, a myth.

We are examined by people, people with blind spots and imperfect judgments and lazy heuristics. Crouching unseen behind the University’s rhetoric of equity and consistency is a bias: if you are extroverted and well-liked—if you seem confident and in control of your material—you will get good grades. If not—if you are an introvert—you will be punished. Markers know this. The University knows this. But despite having the machinery to fix it, this bias has been ignored.

***

Let’s start with the psychology. The “anchoring effect” is how psychologists describe our propensity to answer questions with numbers that are already in our head. In a classic experiment, people saw a wheel of fortune being spun and were then asked to guess the percentage of UN countries that were in Africa. On average, those who saw the wheel land on the number 65 guessed 45 per cent, while those who saw the wheel land on 10 guessed 25 per cent. (For the curious: it’s actually 28 per cent.)

In another experiment, participants were asked to guess the average price of a German midsize car. Some participants had been asked to write down every number between 10,150 and 10,199 beforehand, others had been asked to write down every number between 29,150 and 29,199. Those who’d written down the low numbers guessed on average that the cars were worth €18,459, those who had written down the high numbers guessed that the cars were worth €22,139. Anchoring tells us that irrelevant numbers can have a very relevant effect on our beliefs.

We know anchoring affects grading. Last year, German researchers asked university students to mark psychology assignments. These assignments had—supposedly—been marked by someone else, and the participants were able to see these first grades. In truth, these old marks were placed by the experimenters as anchors. Even when the participants were told that the first marker was unqualified, the anchors substantially shifted the assignments’ grades.

Anchoring operates by forming the presumptions against which evidence is assessed. We have a number waiting available in the unseen spaces of our minds, and when solving a problem we test that number first. If the result isn’t plausible, we adjust it until it is. In the case of grading, we anchor by forming an expectation that a student will produce work of a certain quality, and when we mark, we are testing whether that presumption is true. It is much easier to meet someone’s expectations than to exceed them—if your marker thinks you’re smart they will read between your lines, seeing the analysis you’re hinting at. If your marker thinks you’re dumb then they will see that too, and you’ll have to do a lot more to prove them wrong.

Anchoring doesn’t care for introverts. In most courses, your opportunity to form presumptions is in labs, tutorials and lectures. If you don’t create the presumption within your tutor’s mind that your work will be high quality then they won’t necessarily see that it is. And if the idea of talking up in a tutorial terrifies you then you won’t have the opportunity to create that presumption at all.

Anchoring is reinforced by the halo effect. The halo effect comes from a 1920 study by Edward Thorndike, an American psychologist. Thorndike asked army officers to rate soldiers’ physique, intelligence, leadership skills and character. He found the officers’ appraisals were unrealistically highly correlated—the soldiers described as physically fit were also those described as intelligent, good leaders and being of good character. The halo effect causes us to presume that people with one good trait will have other good traits—such people are lit from the light of their own halo. The halo effect has been supported by numerous experiments—attractive people are considered kinder and more intelligent, politicians with deep, clear voices are considered more competent.

Again, we know that the halo effect has a real impact on student assessment. A 2007 paper examined the grading of final-year research projects. Each project was assessed on nine criteria by two academics. By comparing the assessments of the two academics, the researchers were able to deduce whether academics who rated a project more highly in one criterion tended to rate it well in other criteria. As it happens, they did. The halo effect is real, and it has a real impact on your grades.

Tutors like students they can bounce off, students who sound interested and engaged. The halo effect tells us that markers will extrapolate from strength in the tutorial room—extroversion, eloquence—to the strength of essays and reports. Some students will entertain their tutorials with clever quips and debating technique, but will lack the discipline or research skills to produce good assignments. The halo effect tells us that markers will give these students better grades than they deserve. Other students will produce exceptional assignments, but tutors will punish them for their poor performance in a sport they aren’t told they are playing. Introverts may produce insightful work, but it won’t glow if not lit from the light of a halo.

***

Introverts shouldn’t just be afraid of the implicit, subconscious biases. Marking is difficult—there’s no fundamental law of reality that dictates whether your POLS206 essay deserved that B+. The rough expectations of markers will hopefully be able to distinguish between Ds and As, but when dithering between adjacent grades, tutorial engagement provides a crutch—one that lecturers encourage tutors to rely on.

A friend who tutored a 300-level arts paper told me about his experiences. “I’ve definitely been asked to take tutorial participation (and attendance also) into consideration when grading essays, primarily when an essay was proving difficult to mark. Course coordinators would say something like ‘oh well, how often does she participate in tutorials? If they’re quite good, you may as well give them a higher mark,’ or, ‘if they don’t really talk or seem to know what’s going on I’d be inclined to just go lower’.”

He also told me that tutorial participation was taken into account when determining final grades. “If a student is on the cusp of two grades, how a tutor feels about their participation levels, or sometimes even just whether or not they are liked in general by a course coordinator, will usually decide whether they go up or down a grade in the final result.”

His experiences are not unique. A tutor of a 100-level commerce paper said she’d been told that if a student is “on the cusp of two grades and they’ve been at tutorials and you know they’re trying hard you can bump them up”. A third tutor told me he “tried to grade blindly in the hopes that it would be fairer”, though this wasn’t required. Despite this, he admitted one lapse. He was undecided about whether to award a student an A or an A+ for an in-class test. He showed the test to the course lecturer, who confirmed it was either an A or an A+. As he was doing so, he saw the student’s name. In his words, “one of the things that made me decide it was A+ was that I knew the student, and could tell he understood the material and was bright from tutorial participation.”

Given the subjectiveness of marking, it might seem fair to give bright, engaged students the benefit of the doubt. But to reward the extroverts is to punish the introverts, who will find themselves slipping to the back of the bell-curve. When tutors are encouraged to take classroom participation into account when marking, they are encouraged to punish those students who don’t have the classroom confidence to make themselves stand out.

The University’s policies are explicit—using class participation as an aid to marking is not permitted. Subsection 2.2.6 of the Assessment Handbook tells us that class participation can only be assessed “on clearly defined tasks and not on vague impressions of the quantity or quality of a student’s contribution to class discussion”. If this is the case, “criteria for assessing the in-class performance of students are clearly specified in a form that students can translate into action or behaviour”. Unless the University’s Academic Committee approves an exception, such assessment cannot account for more than 10 per cent of the assessment of a course. Using class participation as a crutch may be widespread, but it is supposed to be against University rules.

***

Given the widespread rule breaking—and the likelihood that, subconsciously, tutorial participation matters more than we admit—it seems odd that the University hasn’t done anything about it. It’s especially odd given that an easy solution exists. Blind marking—not allowing markers to know the identity of assignments’ authors until after the assignments have been marked—would prevent both explicit and implicit biases. Markers could have access to students’ names after marking to allow individual feedback. Some courses already require this, including all of the courses run by the Law School, so presumably the practical issues aren’t insurmountable.

I thought it was a bit odd that the University didn’t require all courses to blind mark, so I approached Allison Kirkman, the University’s Vice-Provost for Academic and Equity. We met in a small meeting room with stained glass windows on the second floor of the Hunter building. Allison told me that the room had previously been a storage cupboard. I remarked that there couldn’t be many storage cupboards left in the world with stained glass windows. She didn’t seem to find this interesting. Instead of talking further about storage cupboards, we talked about blind marking. The first thing she told me was that using “blind marking” as a term “tends to minimise what it means to be blind”, and that she preferred the term “non-identifying marking”. I thought this reasonable, if a little pedantic, and that it at least showed that the issue was getting some official attention.

Unfortunately, terminology seemed to be the limit of this attention. Allison wasn’t aware of the University completing any research into the impact of subconscious biases or into the impact of non-identifying marking. “Before I thought about research in an area, I would want to know that there was a reason why we were doing the research, so I would want some evidence to support undertaking research on that particular topic,” she told me. I wasn’t quite sure how one would collate such evidence without undertaking research, but I guess that’s the function of student magazines.

We talked for quite a while—about half an hour—primarily because I wanted to tease from her some substantive reason why a lecturer wouldn’t blind mark. She didn’t provide one. She told me that blind marking wasn’t perfect—she told me that some tutors may be “able to recognise somebody’s handwriting”. This was, I guess, a fair point, but it also seemed fairly unlikely. She told me that if the University were to consider tighter regulations of assessment, she would “want to look at the whole spectrum rather than just focusing on one aspect”. She told me that there were bureaucratic hurdles, that if someone were to propose mandatory blind marking “there is a process through which that would go and that process would involve talking about within in the whole University community and coming to a decision after we’ve been through that process”. These points would have been more plausible had the University not already published the aforementioned  Assessment Handbook, 54 pages long.

Allison used the word “trust” a lot. (I was going to go through my recording and count the number of times but I realised doing so would make me sound like a bit of a dick.) She believed academics could be trusted to mark fairly. I told her that academics had told tutors to take tutorial engagement into account when marking. “I have no evidence to believe this—it could be an urban myth,” she insisted. Tutors should have read the Assessment Handbook during training, and tutors had an “individual responsibility” to approach superiors if they believed the handbook was being contravened. She had never been approached by a protesting tutor. She assumed this meant there wasn’t any problem to protest. (One tutor I talked to had approached his superiors about the course breaching the Assessment Handbook. In his words, their response had been “oh, that’s something the University wrote, we don’t have to follow that.”)

We can’t expect the University to be omniscient—they have limited resources, and it’s understandable that they hadn’t produced specific research on how assessment policy can treat introverts fairly. But to hide behind a rhetoric of trust and responsibility is to fall back on laziness. Academics cannot be trusted to grade fairly—we know that subconscious biases are much too powerful and we know that academics are currently contravening assessment policy. Until evidence is pushed into their hands, the University will continue to ignore the discrimination against introverts. To expect more isn’t to expect omniscience, it’s to expect a very minimal standard of fairness.

***

When I mentioned to friends that I was writing a Salient article on assessment regulations, they laughed. Assessment regulations don’t make for easy clickbait. This is a pity. As much as we pretend otherwise, our grades matter. For many of us, a random quirk of our personality is causing us to receive worse grades than we deserve.

We should be offended when course outlines don’t assure us that the course will be blind marked. We should be offended when lecturers require us to write our name on our essay’s cover page. When that happens, we should know that academics are either too lazy or too arrogant to avoid the traps of subconscious biases—or they’re relying on those biases explicitly. When that happens we should protest—we should tell the academics that we’re offended, and that we deserve fairer treatment.

Except, of course, if you think that could leave a bad impression. Until the University changes its policy, we will be victim to our impressions. That means forced confidence in our tutorials and offering our opinions whenever they’re asked. For the introverts among us, that means sitting quiet, suffering for our failures in a game we shouldn’t be made to play.

Last Wednesday Parliament failed to pass the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill sponsored by Labour’s Phil Twyford, with the House split on the measure 60-60.

The Bill was submitted with the aim of ensuring that “every rental home in New Zealand meets minimum standards of heating and insulation” according to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority standards.

Under the Bill, landlords would also have to declare or guarantee that their properties were up to minimum health and safety standards.

Because bills require a majority to pass, the tie meant the Bill was dismissed. National and Act voted against the Bill while Labour, the Greens, the Māori Party, NZ First and United Future voted in favour.

The dismissal comes as a blow to VUWSA, which has campaigned since 2013 to introduce warrant of fitness standards to rental accommodation in Wellington and to assist students living in substandard flats.

VUWSA President Rick Zwaan told Salient it was “disappointing that the Government voted down the Bill”.

Students took to social media to respond, with some championing free market economics and the Bill’s dismissal, claiming students simply needed to “give up [their] latest iphone and daily lattes in the city” and find cheaper and better homes.

Others said healthy housing was a human right not a consumer product, and pointed to rheumatic illnesses they had suffered as a result of poor housing conditions.

However, Zwaan says that VUWSA will continue to lobby the Wellington City Council to introduce a rental WoF policy “to ensure we don’t have to keep putting up with cold mouldy flats.”

The Government dismissed the bill on the grounds that landlords were likely to increase rents in order to meet the costs that the new housing standards would force them to subsidise. Members also claimed the Bill would force landlords to take properties off the markets. National MP Paul Foster-Bell described the Bill as “Stalinist”, presumably because the gulags were cosy, dry and insulated places.

Twyford said that the Bill provided a five-year period for houses to be brought up to liveable standards, and that the cost of upgrading a home to meet the Bill’s standards was tiny when compared to landlords’ total revenues over that five-year period.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t hear the debate between Foster-Bell and Twyford, most likely due to our damp-ridden ears and the wind streaming through our flat’s uninsulated windows.

Walking out of the District Court, our service no longer needed, someone said “you made us all feel like a stronger team, thank you.” I was the youngest by at least ten years and not the foreman. But the simple suggestion that we listen to each other had me somehow leading the conversation. As someone who could be considered to lie on the more introverted end of the personality scale (I like books and going to the movies by myself), this came as a surprise. My concept of leadership was someone whose heart didn’t race when asked a question in lectures. Who talked the most in tutorials. Who won all the debating competitions in school. Yet in this instance all the group needed was calm guidance on how to listen to each other. We then reached a balanced and fairly reasoned decision as the collaborative body a jury is intended to be. I didn’t really say much more than anyone else. But I learnt a valuable lesson about the importance of quiet collaboration.

Our society has become obsessed with not being one of the pack. Learn how to develop the character traits of a leader! For only a couple of thousand dollars per training session, you can learn how to be more confident and outgoing. Transform yourself; be able to engage with others and inspire with your unrivaled enthusiasm. Unleash your potential. Enjoy success. Make your voice heard.

If you find yourself deliberately walking solitary routes home, shifting to a spot in the library where no one can find you to concentrate or have a notorious reputation for being an unreliable replier to texts, the pressures associated with leadership courses such as these go against your instincts. Most of the time an innate desire to be alone or aversion to constant conversation can feel antisocial and boring in a world that demands a never-ending state of being literally switched-on. Unless you buy a Nokia. One introvert test (found on nerdtests.com) asks “Do your peers (not friends) see you as…(a) cold and calculating (b) warm and caring (c) the hottest action in town”. For some reason being more reserved seems to be generally thought of as a bad thing.

In 2012 the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking became a New York Times Bestseller. Author Susan Cain gave a TED talk the same year explaining how her research demonstrates a societal bias towards being extroverted. An introvert herself, Cain argued that from working environments to classrooms, quieter tendencies are systemically seen as inhibiting personal growth. But this, she says, “is the world’s loss, because when it comes to creativity and leadership we need introverts doing what they do best”. The talk has since been viewed by more than five million people on YouTube and unleashed a wave of people confessing to their introversion after years of trying to be something different.

One of these confessors is the flawless role model for all, Emma Watson (she may be a living and breathing Hermione even more than we knew). In an interview with Tavi Gevinson for Rookie magazine last year, the bewitching star praised Quiet for making introverts feel valued. “It discusses how extroverts in our society are bigged up so much,” she said, “and if you’re anything other than an extrovert you’re made to think there’s something wrong with you.” Even Emma Watson, who is currently captivating the world as a Global Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations and the highest grossing actress in the past decade, felt there was something wrong with her because she didn’t want to get drunk every weekend. Quiet made her see otherwise.

Psychologist Carl Jung popularised introversion and extraversion in the 1920s. Introversion describes a person who is reserved, solitary and quiet. An extrovert by contrast is talkative, outwardly confident and energetic. The terms have since become extremely popular in defining personalities. Universities and companies widely use the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which evaluates what end of the spectrum you are on, in testing whether you are the right fit for a job—even though Jung himself said “there is no such thing as a pure extrovert or a pure introvert. Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum.”

Tests are likely to place you on the introverted end of the scale if you:

• prefer one on one conversations to group interactions;

• like deep and meaningfuls on a topic that interests you over small talk;

• find it easier to express your thoughts and feelings in writing;

• avoid answering phone calls;

• enjoy solitude;

• are told you are a good listener;

• dislike conflict.

However, the main difference between introversion and extraversion relates to contrasting reactions to stimulation. People process social stimuli in different ways: “extroverts” need interaction and attention, and “introverts” need solitude and peace to survive the attention-seeking of the extroverts. Shyness, which is typically associated with heightened consciousness and anxiety in the face of social demands, is not the same thing as introversion. When you’re an introvert the opportunity to be alone is relished as an opportunity to recharge, not avoid a social life entirely. Your extroverted counterpart is the opposite, and is energised by social interactions with a tendency to get bored or anxious when left to themselves.

Last year Cain launched her “Quiet Revolution”. Its manifesto is to empower introverts to assert their softer personalities in the face of a society that values extroverted behaviour. She aims to do this by creating environments that foster the productivity of introverts on their own terms in circumstances of leadership and creativity. The end goal isn’t a triumphant reign of introverts with extroverts scorned for their dominance. Instead Cain calls for establishing a balance between the two personality types and combining their skills to create a more effective world.

***

On 12 March 1930 an intensely spiritual man scooped up a handful of salt on a beach on the southern coast of India. This small act would trigger a massive movement of civil disobedience for the cause of Indian independence. Mahatma Gandhi explained his decision to target salt as recognition of the importance salt had for even the lowliest Indian, saying “next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life”. It would directly challenge the British government’s monopoly on salt production at the time. The act reflected his unwavering belief in the subtle weaponry of peaceful protest. It has defined him as one of the most influential political figures in history.

Contemporary society seems to have forgotten leaders such as Gandhi, with multiple studies in recent decades supposedly identifying a correlation between extraversion and leadership. A gregarious nature makes you more approachable and engaging. Enhanced levels of enthusiasm are an advantage in compelling others to pursue goals and make things happen. Self-confidence attracts respect and thus makes you an inspiration for all. These qualities apparently indicate competence in fields such as politics and business.

This idea that extroverts are more successful leaders has infiltrated the popular consciousness. Over 65 per cent of businesses in the US in the past decade saw introversion as a hindering quality for leadership. Politicians who are more reserved, such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, tend to attract heavy criticism. In 2008 there was heavy debate about whether Hillary was “likeable”. A theory currently swirls that Obama doesn’t like people at all (although both are working in the wake of Bill’s gregarious and tantalisingly intimate legacy). A demonstration of a careful and considered nature tends to be interpreted as awkward and aloof.

In 2008, then-leader of the opposition John Key completed a personality test at the request of the Sunday Star Times. The results demonstrated that he is an “extrovert” rather than an “introvert” with a “go-getter” personality, and follows his head rather than his heart. Key’s personality has proven to be one of the most successful electoral ploys in New Zealand’s political history. David Cunliffe, former leader of the Labour Party, took the same test (again for the Sunday Star Times) in 2013. He had an even higher level of extraversion than Key. The article commented it would be an “asset to both on the election trail, making it easier to keep smiling all day when meeting many people.”

But the apparent benefits of extraversion are a historically constructed perception. In Quiet Susan Cain explains how extraversion has a historically short lifespan as the ideal leadership style. The ideal of a “talkative” and dominant leader emerged in the twentieth century in response to a power vacuum after the World Wars and the rise of the middle class in modern capitalist societies. A culture that previously valued “character”—integrity and good deeds performed without attracting attention to oneself—lost value in the face of the efficient individual. Cain describes the result as a systemic bias in favour of extroverted personality traits. Self-help books such as How to Win Friends and Influence People have become bestsellers. Everyone somehow needs to “improve” themselves by taking leadership courses that will unleash the inner social butterfly within their prohibitive shy cocoons.

Commanding attention does not mean there is any substance. You don’t have to be the most dominant person in the room to inspire others around you.

***

Time to discuss the mythical nerdy introvert. Not infrequently used as an insult, nerd is defined as “a foolish or contemptible person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious”. Preferably with glasses. I thought it just meant someone who was intimidatingly smart, like Lisa Simpson. Yet ironically, the word “nerd” itself was invented by the one of the world’s most acclaimed introverts, Dr Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel).

Whenever a member of the extended family graduates, my aunt gifts them a copy of Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, a book intended to encourage you to explore and reach your full potential. It’s brimming with quotes such as “Oh the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all.” It seems like a strange fit with the personality of its writer. Dr Seuss would create the Cat in the Hat, the Lorax and Green Eggs and Ham sitting in an old observation tower at the back of his garden eight hours each day and would avoid meeting the children who read his books for fear he wouldn’t meet their expectations. Concentrated distance from other people let’s your imagination run wild.

In her book Susan Cain argues that everyone needs some form of solitude to give our brains creative space. Psychologists have demonstrated that humans naturally pick up on the thoughts and behaviours of the people around us but the most creative minds depend on solitude. Time out fosters individual contemplation and epiphanies. It worked for countless prophets, musicians, artists, mathematicians, scientists—all “thinkers”. But today Cain observes that “the most important institutions in our society including workplaces are designed for extroverts and for extroverts need for extra stimulation.”

There is a growing notion that constant interaction with other people fosters the best creativity and productivity. Facebook’s new offices includes a room that can house 10,000 employees. All open plan. Offices such as these are anathema to any movement that promotes peaceful contemplation. Cain is currently collaborating with a design company to create room designs called “Quiet Spaces”, which focus on creating secluded spaces in workplaces. Maybe she has a way of getting people to stop whispering about their love lives in the blue zones of the library. Cain points out that the more introverts are given a chance to work according to their preferences the stronger the collaboration between different people with different skills in different circumstances. Without Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs joining together there may never have been Apple.

Steve Wozniak could be considered the ultimate manifestation of the typical “nerd”, glasses not included. In his autobiography he said of his creative process that “I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: work alone. Not on a committee. Not on a team.” When it comes to the development of ideas, which you then bring back to a team, riding solo is more likely to endow you with epiphanies of all varieties.

One final example: Harry Potter was infamously conceived on a train by an introvert. J.K. Rowling directly credits the genesis of boy who didn’t know he was a wizard to her introversion. All of her pens failing on her and too shy to ask anyone else for a working one, Rowling sat on the train for hours just thinking about the boy who would change the lives of every child born in the 1990s. Without her I wouldn’t have been waiting for a letter from Hogwarts until about fifteen.

There is a power in being quiet. Follow Gandhi’s advice and remember that “In a gentle way you can shake the world.”

For some, the idea of living alone may be incredibly unappealing—lonely, boring, isolated. For others, the idea of living alone may be a heavily romanticised thing—forever blasting terrible songs and singing along, never having to wear pants, not having to feel guilty or be hassled to clean the dishes and generally having complete control over your entire living space. I fall into the latter group, and this year I optimistically ventured into the world of living alone. My first three weeks of this new lifestyle, in what I dub my “Bachelor Sanitary Pad”, has been a rich and sometimes unexpected learning experience.

On Adjustment

My only reservation about living alone was the prospect of ghosts, a worry that had afflicted me many times before when getting up to pee in the middle of the night. I feared that being completely alone would be conducive to psyching myself out constantly. I had been told by friends who had lived alone that this sort of paranoia, whether of ghosts or burglars, lasts only a few nights at most, and then is quickly forgotten. I consider myself easily scared, so I expected this period to last a bit longer.

However, on my first night sleeping alone, I went about my pre-bed routine completely paranoia-free, and quickly passed out in bed. Perhaps it was the excitement of this new mode of life or perhaps it was because I was really tired from an early morning flight, but I felt completely at ease on my way to slumber. Whatever the reason, this nighttime ease continues to last, and I seem to have avoided the “getting-used-to” period of living alone completely. (If any ghosts are reading this, please don’t come here, this is not an invitation.)

On the Lack of Flatmates

While my previous flatting experiences are by no means the worst, they are definitely not the best. Like Abbi of Broad City, I had to deal with my own Bevers (i.e. my flatmate’s rude, messy, freeloading boyfriend); then there was the heated Dining Table Placement War of the winter of 2014, and the Cold War-like period in 2013 when the kitchen rug would mysteriously appear and disappear several times over the course of a day. No longer having to deal with flat politics is perhaps one of the greatest reliefs of living alone. No more awkward confrontations, no more slow, bubbling, ever-increasing tensions over seemingly trivial things—the freedom is a surely beautiful feeling.

On the pragmatic side, one must quickly become versed in a variety of household skills upon the absence of flatmates. While in a flat there may be someone else who is especially good at dealing with spiders, another who is the broken appliance specialist, and the one who always chases you up to pay the power bill, with an apartment of one’s own you have to fulfill all these roles yourself. This need not be daunting, but rather a chance to grow.

I like to think that I am doing quite well in this regard, especially in the role of DIY expert. As I was assembling my first piece of furniture on my own, I likened myself to Tim Allen on Home Improvement as I masterfully used a screwdriver to screwdrive in a screw, magically joining two planks of wood together. “I am truly a natural carpenter,” I thought, with grand visions already appearing of all the other furniture I would not just assemble, but design and create myself. Everyone at Bunnings will know my name! When I finished my bookshelf and stood back and admired it, I even had three screws left over and I felt proud to have made it with even less material than provided. So resourceful, so efficient. Saving the world’s resources. I am a home eco-warrier.

However, some things do remain unresolvable on your own—there is no one to help you open stubborn jars, or to wake you up if you sleep through your alarm, or to let you in if you lock yourself out. These are all scenarios that I do admittedly worry about. But perhaps the greatest critique on having no flatmates brings us to the next point: loneliness.

On Loneliness

The threat of loneliness is perhaps the biggest deterrent to living alone. But I have always enjoyed being home alone. From parents and siblings to flatmates, whenever they left me as the only one in the house, a calm would settle over me, the feeling of a kind of secret treat that I had all to myself. So the idea of living alone has always appealed to me as the idea of being home alone, forever, me-time, all the time. I guess I describe myself as an introvert, and find solitude peaceful more than isolating. Truth is, you probably already know where you stand, and if you think that you’d be lonely living alone, then you probably will be.

And of course, one can always go out and see people, or invite them over. However, a difference does arise from the lack of a constant presence of people—socialising has already become a less passive process, and more active and conscious. While this requires more work and advance planning, I believe it will ultimately be a good thing since I feel more appreciative of and dedicated to whomever I’m spending time with. Even when living with friends, it is still refreshing to get out of your house to go visit others. Now, every meeting holds that quality.

On Money

Along with the freedom of being your own interior designer comes the temptation of a hundred different shops offering a thousand different items. You could stroll along Cuba Street and buy a flamingo statue for $239 and stand it in your living room with no opposition whatsoever. As I called in my course related costs for the year, I could already see the email—“Hi there, I am applying to the hardship fund for the amount of $3 for a gluestick so that I can finish my assignment. While I qualify for course related costs, the entirety was understandably spent on a genuine Persian rug.”

Worryingly, this is not as fantastical as it may seem. Last weekend I found myself gratuitously dipping into my savings in a suburban gardening center, forking out close to a hundred on houseplants. I fear that this is just the beginning. Curating and collecting a respectable home library, re-upholstering shabby Salvation Army furniture, spending triple digits on the perfect floor lamp, hiring a sculptor to carve a decorative marble bust of myself—these things have all suddenly become very desirable. It is almost definitely more reflective of myself than of living alone, but it’s living alone that has led to my self-discovery of secretly wanting to become some sort of secretive debonair bachelor (or at least to own the associated material goods).

On Food

Even when flatting I have always cooked individually, so there hasn’t been too much of a change. What living alone has brought to my attention is my reliance on others to know when to eat. When flatting, it was the smell of my flatmates’ meals that would bring my attention to the hunger I was harvesting and I would quickly toddle off to the kitchen myself to cook something too. Now, my meals are incredibly irregular: sometimes I snack constantly instead of eating any real meals, other times I binge on a meal for a family of four at noon and render myself immobile for the rest of the day.

Furthermore, without visual or olfactory cues, there is also a lack of meal precedent. Before if I was hungry, and then smelt my flatmate cooking stroganoff, I’d likely crave and make a similar meal. Now, whatever is easiest and quickest is usually eaten. If you would like to eat like a responsible adult too, the diet consists mainly of cereal (I highly recommend Pam’s Honey Snaps), ice-cream (try adding sweetened condensed coconut milk) and toast (also have this with sweetened condensed coconut milk—sweetened condensed coconut milk is great because it tastes even better than condensed milk but sounds healthy because it has the word “coconut” in it).

To further understand this diet, it is highly useful to investigate the fridge. In fact, the state of the fridge perhaps best exemplifies the quintessential bachelor(ette) lifestyle. Stray cans of beer and ham says “typical dudebro bachelor”, whereas marmalade and cottage cheese says “I’m eighty years old”. The current contents of my fridge consist of half a bottle of sparkling water, half a tray of tofu, half a grapefruit and half a chocolate bar. What this says about me is that I am very healthy and responsible. This is because leaving all your food half-eaten means that not only have you had a nutritious meal, but you are also being proactive by preparing something to eat later.

On Nudity

I truly and thoroughly enjoy domestic nudity. Whether this stems from the forbidden nature of such an act in the family home, a taboo perpetuated by prudish flatmates, or some other reason entirely, I cherish each and every moment of undress around the house. Cooking, cleaning, reading, eating, singing, dancing, looking for the keys—every activity no matter how mundane is suddenly elevated once clothes are shed. There is a freedom, a likely self-imposed sense of rebellion, but a sense of rebellion nonetheless, that elevates each action. In nudist daydreams I convince myself that I am a free and individual spirit in a sea of conforming, protestant prudes. Clothes are for the bourgeois. I am a political hero. Viva la revolution, until the Wellington winter demands otherwise.

On Cleanliness

During my flatting years I had observed in myself what I call the messy bedroom/clean lounge phenomena. My own bedroom would often fall into a state of complete squalor and clutter, while at the same time I could not even bear to leave a mug out in the lounge. It seemed to me that self-imposed guilt prevented my communal laziness, but in my private domain I need not feel bad for messing up anyone’s space, since it was mine and mine alone.

Prior to moving in I had wondered if this tendency would spread across the whole flat now that I lived alone and, unsurprisingly, it has. This complex has stayed with me. The times when my apartment is the cleanest are the times right before I know someone is coming over, after I find myself quickly attempting to put on the disguise that I am a tidy, hygienic individual and you are visiting a tidy, hygienic apartment. Why I can only clean for others and not for myself makes me wonder what this says about me, and I wonder if this will change as I become further accustomed to living alone.

***

On the whole, my first few weeks of living alone have been a positive experience. I am happy that my preconceived belief that I would enjoy domestic solitude is proving to be true, even exceeding my expectations. While I do wonder if the novelties will wear off, if I’ll be able to continue actively seeking social interaction, and if I’ll become more responsible towards myself rather than others, my outlook for the rest of the year remains positive. Montaigne wrote that “the aim of solitude is to live more at leisure and at one’s ease”, and as long as I keep my bonsai collection under control, keep seeing friends and do the dishes every now and then, I do think that this ideal of solitude can be achieved by living alone.

When its discovery was made public, the creature was dubbed “the loneliest whale in the world”, and it became a spirit animal for the despondent, the heartbroken, and the just-plain different folk all over the world. Is it a danger to idolise and anthropomorphise this creature for the sake of our own self-satisfaction? Or can the feelings stirred by this creature’s plight teach us something about introverts, those for whom solitude comes as naturally as it does to this poor whale?

The ability to give care, attention and “a shit” in social interaction is a limited resource, like a battery. This is true for everyone, but the difference between extroverts and introverts is how that energy is expended and rejuvenated. Extroverts gain their energy through company and expend it alone on personal tasks, while introverts gain energy through solitude and expend it in social interaction. Introverts get a bad rap because their need to deliberately forgo company is mistaken for selfishness or anti-social tendencies. But introverts are just more careful about how and when they expend their limited energy store. They’re also more inwardly focused on their own thoughts and feelings, preferring to cultivate a complex inner world, rather than be in tune to the social current.

However, we live in a society that favours the extroverted, those who can make friends and influence people with limitless energy. The corporate and social realms march (or swim, to continue the metaphor) to the beat of this drum out of a belief that overt friendliness fosters creativity, synergy and other buzzwords.

It should be said that no one is a complete introvert or extrovert. One is simply introverted and extroverted. Modern psychoanalysis is consistently aiming to reflect this as it moves towards a “spectrum” approach of assigning individual personalities and identities, rather than a binary “if not this, then that” label. The extrovert/introvert spectrum (or E/I spectrum) assigns individuals based on a preference for stimulating environments. Introverted quiet-cafe people sit at one end and extroverted party people dwell at the other. “Ambiverts” sit in the middle, being comfortable in either pool.

For those who require the science, you’re not the only one. Psychology has a tendency to be seen as a bit ethereal, even by those within the field, so most psychologists and neurologists aim to find a “wetware” explanation for behavioural tendencies. The research of Hans Eysenck, author of The Biological Basis of Personality, states that an introvert’s desire for quiet low-stimulation environments is tied to cortical arousal—the rate at which your brain takes in information. Introverts have naturally high cortical arousal, which means they are constantly evaluating their surroundings, for example, looking for a less stimulating environment in which to think or to add new information to their inner world.

Put an introvert in a crowded, noisy restaurant or a party where everyone talks over each other and the music, and they’ll be overwhelmed by the influx of information. Suddenly you have to process talking, and listening to people over music, and social cues, and navigate a sea of people, and you just want to find a place to sit down and OMIGOD WHY IS THIS SO DIFFICULT!?! So an introvert will mentally shut down or “chug” like a computer with too many programs running, and this kicks off a retreat to solace. This is just how the introverted mind is wired, and that’s okay.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t address the other end of the spectrum as well. As introverts are wired to seek solace to recharge, extroverts are wired to seek company to do the same. A cognitive neuroscience study from 2011 has shown that this “wiring” pertains to how stimuli is received and processed by the brain. For example, in response to social stimuli such as looking at people’s faces, extroverts respond more strongly and feel more rewarded, while introverts have a response on par with how they would respond to an image of flowers. This explains why an extrovert feels replenished in more stimulating environments, while introverts can stand to shirk them.

As social animals we’re driven by a need for connection, regardless of where we fall on the E/I spectrum. Thanks to smartphones and the internet, introverts have both a convenient escape from social pressures and a means to interact with others without fear of public embarrassment. Some even take this to the point of completely replacing face-to-face interaction, with communities on Tumblr and Reddit becoming a haven for the introverted and socially awkward to share their thoughts and feelings. Like the 52-hertz whale, the introvert’s voice is being heard.

The 52-hertz whale has always been heard but never seen. While its migration patterns can be traced from its call, finding the whale itself is like searching for a needle in a haystack that covers 70 per cent of Earth’s surface. Many theories have been made to explain the high tenor of its call, trying to put the whale on the couch, so to speak. Its discoverers believe it could be a blue whale/fin whale hybrid or one of the last members of an older species that hasn’t become extinct yet. Worse still, it could simply an accident of nature, its defective call dooming it to be eliminated from the gene pool by the cold hand of natural selection.

Perhaps it is the realisation of this fact, that the whale may never find love, that gives introverts who relate to its tale a capacity for great introspection and a desire for personal improvement. If you’re going to be apart from others, you may as well distinguish yourself, right? But at the same time, you want to put your voice out there and be accepted by your peers. The danger with this, and I speak from personal experience, is that after the necessary retreats to that online well of objectivity and opinion, you return to the outside world too esoteric for anyone to relate to or understand. Like the 52-hertz whale, you are never on anyone else’s wavelength. Any attempt to be social, to put your own unique call out there, just demonstrates how different you are to what society expects of you. And so you retreat back to solitude, and the cycle continues. You put out a call, and get no response. And thus the introvert sphere has made the whale one of its totems.

But does introversion necessarily always lead to isolation? Is it healthy to either accept or deny this tendency? Online, self-identified introverts fall into two categories: those who take pride in their self-isolating status (“I’m not a loner, I just don’t care for other people”) and those who try to be more like an extrovert out of a desire for social acceptance.

The former group interests me because, to the outside, they seem to possess a sort of superiority complex. Such a thing is only really possible on the internet, where one can narcissistically lord over others one’s solitude and inability to be “understood”, yet ironically require validation for doing so. Sites like Reddit and Tumblr have a tendency to become echo chambers of these sorts, due in part to rampant categorisation (INTJ for life!) and the tribalism that goes with it (INTJs rule!). Everyone kind of becomes their own whale, echolocating and having their own words or words like them being echoed back at them. Their isolation is self-validating because everyone on their forum or feed is like them and will repeat their sentiments back at them. Anyone who doesn’t fit in with their esoteric worldview and match their wavelength is ignored, to the detriment of making any actual connection.

What I describe here is merely the introvert in extremis—the worst case scenario. Withdrawal from social situations and the comfort it creates can slowly become a feeling of not needing other people to live a fulfilling life. Introverts become perfectly happy alone, and they believe that creating distance is seen as not only good for themselves, but for others, should their frustrations bubble to the surface. Personally, I think the ability to be comfortable alone is a good character trait to have. But we should aim to be the kind of person we ourselves would want to spend time with. And to that end, if you don’t like the person you’re with, you should find better company.

The introverted-and-not-proud, on the other hand, have accepted who they are but desperately want to fit in; that is, be more like an extrovert. It exacerbates how much we expect people to be extroverts right off the bat. Learning how to hold a conversation, to pay attention to people, the very idea that a relationship of any sort takes maintenance, can be an alien frame of thought for someone used to solitude. They treat actual interaction and conversation like a science to be learnt, rather than an art to be experienced and muddled through in all its awkwardness. Post-interaction becomes a play-by-play recount of all the things they did wrong or right: “Did I listen enough? Did I come off desperate?” You’re essentially asking “Did I perform well?” But extroverts are not out to perform—they’re trying to have a good time with good people, as anyone would. To build on one of the central tenets of introversion, you decide who you expend your energy towards, and we should all aim to find people who replace our solace with genuine company.

To that end, one thing that is common to both pools is the portrayal of extroverts, who are seen as irritating vampires out to leech introverts’ energies or encroach on their personal space for their own amusement in attempt to “fix” their introverted companions. This makes out that extroverts are blind to the feelings of their introverted friends, but aside from a senseless few, extroverts wouldn’t be who they were if they didn’t understand people.

In any case, the 52-hertz whale has become a great 180-ton exemplar for introverts to point to and say, “this is me!”. I understand the desire to anthropomorphise and impose our feelings on this animal, but whales are not people and vice versa. In fact, most animals are solitary by nature, and only meet to feed or mate. We don’t know if 52-Hertz is actually happy being alone, or can even experience loneliness as a human does (a documentary on the whale, 52, is due for release later this year, which could shed further light on this). A higher hertz call may simply be the whale equivalent of a speech impediment—potentially debilitating, but something that can be managed with time and patience.

More importantly, I think we need to remember that extroversion is not the default mode of human behaviour, just the one we’ve been taught to accept is the default. And being an introvert makes you neither big and important nor small and insignificant. You’re never one thing or the other, and the E/I “war” should not be an us-versus-them conflict. Being introverted or extroverted can be a badge of honour or a label, but it should not be a mask that your face grows to fit.

The 52-hertz whale has been checked up on every year since its discovery—the only change about it being that its call has become lower over time. Its Wikipedia page states “the fact that the whale has survived and apparently matured indicates it is probably healthy.” I think that’s something we should all take solace in.