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Recently I became a bronze donor to this wonderful experiment in philosophy, and I've been going through some of the bronze files. I came across this one recently: https://board.freedomainradio.com/files/file/115-preparing-for-launch/ (Can't access it? Donate! ) and Stefan said something which really got me thinking. About 1/4 of the way in, the listener speaks about how he is an introvert, which he thinks is a contributing factor as to why he can't get his life 'off the ground', so to speak, and Stefan replies, "if you are introverted, the last place you want to be is at home, because if you are introverted then it may have something to do with the way that you were raised. So if you're at home, you're going to be continually exposed to the same environment that contributed to your introversion." Stefan also later expresses his sympathy for the listener being an introvert, which implies that introversion is a negative thing (I'm not saying it isn't, that's what I'm asking about). So my question is this: are introversion and extroversion even real things? Or do all people who had decent childhoods naturally turn out as what we call extroverts, and what we call introversion is just a negative effect of a poor childhood? If this is the case, is childhood always the deciding factor? If this is not the case, is introversion necessarily a bad thing? I'm asking because I am what you might call an introvert myself. I abhor any kind of social interaction - I don't even answer my phone if some one is calling me, or answer the door when some one is knocking, so by asking this question I am trying to glean how broken I am in personality, how I might have turned out if I'd had a good childhood, and how to fix myself if I am indeed broken.