FORGET INTROVERT AND EXTROVERT, COULD YOU BE AN 'otrovert'?

Most people find it hard to imagine what it feels like to have no group loyalty: to not feel any particular affinity to your nationality, ethnicity, religion, or to your chosen profession, a particular sports team, or your alma mater. These group affiliations form partly because local cultures are diverse, and even small differences can be enough to bind people together — or set them apart.

- By RAMI KAMINSKI MD

From an early age, children worldwide are conditioned to identify with one group or another. That cultural conditioning almost always conveys the values of the parents or caregivers, turning what are clearly random circumstances of one's birth into their destiny. This process is so deeply ingrained in our society that identifying with a group is not seen as optional.

But not everyone feels this way.

An 'otrovert' is the term I use for those who do not feel the obligation to merge their identities with others and who remain unaffiliated with any group, as we all were initially, when we entered this world.

Being unable to adopt a group identity can have social consequences in a culture that is designed for joining. However, it can also be quite advantageous. When you don't belong to any group, you are not subject to the group’s implicit rules, or swayed by the group’s influence. This confers upon the non-joiner two beneficial traits: originality and emotional independence.

Being outside the hive, so to speak, allows you to think and create freely: to come up with unique ideas and make unique contributions, untainted by groupthink or by ideas that have come before. Able to distinguish between the gravitational pull of the group consensus and your own inner, personal centre of gravity, you are free to think whatever you want and to be flexible when situations change, without fear of subverting collective notions about what makes an idea ‘good’.

Given that one cannot be cast out of a group to which they don’t belong, you have no fear of social rejection. You don’t seek external validation, nor do you rely on others for emotional support. You don’t feel the need to convince anyone of anything, least of all, your own worth. You do not borrow your dignity from external sources; you own it. You always live as your true self.