Shyness in Fleecedom

We humans, although socialish, are nonetheless suspicious of strangers. Like most creatures, we tend to view others first as competitors or threats, and only later after much processing of evidence as potential friends and bedmates and cuddlebuddies.

I think this explains 58% of the problems with online dating, but I don’t want to go there. We’ve heard enough of my blabbering about that.

One thing that interests me is why we expect to be comfortable with strangers, believing that it is somehow pathological if we are not.

It is very mammalian to be uncomfortable with or even downright hostile to strangers. The female tiger, for example, will savage an approaching male even when she’s in heat. It typically takes her days to dampen her aggression to a point that he can cuddle up without getting his innards ripped out.

OK, that’s just one example: Admittedly not the strongest case. But I challenge you to name a counterexample. And dogs don’t count because dogs are basically incompetent wolves who are perpetually stuck in puppyhood. (Lovably so.)

The thing is, if you don’t experience some form of performance anxiety, public speaking anxiety, stage fright, or general shyness or timidness, then you are probably one messed up cat.

Consider what happens when social caution is completely absent. There are people with a rare condition for whom this is just the case, and they are extremely friendly, trusting, loving, and loveable. But there is a flip side to that coin.

This is probably just me trying to justify or rationalize my own shyness. The truth is that if you live in Fleecedom then you really have no rational reason to be shy, especially when you pack huge forearm muscles like me. (People who know me in flesh, stop laughing.)

I don’t have any rational reason to be shy now, in 2011 Fleecedom, but that’s not how it works. The chemical and electrical processes that make up my mess of a body were not constructed in a 2011 suburban America environment.

(Side note: The science fiction book I would most like to read would be an imagined universe where creatures evolved out of a suburban whitie environment.)

I’m trying to understand how it makes sense that people or creatures exist who are un-shy. I can come up with only two possible explanations: (1) they evolved or adapted faster than me, or (2) they’re seriously effed up.

My inner oracle says it’s the latter.