Extroverts destroy the world

Extroverts are such a pain and a poison that we feel Virgil Starkwell’s agony when, in “Take the Money and Run,” he breaks the rules while working on a chain gang and “for several days he is locked in a sweatbox with an insurance salesman.”

But in considering the more thoughtful personality type, Susan Cain’s new book, “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” (Crown), demonstrates just how deep and disturbing is this plague of extroverts — the showoffs, risk-takers, salesmen, charmers, charlatans and politicians. They may not be responsible for all the evil in the world, but they did give us such pernicious results as Enron, Hollywood, the financial crisis, Washington, infomercials and Harvard Business School.

Cain traces the birth of the cult of extroversion back to 1913, when Dale Carnegie started publishing his success manuals. Carnegie (born Carnagey — he changed it, with the consummate skills typical of the extrovert, so as to create a spurious association with the tycoon Andrew Carnegie) took advantage of an America that was changing from a nation of farms and small towns, in which people tended to die not far from where they were born and everyone knew everyone. There was no need to sparkle or scintillate.

But big business demanded salesmen (like Carnegie), who hit the road and realized their core product was themselves. By 1920, more than a third of the population lived in cities filled with strangers. Workers realized getting promoted by bosses who didn’t really know them could depend more on making a dazzling impression than the quality of their work. Historian Warren Susman said that a “culture of character” gave way to a “culture of personality” and “every American was to become a performing self.”

Susman noted that the qualities most often lauded in the advice manuals of the 19th century were “citizenship, duty, work, golden deeds, honor, reputation, morals, manners and integrity.” In the post-Carnegie era, these concepts were replaced by words such as “magnetic, fascinating, stunning, attractive, glowing, dominant, forceful and energetic.”

Substance, then, was being replaced with surface, and the era of B.S. had begun. Fast-forward a hundred years and you can see Carnegie’s descendants trained in the highest BS — HBS, or Harvard Business School. Cain visits the campus and discovers an island of the absurdly ebullient — overconfident, tricked-out show ponies born smiling, with business cards in their diapers. The school’s emphasis on networking above studious reflection makes outcasts of, for instance, many brilliant but introverted Asian students who feel out of place in this cheerleader hell.

Follow @NYPostOpinion