Hey Sam,

A text that prompts me, that's what I like. HaHa! :)
Since I am for some friction, you have another long comment from me today.

My first or early thought when reading this was: it has become very quiet with me. I have long since shut out the restlessness and the hectic pace and the discords of the world. Until a year and a half ago, I left - unfortunately compelled - for several months the course I had previously taken over the years and faced the clamour and chatter, and chattered and clamoured along. My active connection to the online world is this sphere here, otherwise I would probably have to be called a "hermit". It wasn't always like that, I used to be a different woman.

You preach in my church and I wouldn't object to what you say about silence. You can get too much of it, though and lose touch to reality.

Then, reading on, I thought that each of the faces and characteristics of people mentioned are equally familiar to everyone. Humans are actors and performers. It's good to know that about yourself, I don't think much of an authentic essence, I don't think there is such a thing - smile.

The me of my 14 year old existence is not comparable to that of the 25 year old young woman and I was different at 31 than I was at 45 and so on. If you ask me who I really am, I wouldn't know how to answer you.
... Maybe that's why movie actors sometimes have a bit of a weird attitude when they have it in them to portray very different characters. And, as viewers, aren't we just as talented? After all, we wouldn't recognise ourselves in any of them if we didn't know what each of the qualities felt like, would we?

All the time you were someone "different", so I would think that what makes people, among other things, is their changeability and the ability to slip into different roles.
In a fine restaurant, I might eat like a lady of distinction; in a smoke-filled pub with a rough crowd, I might raise my tankard like a hard-boiled gal; among academics, I might talk educatedly; and among commoners, I might crack a crude joke.
I manage to do that when I have enough variety and enter or have entered different spaces. When I have a lot of diverse experiences and go to contrasting living spaces (in ancient or tribe communities it's the drugs which can bring you there, for a lack of having planes and trains). I don't think that a person is and always has been one way or another. If one persistently tells oneself so, that may be true for this person.
Then perhaps one has had too little contact with other ages and professions. Seen too little of the country and its people. Stayed mainly among people of the same age.

But then, I don't want to act stupid, I feel there are tendencies, which are then seen as "characteristic".

I suppose one can play a role very persistently and actually keep it up for many years. Then maybe that's the preferred role.

I am quite sure that someone who says of himself that he is an introvert will completely surprise others who would never in their lives describe that person as introverted because they experience him differently. And vice versa, those who describe themselves as extroverted tend to place them in a somewhat more modest corner. The perceptions do not match. One friend of mine would describe me as this and that, the other says the exact opposite.
I would be cowardly and fearful in one situation, courageous in another.

Does evolution makes me and the rest less aggressive and more rational beings in the aggregate? I'd rather say "it can't be answered". Conditions are too different, climate, geological location, culture, family and common experiences, etc. - I rather think it is a mental construct, born out of the limiting experiences of a comfortable life, that is frightened or dismissive of even slight variations in appearance and language and fearful of the stranger. I only speak a paltry two languages, yet there are thousands.

In my understanding, civilisation is a very thin varnish. A great shock, an accident, an event of tremendous force would tear the varnish and I would find myself situationally the instinctive being that I am as much as the civilised human being adapted to technology. I think one includes the other, not excludes it. I have learnt that development is not linear, but rather cyclical, and within the cycles there are anti-cycles and feedbacks from the past that take different lengths of time and have an effect right up to the present.

Good day for you and sincere greetings!