No Risk or Why Truly Sociable People Hate Parties

Parties as they are currently structured constitute a clever ruse by a sharp minority, perhaps only ten per cent of humanity, to persuade the rest of us that we have been provided with the social contact we crave. But, in truth, it takes a sharply insular and misanthropic person to feel that what goes on in an average party really counts as anything like the requisite encounter with one’s fellow human animal. If we have a lingering horror of parties, we should be generous towards our hunches. It doesn’t mean that we don’t like other people, rather that we have too ambitious a conception of social contact to put up with what is on offer at most parties. The mark of a truly sociable person might, in many situations, simply be a strong desire to stay at home.
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