This makes it sound like we are prisoners to a system (and yeah, we are) but that opting out would be a one-time choice. This is too narrow a view. Let's say you develop enough skill to opt out -- you move to unclaimed territory and feed yourself based on the local flora and fauna. You get your pound of nutrients and gallon of water that you need. You are out. ...but we're social animals. We don't deal well with "out". You'll get to discover this after a while -- or if you have a medical condition, rather dang quickly. We have easily pierced skin, no carapace, crap for hair (which is only helpful if you live along the shore and swim to get food), burn easily, get horny all the time, and really only thrive when we can cook our food and use the waste to make soap. Humans are pack animals. To stay in the pack and not be eaten by malaria, we contribute back. We may have lost track of the scale for giving back, but we'd go nuts without it. I have tinnitus. I can't even deal with a single minute without noise or I'll hear those high pitched whines. I have to turn on a fan in winter or I can't sleep. You weren't born a slave -- you were born into a society. Your natural state had to be invented, but it involves concrete and a dental plan. I mentioned before that this isn't a one-time choice. It's a lot like AA and what aerowid said: each morning you wake up and choose not to flee. Should you flee, you are 99.5% genetically likely to come back -- even if it's just to avoid roaming charges. If you don't come back, you're out of the gene pool and more of us suckers will be born.
Semi social actually, which is important. Edit: Also, most people who crave solitude probably don't get much of it. They may not want to interact with as many people as they do, but they have to regardless, and grudging interaction is still interaction.Humans are pack animals.
Look at a herd, of pretty much anything that comes in a herd. Or a school of fish. The entire life cycle of these animals occurs in the group. That's full social. A fish doesn't need 'alone time.' Neither does a cow. Contrasted with solitary animals, such as bears, or certain species of sharks. These animals come together pretty much only to mate, though they may tolerate adults of their species in 'their space,' depending on species. Humans are somewhere in the middle, depending on your temperament. We need a certain amount of social interaction to stay healthy and happy, but that doesn't mean huge groups. This is where we diverge from biology and get into psychology quite a bit. Biologically speaking, humans are semi-social because reproduction primarily, as well as other important stuff, takes place in private, or relative private, and if you keep a big group of us penned up with food, water, sanitation, but nowhere to be alone, we get crazy also. Both perfect solitude and full herd behavior are anathema to the human animal. Psychologically speaking we could go for years (And have been) On the actual difference between introversion, extroversion, and related topics. All that we've been able to clearly establish is that some people love periodically (Periodicity also being a variable) being in massive groups with other people, and others prefer occasional interaction with a few people (Again with number and periodicity being variable). All of that falling on a spectrum with extremes and outliers at both ends, but with most people falling under the meat of the bell curve. A cool idea in this area of study is Dunbar's Number which is basically the idea that you can only have meaningful (different degrees of meaningful here too) relationships with a set number of people. The proposed range is somewhere between 100-250 individuals.