I wonder if this is an adequate explanation of awkwardness:
Discomfort and lack of smoothness caused by a combination of:
- A lack of planning or extensive experience in a problem domain
- Distance between modern socially-appropriate behaviour (and modern personhood) and behaviour that was appropriate for the human EEA
The idea of struggling with maladaptive instincts and social scripting without having much of a modern alternative, to me, feels like it captures most of the times I've identified awkwardness-as-such. It also captures the feeling that I am flailing and then the falling back to humanity's special gift: moments of extreme self-awareness as a kind of "reserve power" (to use a jurisprudential analogy) or "supervisory mode" (to use a computer systems analogy; yes, these are two analogy-sets I think in a *lot*).
at least, to consider what the "meta-conversation" for a current situation has been an effective way of making myself not feel awkward, so.