One who is Subtle understands that power resides in understatement. They understand that when all things are grand and exaggerated, they become meaningless, just white noise that the brain tunes out. They always leave plenty concealed, taking up as little space as possible. They watch for all things undervalued.
Their manner is reserved, their feelings closed to all but those who are found most important and trustworthy. They are courteous yet not cloying or pretentiously familiar with strangers to whom they have just been introduced.
One who is Subtle wants to like and be liked by certain people. They would rather be liked by one person whom they truly care about than have any number of friendly acquaintances. Friendly acquaintance is a pretense and waste of time when there is even one true friend.
They would rather completely change and nurture one life than perform small favors for thousands.
Even in purely material terms: it is tremendously more powerful to give $10,000 to one carefully chosen person than $1 each to 10,000 strangers. Time spent on those who do not show the proper potential is a waste of one’s wealth.
Addressing one underlying cause is effective, focusing upon 10,000 effects is futile.
One who is Subtle reduces to essentials and then progresses according to the guiding principles they have discovered. Every thing in life is judged and valued according to one’s foundations. Mass society’s judgment is just the fashion of the hour, its very existence an airy abstraction.
One who is Subtle is Incorrect, their life must be a constant struggle within a mass society; their very world view is a challenge to its legitimacy. Their avoidance of all that is Loud is interpreted as weakness, their position, when discovered inevitably comes under attack.
Perceptions are meaningless next to the underlying truth.
2 Comments
“If the map doesn’t agree with the ground, the map is wrong.”
Dr. Gordon Livingston
Your post recalled this quote for me. Many times, society tries to sell us a faulty map, when we truly recognize that the ground beneath our own feet is the real guide to what is.
We are taught from birth that the map is more substantial than the ground, that all that matters is the approval of others.
In theory everyone could collectively decide to stop believing currency has value. Likewise, the social conventions that govern all our lives would disappear the instant people decided to discard them.
No one person can stop believing in social conventions without being ostracized at best and being thrown in a mad house at worst. Thus, we all live under a tyranny that results directly from collective life. Forever being subject to the rule of this Social Ghost causes us to forget anything else exists.