A society that is Loud
-Attacks the superficial symptoms rather than the underlying illness.
-Favors quantity over quality
-Values the title and status that corresponds to a given human relationship above what the relationship actually contains.
-Values all things in life according to the fashions of the hour
-Espouses hypocritical virtues and ideologies which no one actually follows. It is all about group identity, not meaningful action.
-Holds that social life is an end in itself, a brutal competition that consumes wealth, energy, and life itself.
-Holds that individual needs are meant to be subordinate to the mass society. Holds that those born into the society owe their lives to its upkeep.
-Tacitly holds that the legitimacy of social customs comes from dominance, acceptance, and recognition. Correspondingly, the value of any given individual is based upon degree of social dominance, acceptance, and recognition.
As a Subtle civilization is formed from those traits the larger society selects against, its values are naturally in opposition to all things listed here.
2 Comments
The problem is that I don’t really know any subtle societies (or at least no major ones). Maybe China, with their focus on the systematic bureaucrats, rather then charismatic leaders, but even that is a stretch.
There is something called the rule of 150. Each of us humans are only capable of managing 150 or so relationships on any meaningful level. In general smaller more cohesive social arrangements are going to be much less of a disadvantage for Subtle people. In a small group, everyone knows everyone for what they really are. Getting what one wants with a convincing act and superficial personality is a lot harder.
Loud people dominate in mass societies because a steady supply of new people to interact with prevents them from ever really being found out and protects them from the crippling loss of credibility they’d suffer in a small group.
I find East Asians to be more Subtle on average. They tend to invest most of their social energy in family and their best friends while not caring that much about everyone else. They tend to be very closed or put on social acts until you get to know them. The Chinese are a good example. Koreans even more so.
I find Czechs to be more Subtle than average. They can seem fairly cold and indifferent when you first meet them, but they open up nicely.
The Russians are as known for mystics, philosophers, and authors as they are for icy autocrats, gigantic weightlifters, and streetwise mafia bosses.
More traditional, especially rural British people are very much on the reserved, introverted side.
The Dutch seem to be an inward oriented people. Almost all of them speak pretty good English so they can communicate with the rest of the world. Like East Asians, however, they don’t encourage outsiders to learn their language. Dutch is for communication between Dutch people.
Furthermore, I find highly outgoing Mediterranean and Latin American civilizations to be much more tolerant of less social people. They tend be less judgmental and more empathetic. Or they’re just more easy going and just don’t care as much if someone is acting a bit strange.
Africans are often soft spoken and understated, especially East Africans. Most Ethiopians, Kenyans, Eritreans I’ve met have an extremely mellow and even temperament. They are hospitable, friendly people, but without any sort of overwhelming forcefulness.
I might suppose that many, if not most societies on Earth tend to be more subtle than our own. However, most of these peoples aren’t typically in the spotlight because they aren’t looking for attention with the same intensity as the truly aggressive peoples. There are whole societies out there that keep themselves mostly out of circulation.
In fact it’s societies like these that maintain a cohesive continuous cultural identity across millennia while Loud societies lose their sense of purpose and identity.