'To Live on Understatement'

A reader more interested in electoral politics than I complains about the sheer noise level of contemporary life. People have repudiated the gift of modulation. Perhaps they have forgotten that when someone starts shouting the rest of us stop listening. To holler is to say, “I’m more interested in emoting than communicating anything of substance or interest.” Speak softly, rationally, clearly. That’s advice we give to toddlers. Even if your idea is stupid or otherwise repellent, at least give me the opportunity to understand it and reach my own conclusions. Make it more difficult for me to dismiss you as just another asshole. I’ve been rereading the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle observes:     

“The sincere man will diverge from the truth, if at all, in the direction of understatement rather than exaggeration; since this appears in better taste, as all excess is offensive.”

I understand this sounds quaint to modern ears. Perhaps it is, at least in part, a matter of temperament, what Michael Oakeshott calls a “disposition.” In his Notebooks, 1922-86 (Imprint Academic, 2014) Oakeshott writes:

“The Chinese concealment of feeling and avoidance of excessive expression. Understatement. It is their social sense; it belongs to a truly social life.”

This dates from 1944, two decades before Mao's Cultural Revolution. A subsequent series of notebook observations is enlightening:

“The excesses of the French Revolution killed in some all enthusiasm for liberty.

“To be the one sober man in the party, not because of a love of sobriety but because everyone else is drunk.

“To live on understatement because one’s companion lives on superlatives.”