Ship of Fools: Humility - is it a good thing?

Thread: Humility - is it a good thing? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

What is it?

Why are we asked to practise it?

Jesus -

"For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

quote:
SusanDoris -

You mention humility – I know what you mean, but too much humility is not a good idea in my opinion. Respect, certainly, but humility is a separate consideration.

Would the self-righteous even know what 'humble themselves' means?

Do the 'humble' simply lack self esteem?

From the dictionary -

quote:

humility
hjʊˈmɪlɪti
the quality of having a modest or low view of one's importance.
"he needs the humility to accept that their way may be better"
synonyms: modesty, humbleness, modestness, meekness, lack of pride, lack of vanity, diffidence, unassertiveness
"he needs the humility to accept that their way may be better"

Is unassertiveness really a good thing?

I find it best to be assertive, but kind. I also find it far better to be realistic about my talents/achievements but not to be either prideful or modest.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

I'd take exception to that definition right away.

I think humility, at least as when understood as a virtue, is the ability to have, not a "modest or a low view of one's importance", but an accurate and objective one.

It's something of an axiom in our family that Moses must have written the Pentateuch (or at least Numbers), because only he could legitimately have written that he was the humblest man on the face of the earth.

Posted by Fineline (# 12143) on :

I don't think it has anything to do with assertiveness. Assertiveness is a behaviour. Humility is a mindset. Behaviours can be motivated by many different mindsets. Mindsets can inspire many different behaviours. Unassertive people are often afraid to be assertive. Humility isn't fear. You can be humble and bold, quite easily.

Jesus was humble - he didn't feel the need to compete with other people, to impress them, or to achieve worldly success and status. He was secure in his Father's love, working for a higher good rather than for his ego. That was his mindset. He was happy to serve others - he knew who he was but didn't need to boast about it. As for his behaviour, he was assertive in plenty of situations, but these weren't situations where his ego was threatened. So the mindset behind his assertiveness was not a non-humble mindset.

Posted by Tortuf (# 3784) on :

For me humility is an important life skill. If I am humble I do not think I have to be "Right." I do not have to be in control of every situation in which I find myself.

I do not have to go it alone and figure it all out by myself. I can, and should, ask for help.

When bad things happen it does not have to be my fault.

Every bit as important, I can find serenity. I am not special. Nor should I be special.

Not being special in small things means I do not have to get irritated at the driver who slows me making a turn against oncoming traffic. They are not obliged to drive for my convenience.

Not being special in larger things is that I can find serenity even when things do not go the way I "Need" them to be. I am not God. I no longer want the power to arrange the world the way I know it should be.

I have a new, and better, power. I have the power of being humble enough to know I am merely a flawed human being. I have the gratitude of knowing that that is enough. I am not required to be right, perfect, or special. I am OK just because I am a child of God; like everybody else.

It is quite freeing to know that I can be wrong. It is freeing to know that the world does not have to be the way I want it to be for me to be OK. I can have serenity even in the face of unpleasant events.

I think that may be what the Buddha was talking about with the concept of dukkha.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I'd take exception to that definition right away.

I think humility, at least as when understood as a virtue, is the ability to have, not a "modest or a low view of one's importance", but an accurate and objective one.

Language is a bitch, and though I expect we agree, I would like to clarify.
It isn't the accuracy of one's importance, but the value placed on it. For instance, it would be accurate for President Obama to consider himself one of the most important people on earth at this moment. It is whether or not he thinks this makes him a better person than those less powerful which would illustrate his humility.
I can do X better does not mean I am a better person.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

I'd go with Fineline- I don't think that humility has anything to do with (un)assertiveness. If you want a fictional example, look at Chesterton's Father Brown- humble but never afraid to speak up for what (he belives) is right. Or for a real example, ++Geoffrey Fisher who was described after his death by Donald Soper as having a 'hard-shell meekness': ardent in speaking what he believed to be the truth, ardent too, it is true, in defending what he saw as the legitimate and proper position of his church and his office within it, but personally very unaffected and unpretentious. In fact, I think humility helps you speak the truth because there is less crap (self-aggrandisement, competitiveness, whatever) in the way.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
I can do X better does not mean I am a better person.

Absolutely. But I think sometimes people assume that someone who can do something better is prideful merely by virtue of that ability.

Posted by Tortuf (# 3784) on :

Ability and pride tend to be uncoupled in my experience. Some of the biggest dimwits I know are filled with hubris.

Posted by Fineline (# 12143) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
I can do X better does not mean I am a better person.
Absolutely. But I think sometimes people assume that someone who can do something better is prideful merely by virtue of that ability.

This is where it gets really tricky. To pretend to not be good at something may be false modesty, but it's also an expected etiquette thing in many situations. To say you're good at something may be true, but it can also be bad etiquette. I found this incredibly confusing when I was growing up, as I tend to be literal and not have hidden meanings or connotations to what I say. As a kid, people constantly told me I was clever, and I got good grades at school and aced exams, but if I ever referred to myself as clever, people thought I was big-headed and didn't like it. I didn't actually attach any value to being clever - it was something random about me that adults seemed to like, at least when I wasn't correcting them, and that kids didn't seem to like. I had no idea how to deal with this fact about me that I wasn't allowed to mention, as I find it difficult to tell lies. As I grew older, and went to university, where there were plenty of people getting the same grades as me or higher, I realised that cleverness was relative, and then I was quite happy to readjust my idea of my cleverness.

All this has nothing to do with humility or lack thereof, but about social norms and etiquette expectations, that some people are better at grasping than others. And is further complicated by the fact that at job interviews you're then expected to do the opposite and boast about how great you are at all kinds of things, and why you are the best person for the job. Again, not a humility/pride issue but a social expectation issue. But I think a lot of people have all this sort of stuff in their mind when they use the word 'humility'.

In my mind, humility is more about a mindset that says (for instance): 'I am considered intelligent in certain circumstances, I have a high IQ and am better at certain things than many other people are, but this simply happens to be part of the way I am made, and someone who has a low IQ is equally valuable and has other strengths that I don't have.' Unfortunately, though, intelligence does seem to be an area that people feel it's okay to be proud and elitist about - many people boast that they only choose intelligent friends, and like to make fun of people they see as 'stupid'. There is something in human nature, it seems, where people like to see themselves as superior.

Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :

I'm with you, Fineline.

The status game is played all of the time, with people giving themselves higher status than others for all kinds of reasons: higher bank balance, academic ability, social class, sports prowess, cleanliness, strength, ability in any one area, longer service, age (this can go either way, as elderly people are often seen as inferior too), etc etc etc.

It's not easy to love others as ourselves. To do so, we must see them as equals, and to be ready to serve and to wash their feet - that is, whether they are richer or poorer, mentally superior or inferior, cleaner or dirtier, etc. In there somewhere is humility.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

And humility is not the same thing as not having self-confidence. There are careers that you simply have to have some minimal self-confidence, to succeed at all. Consider the actor or the singer or the ballerina.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

The whole false modesty thing is a bitch for me especially because of the social expectation that women will do this even in job settings (such as interviews!) where you really ought to be straightforward about your strengths. I lost a job offer once which was going swimmingly because I had the brass to name a reasonable figure for what I thought my services were worth (expecting all the while to get a lower counteroffer, of course). Uh uh. I had it frostily conveyed to me that "my values were not their values," and from having worked there previously for seven years, I can decode that: How dare I ask for a reasonable salary while being a woman. Meh.

I spent much of today at a computer conference seriously wondering whether I ought to camouflage my gender on my resume, etc. as much as possible in the hopes of at least getting an interview.

Posted by Pomona (# 17175) on :

The conversation arose in the context of monastic humility - which is couched in the language of emptying oneself in order to allow God to fill you. In Franciscan terms, it's about a poverty of the self, relying entirely on God. It does not mean not standing up for what is right, or not being a leader, or false modesty. St Francis embodied the opposite of those things, but still promoted the idea of knowing that one relies entirely on God, and leading in God's strength and riches not your own.

Posted by The Silent Acolyte (# 1158) on :

Icons teach.

This one is titled Extreme Humility

Posted by Twangist (# 16208) on :

I find it helpful to think of humility as being a state of self-forgetfulness that enables our perpective to be appropriately full of God and other people as opposed to the distorting carnival mirror type view of life that we have when full of self-obsessed pride.
False humility is IMHO marked by a form of self-obsession: all that "what a worm I am" stuff.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

The essayist Roger Rosenblatt, in an article that I have never been able to find again but still remember clearly, argued that nearly everything we do as human beings is in the search for self-forgetfulness. You can see it in how we speak of the arts: the movies that we attend, to fall into another world for a couple hours, the books that we praise as un-putdownable, the causes that we extol as being worthy of devoting hours of life to. We spend all our time looking for ways to escape our own consciousness, and entire industries (liquor, drugs, sex, entertainment, music, art) exist to meet this need.
We are a burden to ourselves; surely this is a consequence of original sin.

Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on :

Yes, this speaks to me.

I pray for humility - something I'm sure I would once have regarded as a 'worthy' thing, but why the heck would anyone do it with any sense of urgency?

Well, now I know. I pray, and for a while I am sometimes freed from my f*cking toddler ego. Both the 'I need you to acknowledge that I'm great' and the 'I'm so resentful about what you did to me' varieties. It feels so good to escape from pride for a little while - to become a different kind of self.

Posted by Banner Lady (# 10505) on :

Philippians 2:3 says "Don't do anything from selfish ambition or from a cheap desire to boast, but be humble toward one another, always considering others better than yourselves."

I figure as I was born in the "me" generation that this is a direct challenge to the spirit of my times. But it doesn't mean suspending wisdom or making yourself a doormat for everyone. I think real humility (suspension of perpetual self interest/ego driven desire) brings wider perspective. That may not make me successful in worldly terms, but it probably is going to make it easier to live with myself in the long run.

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