The proud man can learn humility… but he will be proud of it.
-G.K. Chesterton
Being humble is almost always hailed as a great virtue. Almost all religions, philosophers, thought leaders, successful people promote humility, and rightly so. But I want to take a different perspective today. The question I want to ask is, by being humble, are we really being humble? Or is it just a camouflage for our ego? This might sound ridiculous, but hear me out and I might be able to change the way you look at humility.
You might have noticed this. If you compliment someone and they say, “I am not that talented!” they don’t actually mean it many a times. They mean, “Please notice how I am not showing off”. This is very funny to me. This version of humility seeks validation. Here are some more examples. A person writes on linkedin, “Extremely delighted and grateful that I have been promoted…” and then they ramble on and on about their own achievements trying to make it sound very humble on the post. A person who is delivering a speech calls their teachers/parents/any other person on stage to honour them. They touch their feet and say, “All the credit of me being on this stage goes to XYZ person”. A youtuber who recently hit 1 million subscriber says on record, “This is all because of my audience, it is the audience that motivates me every day to produce quality content”. They are often optimizing for positive comments. Obviously this might not be true for every case, but a huge section of humility on the internet is this pseudo humility. Most of these examples are easily observable. Also, more importantly, in many of these examples, the “humble” person is knowingly trying to show others how humble they are. But it is not as easy to identify every time, sometimes it is much subtler.
When a person is proud of their humility, not just optimizing for fame or monetary gains or praise, they are actually proud of their humility, that is much more difficult to identify. On the face of it, they are actually humble by the societal standards. How do we tell them apart from a genuinely humble person then? Here’s an example to understand this. A person is extremely non-materialistic. They abstain from unnecessary spending and live a very simple, minimalistic life. They don’t drink, they don’t smoke. They embody the definition of the societal “ideal person” (at least some of the definitions). Almost everyone will say that they are extremely humble. But lets now imagine the person judging others for not living minimally. They put themselves on a moral high ground. They think that they are superior to all the people who are spending on fancy vacations or luxury fashion. This is their ego disguised as humility. Another example, an intelligent person who says, “I feel that I know nothing at all” to demonstrate how wise they are. The actor here is not actively trying to deceive the audience. They genuinely feel that they are humble. But they are not truly humble, they are trying to get validation from people about their wisdom. That is the point of difficulty. And that is why it is important to understand that we could be such a person.
You see, our mind is a masterful deceiver. It is extremely difficult to identify, even for ourselves, when we are engaging in such egoistic humility. Why does this happen? Humans are social animals. Our society rewards humility. It is visible everywhere. Religions, for instance, have glorified saints who live with extreme minimalism and claim that they are unworthy (I am not commenting on whether that is a good thing or not). Showing humility is a way of signalling virtue, but seeking rewards given by the society. Humility is also used to control the narrative, i.e., the perception of ourselves in the mind of others. All of this happens in our subconscious mind without us noticing. So it is important to ask ourselves this, “When I act humbly, am I trying to uplift others or myself? Am I trying to be good or just look good?” I feel, more often than not, we will find the answer to this as “just to look good” if we are being ruthlessly honest.
This got me thinking, does true humility even exist? Because when we act humbly, it seems to be accompanied by a pride of acting humbly every time. Just something to think about. See you next time.