Here is the thing about humility: it is not the same thing as self-deprecation. People (in my part of the world) often seem to think humility is about downplaying one’s own abilities or accomplishments. But that strikes me as ironically narcissistic. It is self-focused. To say ‘awe shucks, I’m not so great’ is still to be all about me.
Perhaps this misunderstanding of humility is rooted in a misunderstanding of arrogance – which is not the same thing as confidence.
Arrogance is only possible with an equal measure of ignorance. As Rogowski says, it is only ever the new guy in the shop who is arrogant. Experience has a way of humbling people. Part of the reason for that is “experience” is just another name for the series of wrong paths a person needs to take to find a right one. One gets experience by making mistakes – and it is hard to maintain arrogance through enough mistakes to get good at something. More importantly, experience is how a person gains perspective. With experience comes a greater awareness of how much the experiencer does not yet know and cannot yet do. The only way to maintain arrogance is to not be able to recognize how much you haven’t seen. And since arrogance also undermines motivation to seek greater awareness of how much one doesn’t know, it does have a tendency to be self-perpetuating.
When the bullshit quotient is low, old-timers are not arrogant. When one’s work gets manifest in the world concretely, there is no backing away from imperfections and limitations. You can’t help but gain the perspective for humility. But higher bullshit quotients open the possibility of self-perpetuating, arrogant naiveté. When one’s work produces only abstractions, weaknesses and errors can be rationalized with a bit of arm waving – even re-casts as strengths with the right rhetorical flourishes.
The sin of arrogance is not so much being overly impressed with one’s own capability. It is about a lack of awareness of one’s limitations.
Humility does entail a realistic recognition of ones own limitations, but that is not its essence. The real essence of humility is what that realistic self-assessment enables: the recognition that, no matter how good you are at your thing, it is just one among billions of things human beings have gotten good at. We don’t know most things. And we can’t do most things. We are therefore deeply interdependent on other people who know and are able to do all sorts of things most of us can’t even fathom. Humility is about recognizing we each contribute but one part to a shared endeavor – and all of those parts are necessary. We need each other to survive and to accomplish worthwhile things. It is impossible to self-actualize alone. My part, and yours, are necessary – so there is nothing inherently humble about simply downplaying yourself if it is a purely self-focused gesture. But my part, and yours, are insufficient on their own. The point is not to diminish the value of what I, or you, or anyone else contributes. The point is to recognize each contribution only becomes valuable to the extent it contributes to our shared endeavors and responsibilities.
More bluntly, if all you have to say about your accomplishments are that they are not a big deal, that is not humility. That is irresponsibility (if it is true). We all should be striving to do our thing well, because our families, friends, and neighbors need us to. Confidence in one’s own capability is not arrogant if it is matched with a recognition that those capabilities only become meaningful in the context of what we can do together. In that sense, I don’t think it is possible to be genuinely humble without confidence in your own capabilities to do your part in a larger endeavor.
Of course, I don’t actually think that ‘I’m not a big deal’ is what most people mean when they downplay their own accomplishments. I don’t think people are genuinely saying ‘you are wrong to praise me because I think I actually did a crappy job.’ I think most people, when they ‘awe shucks’ about their work, are trying not to seem self-important. And that would be fine – if it were not so self-focused. As long as downplaying one’s own accomplishments is done in order to seem virtuous (i.e., not arrogant), then it is effectively a striving to be awesome at humility.
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While I am on the subject, what is with people saying “I am humbled” as part of acceptance speeches? I don’t think that word means what they think it means. I think people who say that mean they feel honored, not humbled. And that would seem totally appropriate to me. But proclaiming your humility in front of a crowd, assembled expressly for the purpose of honoring you, seems like it takes the narcissistic performance of humility to another level.