Meditation on Humility
Once again, I missed posting this on Sunday (as planned), and so once again, I’m offering up the third entry (see: part 1 and part 2) in this series in the middle of the week.
In Taoist teachings, according to the Tao Te Ching:
To know when one does not know is best.
To think one knows when one does not know is a dire disease.
This is a particularly elegant attempt to explain what humility is, chiefly because it does so without even invoking the actual word. As is sometimes the case with Taoist philosophy, the true lesson isn’t explicitly referenced, but is left to be teased out by the student through contemplation and meditation.
But what is being taught, here, is the nature of humility as a practice. And this is something which is the reciprocal of what was discussed previously. Because humility, in being an attitude of serenity in the face of what can’t be changed, and an attitude of confidence in one’s own state, resources, and knowledge, is also an attitude of honesty about one’s own limitations, and an attitude of courage to admit such.
Pride, humility’s opposite, prompts the response — both cowardly and dishonest in nature — of lying about the state of one’s own abilities and knowledge, in an effort to elevate the self. And the direction of the lie need not be outward, directed toward another; we can tell that same lie to ourselves. Which, in turn, illustrates the fundamental absurdity at the core of prideful actions: it debases the self even as it attempts to elevate the self; it is Sisyphean in nature. Which I suppose makes sense, since in a certain reading, pride is also at the core of the many sins of Sisyphus, in his desire to exercise power over and manipulate even the gods.
“…is also an attitude of honesty about one’s own limitations, and an attitude of courage to admit such.”
I’d like to suggest that this could be expanded to include humankind’s limitations rather than confine them solely to the individual. There are many things people believe simply because it is what others believe without the assurances of independent research or personal, self-discovery. In as many ways as we are individual we also are one (thanks culture and technology!).
“To know when one does not know is best. To think one knows when one does not know is a dire disease.”
Despite using similar to exact language across all four components of the two sentences I interpret this quote as saying, “To believe absolutely when one is ignorant is best. To believe with doubt when one is ignorant is a dire disease.”
If that is what was generally meant then the quote’s an argument in favor of faith’s virtues. I’ll grant you that “faith” is an untamed beast which by definition cannot be lashed or yoked to reason; arguing against pure faith is a pastime of fools and trolls.
Faith aside however, would the advice to us as diverse and global actors not be more beneficial were it to read, “To think one knows when one does not know is best. To know when one does not know is a dire disease”? I would argue that my inversion of the quote is exactly the definition of one facet of humility. Then again, if humility is an AD&D die perhaps faith has its own facet just across from my suggested addition.
Just throwing this out there, but after I evolved from a intensely gnostic Christian to an atheist in my teens it was not by my own will that I succumbed to agnosticism. It was the simple logic of not knowing–ignorance–that forced me to let go of everything I’d ever been told with such confidence by so many. When I started to realize I didn’t know shit, what washed over me was humility. It wasn’t a virtue, a choice, or an ideal to aspire to, it was a feeling; a state of being. Just one facet, and there are many. In other ways I’m terribly filled with hubris.
Heh…whereas I believe in the efficacy of reason and rational inquiry because of my faith in, among other things, Him who taught that our seeking shall be rewarded with finding, and our knocking rewarded with opened doors. (Matthew 7:7) The idea that the universe rewards rational inquiry with evidence and discovery is a very Christian notion, albeit one that too many Christians forget.
I’ve more to say, but I am presently tasting and seeing that The Lord is good (Shiraz). I’ll add more thoughts later.