Most of us, whether we know it or not, suffer from a peculiar condition: the umbilicus mundi syndrome, a pathological inclination to place ourselves at the center of everything, and to fancy ourselves far more important than we are. From a cosmic standpoint, there must be something irrepressibly hilarious about Homo sapiens. Most of the time we behave as though the world exists only for our sake; we think of everything in terms of our own needs, concerns, and interests. Not only do we appropriate other species—we devour them. We don’t just use the planet, we abuse it, voiding it of life and filling it with trash. Out of greed or stupidity or both, we have subjected the natural world to such savagery that we may well have damaged it beyond repair. We are as a rule indifferent to the suffering of others, and incapable of relating meaningfully to them. Far from loving our neighbors, we exploit, mock, or resent them, when we don’t simply ignore them.
What makes our situation particularly ludicrous is that, within the bigger picture, we are utterly insignificant creatures. Lilliputian tyrants. The smallest stone we pick up randomly from a riverbed has long preceded us, and will outlast us. We are no grander than the rest of the world; in fact, we are less than most things.
The good news is that there may be a cure for this condition. The failure of the plane’s engine, of our car’s braking system, or of the elevator’s, can shatter us so thoroughly that, should we survive the experience, we will find ourselves transformed. What defines our changed existence is a new humility: failure has humbled us, and healing can come from there. The word “humility” has moral connotations, but rather than a virtue in the narrow sense, humility involves a certain type of insertion into the world, and a distinct way of experiencing the human condition. Humility is no ordinary virtue, as Iris Murdoch reminds us; it is “one of the most difficult and central of all virtues.”78In “The Sovereignty of Good,” Murdoch offers what may be the best definition of humility, describing it as “selfless respect for reality.”79 Ordinarily, she thinks, we misrepresent reality because we have an oversized conception of our place within it; our “picture of ourselves has become too grand,” and as a result we have lost “the vision of a reality separate from ourselves.”80 This misrepresentation harms us more than anything else. If we don’t do anything to correct it, we will end up cut off from the world, inhabiting a reality of our own making. Humility offers us such a correction.
Some of the most endearing characters in Yasujirō Ozu’s films are martyrs of humility. They would rather waste their lives than assert themselves. The greatness of the Japanese director’s art, however, is that it not only depicts humility; it embodies and performs it. Thanks to his use of low camera angles, Ozu gives us access to another side of things, to their lowly dimension, which we—self-centered as we are—normally miss. This is the method of humility itself.
Just as in Ozu’s films, where low camera angles bring forth a surprisingly rich face of the world, a humble position allows us to access a layer of reality that we don’t ordinarily see. That’s because our self-assertive drive places a screen between us and the world, and what we end up seeing is not the world itself, but our own fantasies of self-assertion—mere projections of power. It is only through humility, the opposite of self-assertion, that we can tear this screen apart and glimpse things as they are.
More than a form of behavior, then, humility should be seen as a form of knowledge. No wonder mystics and philosophers of different stripes have connected humility to a vision of truth. Purifying though it may be as a practice, this line goes, humility should be sought not for its own sake, but for the higher good it leads to. Bernard of Clairvaux likens humility to a ladder: you climb up it, one rung at a time (twelve in all), until you reach “the highest summit of humility” (summae humilitatis).81 That’s when you’ve finally found truth, for the sake of which you’ve done all the climbing. In his own words: “The way is humility, the goal is truth. The first is the labor, the second the reward.”82 Following in the same tradition, André Comte-Sponville defines humility as “loving truth more than oneself.”83There is something unique about the truth that humility gives us access to. It’s not just that we acquire a better, more “truthful” understanding of how things are, even if that’s no small feat. Something important is happening to us on the way there: we are being transformed as we climb the ladder and take in the view. When the humble reach the top, they find themselves possessed of a renewed sense of self—a reformed self. For those who happen to be believers, this is an epiphany of redemption: “Therein lies the greatness of the humble,” writes Comte-Sponville, “who penetrate the depths of their pettiness, misery, and insignificance—until they reach that place where there is only nothingness, a nothingness that is everything.”84
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The Mud Cure
The labor of humility is a complex, dialectical process. Let me focus here on just three of its phases. In a first movement, humility involves acceptance of our cosmic insignificance. The word itself comes from the Latin humilitas (lowliness), derived in turn from humus (earth). The truly humble regard themselves as dust, or even less than that. The insight is as old as spiritual life itself. Adam, the first man in the Abrahamic tradition, not only was made out of dust, but had earth in his name (adamah). Humility is what God wanted to instill in Job when he asked him, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 38:4). Job could not answer because dust doesn’t talk, especially not to God. Bernard of Clairvaux intuited something essential about humility: the humble can reach heavenly heights precisely because they lower themselves so drastically.
When the Stoics recommended “the view from above” as a form of philosophical therapy, what they meant was that one should embrace utter humility. To see yourself from above is to realize your insignificance on a large, cosmic scale. That’s also what Lady Philosophy, in The Consolation of Philosophy, sought to teach a terrified Boethius waiting execution in his prison cell. Or what, more recently, Carl Sagan popularized so well. “Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe,” he writes in Pale Blue Dot, take a different meaning if we just look at the earth from some remote point in space.87 Taking “the view from above” is the opposite of arrogance: it is to place ourselves within the bigger picture so as to understand how insignificant we truly are. Seen from such a distance, we are nothing but humus, if that. At its most fundamental, to be humble is to embody, in our dealings with the world and others, the insight that we are closer to nothingness than to anything else.
Embracing our cosmic insignificance is the zero-degree of our existence. At this stage, shattered by failure and overwhelmed by precariousness, we rightly feel crushed, flattened, reduced to dust. Humility, thus, places us where we belong. We are reduced to our true condition: next-to-nothingness. Yet this is no small feat: for along with losing our self-importance, we manage to get rid of the combination of self-deception and self-flattery that usually keeps us hidden from ourselves. The humble, although they are at the very bottom, are the ones who will make progress. “The humble man,” writes Murdoch, “because he sees himself as nothing, can see other things as they are.” He is the kind of person “most likely of all to become good.”88
In a second movement, we come to the realization that, thanks to our being brought down to earth, we find ourselves in a better position: we are on firm ground. Granted, we have been crushed and defeated, but then we underwent a rebirth of sorts, and we can again stand on our own two feet. We also realize that there is no degradation at this stage, for, by embracing our cosmic insignificance, we are true to ourselves. We may be poor, but we are honest. And that’s the best place to start: wherever we go from here, it will be a worthwhile journey. There is nothing healthier, for minds so frequently pulled up into the air by the force of their own fantasies, than to be drawn back down to earth once in a while. Hardened dreamers undertaking the mud cure are in for a feast. If the first stage, involving a crushing experience of failure, was traumatic, this one is rather serene. We are contemplators now, biding our time and enjoying the view. But don’t be deceived: the ultimate lowliness can take us to new heights of insight.
The third movement is expansive. Having lowered an anchor into the world, and regained our existential balance, we can move on to other, bigger things. The dreams now have the necessary ballast to be dreamt properly. At this stage, humility is no longer an impediment, but an enhancement of action, should we so desire. There is nothing more daring than the act of the humble.
Humility is the opposite of humiliation—that’s the chief lesson of this stage. There is nothing demeaning or inglorious about humility; on the contrary, it is rejuvenating, enriching, emboldening. Humiliation relies on the exercise of raw, external power; humility is all inner strength. Humiliation involves coarseness of mind (a truly intelligent person doesn’t humiliate others), while humility is itself a form of intelligence. Whether aware of it or not, the one who humiliates is a reject. Humiliation is often born out of frustration. In contrast, humility is all about inwardness and intimacy. The humble know from within—they see everything, understand everything, forgive everything—and that places them in a position of significant strength. Humiliation exhausts itself in the act, and those who perform it usually reveal their impotence. Humility grows and thrives with practice, transforming everything around it in the process. True humility, writes the rabbi Jonathan Sacks, “is one of the most expansive and life-enhancing of all virtues.” What it involves is not “undervaluing yourself,” but an “openness to life’s grandeur” and a “willingness to be surprised, uplifted, by goodness.”89 It is written that the meek shall inherit the earth.
Humility in response to the experience of failure is a promise of healing. Properly digested, then, failure offers us a medicine against arrogance and hubris. Against the umbilicus mundi syndrome—our debilitating tendency to imagine ourselves at the center of the world. It can heal us, should we care for a cure.
IN PRAISE OF FAILURE
Four Lessons in Humility
COSTICA BRADATAN
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