Humility is a difficult thing to come by in the western world, particularly in the United States. This isn’t to say that we’re a bunch of arrogant asses, although we certainly can be if we try (or don’t try not to be), but just that our culture is the child of tough, pioneer grit and rebellious determination, for better and worse. So, we tend to retain this mindset as a cultural undercurrent of sorts. But, mankind overall has an instinct of domination, of ownership and superiority. It’s what gave us our survival edge in the old days of banging rocks together, and banging rocks into the heads of other creatures that we eventually outclassed in the evolutionary race to ownership of the planet. Not very pretty to think of, I’ll admit, but it’s just the truth of human history. Humility though, that’s the difficult stuff of the truly rational animal, the stuff we have to choose consciously and often with no small amount of effort.
There’s a kind of difficult self-awareness involved in humility which requires a broad and inclusive perspective on the human race overall. We members of this prestigious human race of ours were bred ever since our hairy, lice-picking and turd-throwing days to get even with those that wronged us and to always get the upper hand in any conflict. Doing so meant the success of not only the individual and family, but survival itself. The strongest, toughest, and most persistent of us got the best location to shelter in, the best and most attractive mates to reproduce with, the most food to feed all the hungry babies that popped out from such success, and the most comfortable lifestyle to grow old and feeble in as the years of slapping each other over the head raced by. The more things change, the more they stay the same, right?
Before you run with this idea to unhealthy places though, understand that it doesn’t mean that we’re all actually awful in the strictest sense, but just that we have to recognize that we all have faults, some greater, some lesser, some different, and some the same. All things considered though, we’re all equally awful, which then means that we’re all equally not awful, or at least potentially so. Therefore, humility isn’t self-deprecation, chronic guilt, or even subservience, but the realization that we all start with a kind of natural deficit of character as well as a natural potential for greatness, the former of which takes no effort at all to live up to, the latter of which takes a bit of work to realize.
There are some cultures in this great spinning ball of dirt we call home that operate, quite unapologetically, on social caste systems. This means that whatever strata of society you’re born into, that’s where you stay pretty much your whole life. The upper-class stays in their ivory towers, snacking unappreciatively on crème brûlée or whatever, and the lower-class stays shuffling in the dust, overjoyed with fairground fried Twinkies and other lard-infused garbage.* This is more common in the eastern world, but before we over in the west get all high and mighty about civil rights and equality and whatnot, we all need to wake up to a rather rude truth—we kind of have the same problem, we just don’t label it as such. Without digressing too far into a full-on social commentary, I’ll just say that if you ever doubt that we share some caste society problems with other cultures, just try to break out of your current life station or career and see how difficult it really is. While it’s not impossible (land of opportunity, and all that), it sure ain’t easy, quick, or cheap.
For those of you who saved your hard-earned money on superfluous education, the word “ontological” just refers to the state of existence or existing. Whether you believe in God, gods, or even just the idle or mathematical machinations of the cosmos, we all have an equal ontological opportunity, even if not equal opportunity in culture and society. That should be a humbling notion—to think of the fact that we’re all mere toddling meat sacks trying to make our way on a giant ball of dirt and stuff that flies through space at around 67,000 miles per hour. But, the truth of the matter is, meat sacks though we may be, the fact that any one of us can reflect on this means that we’re special in some way… rational, you might say. This rationality is a gift, regardless of your philosophical outlook, and one that shouldn’t be wasted on fighting for the biggest banana or the best tree.