The Humble Brag and Humility

There’s a running joke that if you ask someone where they go to college, and they say “in Boston,” they go to Harvard or MIT, because for various reasons, we don’t always like to advertise. That certainly doesn’t keep us from being ridiculously pleased with ourselves at times, but I also have friends that have felt genuinely ashamed to go to Harvard, to have so much. Our opinions of ourselves are a complicated affair.

Humility is one of the most over-emphasized and under-explained of virtues. We’ve all met that person who starts out with “now, you all probably know more about this than I do…” every time they prepare to give a long-winded speech about something they know nothing about. And we’ve all found said person generally aggravating. And sometimes, we forget, and think that this is what is meant by humility; in Nietzsche’s opinion, it was an excuse to give society over to its least competent members and keep anyone with real talent from expressing it.

This annoying sort of false humility is concerned with saying bad things about yourself, in order to make yourself look good. This is, in the first place, rather silly, especially since it’s not fooling anyone in most cases. Secondly, it misses the point of humility altogether, in two ways.

First off, humility is not concerned with your saying bad things about yourself, or thinking badly of yourself at all. Truth and humility are supposed to go together, and that means having an accurate opinion of yourself, not one that’s too high or too low. The fact that most of us probably think too much of ourselves has led to the idea that, in order to be accurate, we should speak as if we’re worse than we really believe. Eventually, though, we skipped the accuracy part of things and only kept the self-derogatory comments (possibly because the latter is much less trouble than taking a hard look at ourselves). In order to get humility right, then, we have to make an honest assessment of our state, and then speak the truth, good or bad, when needed.

This ‘when needed’ part is very important, because humility is about more than just speaking truthfully about oneself. The second way that false humility misses the point, is by trying to make itself look good. Humility is not concerned with making itself look good – in fact, it is not concerned with itself at all. That’s why we say that humility isn’t thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.

Humility is thus separate from simple accuracy, although accuracy is ancillary to it. In a discussion, a falsely humble man will start by listing his flaws and insufficiencies, and then begin to list off his opinions to impress everyone. An accurate man will state his credentials correctly before giving his opinion so that everyone knows where he stands. A humble man will not be concerned with his credentials at all; he will be concerned with furthering the discussion. In fact, true humility is even less concerned with one’s standing than false humility; it is not about comparing oneself to others at all, but concerned instead with larger things.

This deterioration of humility is part of a larger trend in ethics, where we have taken the forms of virtues (like the self-effacing comments of humility) and forgotten the virtues themselves. Then, we realized that the forms of these virtues were silly, and rejected them (like the accurate man who doesn’t disparage his own worth). But this does not return us to virtue; we are instead left with a virtue of negation – humility is not making too much of yourself – instead of a virtue of affirmation – humility is care for things beyond yourself.

This negativity is one of the things Nietzsche was critiquing in his society; he saw people willing to put themselves down, hide their own achievements, and talk about self-denial, all the while enjoying and commending themselves for so doing. He termed this (in combination with other things) a “slave morality” that “finds its pleasure in humbling outstanding men,” and said that such so-called humility “would not be a virtue but the waste of a virtue.”

Of course, Nietzsche thought that this was the sort of mentality rampant in Christianity. While I don’t know whether it was widespread in the Christian individuals of his time, I am pleased to report that it has no place in Christian doctrine. Paul says that he was the worst of all sinners, but only to emphasize the power of grace; it in no way hinders him from instructing others and telling them to follow his example – and this, too, is not about him, but about the truth. He lists his credentials at one point, but only to point out that if people are going to go about bragging about their own resumes, he can beat them at that game as well. He himself is playing a quite different game.

This is not to say that all mixed-up humility comes from vanity or attention-seeking; sometimes we genuinely think we should put ourselves down, but this is an unhealthy attitude that usually has a bit of pride sneaking in the backdoor (aren’t I good for recognizing how bad I am). It does seem ridiculous and wrong to say to myself, “I go to Harvard. I am a very impressive person.” But it’s just as bad to say to myself, “I go to Harvard. I am a terrible person to have this opportunity when others don’t.” The problem isn’t that I need to convince myself that going to Harvard is unimpressive or bad. The problem is that I need to stop sitting around trying to decide how impressive I am, and go do something productive.

Humility, in sum, is not passing yourself over. It is getting over yourself. The world could do with less self-derision and more genuine concern with other people’s position.