Ojuice5001

What is humility?
Is it a good thing or a bad thing?
How can someone attain more of it?

dk

Humble people have the stature to overcome diverse cultural, ethnic, racial, and religious bigotries with respect and good-will. A person becomes humble by accepting humiliation with grace and dignity.

yguy

Humility is always a good thing in others.

Philosoft

But not sexual-orientation bigotries? Cheap-shot, I know, but my irony meter is going haywire.

dk

Hey, that's not a gimme. In the sex marriage thread ad hominem arguments abound. To accept a personal attack with dignity and grace amounts to a humiliation. Who knows if we as individuals could get past our narrow personal egos with humility, we might find some common ground to disagree upon. hehehe

Pyrrho

See http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=humility:

And http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=humble:


It depends on which definition you mean. It also depends on whether or not you are the typical cretin that infests the earth.

Many times, people imagine that people should be dishonest and say that they are inferior to what they are. This is one of the reasons why many people were angry when Mohammed Ali said that he was the greatest. When he said it, he was the greatest boxer, so if that is what he meant, he was merely telling the truth. The truth, of course, is one of the most offensive things you can possibly say.


Why would you want to? Like most such qualities, you get more of it by practice. In other words, if you want to be more humble, consciously spend your time being humble.

Dr. Retard

Anyone who doubts the value of humility needs to spend some time arguing with creationists who, despite harboring a childish and caricatured conception of what evolution even is, decide that they know more than 99.999% of the scientific community.

You walk away from these encounters, and you think, "Wow, now I understand the value of humility".

Pyrrho

I am inclined to think that people should have an accurate view of themselves. For many, this would involve far more "humility" than they have. But I don't think that people should view themselves as worse than they are. All that traditional Christian groveling I'm not worthy crap before their god is sickening. Think about the concept of being "born in sin" and you should know what I mean. And take a look at Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, where he discusses the idea of a "properly proud man".

If, for example, we consider Mohammed Ali's statement that he was the greatest, if he meant that he was the greatest physicist instead of the greatest boxer, then his claim would be entirely inappropriate. Then, I would say that he needed more "humility". But, since at the time he said it, he was the greatest boxer, that, in many circumstances, would be an appropriate thing for him to say.

What I advocate is maintaining a view of oneself that is as accurate as possible, neither better nor worse than one is.

Now, of course, there are different definitions of being "humble", and some of them are compatible with what I am saying, while others are not.

Tom Sawyer

I think that true humility is a good thing, but the problem is that a lot of people think that they should be humble so that when they do something that can be construed as humble, they tend to brag about it and wear their humility like a badge of honour, which I find to be very arrogant.

dk

Ali didn't lie, he was probably the greatest boxer in ring history. My Mom once ran into him at O'Hara Airport waiting for a flight. He took the time to take a picture with her over the protests of his bodyguards and managers. She came away claiming he was a genuinely humble man without airs.

In the public arena Ali was not a humble man, and never missed an opportunity to promote himself at the expense of his opponents. We are left to ponder if Ali came to believe his own boasts. Perhaps if he had been a little more humble in public he'd have retired before the punishment turned his brains to mush. What's the real truth?

In my opinion, since Ali retired he has been humiliated publically by his illness, but nonetheless a greater man for it.