Carey Johansen
Aug 26, 2017 · 2 min read

Humility and False Humility

When I think about humility, I inevitably remember Uriah Heep from Dickens’s ‘David Copperfield’ with his constant profession of ’umbleness. ‘We are such ‘umble people’, he would say. Humblebrag is a modern word for a kind of false humility. You say something disparaging about yourself, but are in fact pointing out your exceptionality. ‘I cannot think in the way that normal people do. ” Meaning, I am a genius that common folk cannot understand. A real example, and it’s not even funny.

You say something seemingly bad about yourself with a laugh, and your conversation partner supports you in assuming that this bad thing is quirky and original, or, at least, due to circumstances and definitely not your fault. You’d be unpleasantly surprised if the listener condemns you for your stated fault. You say, ‘my kids don’t listen to me’, with a smile that asks for support, and your friend responds that this means that your children do not respect you, and you should work harder to teach them. Not exactly what you were looking for with your confession, right?

Would true humility entail actually acknowledging that you acted wrongly, not complain and list excuses? Acknowledging to yourself at first, but if you know something about yourself, your knowledge will seep into your relationships with others.

Humility for me is mixed with that image of cloyingness from Uriah Heep’s character. Nobody likes to be an object of false pretenses in say, charity or humility. You have probably met these ‘religious’ people who act in a friendly and helpful manner to you but it feels like they are not really thinking about you, but are performing their religious duty. In the same way, I have met this ‘humility’, though it is rare, because it is out of fashion, when someone deprecates themselves, in order to appear ‘umble to themselves and to anyone around them — no matter who really.

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