Is Extolling Humility Oxymoronic?

          My adult sons were ribbing me at our weekly lunch out together. One said, “It’s the best website on humility out there,” and another said, “She’s the most modest person you’ll ever meet.” One of them had picked up on the tacit joke in one of my early blog posts: there’s a proud history to Christian humility. Really, how can I highlight humility with humility? Isn’t drawing attention to it kind of the opposite of humble?

          Like all virtues (the topic I studied last fall in a class on virtue ethics), if it is examined too closely it disintegrates into hypocrisy or idiosyncrasy. It’s like Ferris Bueller’s friend staring more and more deeply into the pointillist painting of the park, until the picture becomes dots and the dots mean nothing. The way to avoid this effect is to---and I’m getting this from Aristotle---examine the virtue in action rather than isolate it from experience.

          Now, if you saw me this morning on the sidewalk in Hokkaido waiting hopelessly for the crosswalk light because I didn’t see or understand the instructions for requesting the signal, you might say I’m just clueless, not humble in the pure, penitent sense. While truly humble people probably don’t strive to be among the cognoscenti, just being perpetually out of the loop doesn’t mean I’m humble. I could be resentfully oblivious, for example, although I’m usually not.

          In my case, a virtue that I hold as important has been tested by cross-cultural relations for a very long time. Some might say I border on martyrdom, unnecessarily. However, rather than give up attempting to enact this virtue, I’ve decided to advocate for it, here in this blog. One could say I exemplify humility with “edge,” if that’s even possible.

          I’m here to say that humility is hugely important and needed now more than ever.

          But don’t take my word for it (as Levar Burton used to say on Reading Rainbow), hear it from Utne Reader editor David Schimke (Nov-Dec 2011):

“Where are today’s pure hearts?

The answer is that they are all around us. They are the everyday citizens, academics, artists, and activists who eschew empty promises and choose instead to take action. They walk their talk, no matter how many landmines litter the long journey. They tell the truth, even when a little white lie would make things easier in the short term. They are passionate and open-minded, opinionated and humble.”