Today we will be looking at what we can learn from the Socratic idea that the wisest among us do not think of themselves as wise. A sort of meditation on humility.
In Plato’s Apology of Socrates’ there is a story about a man called Chaerephon, who went to the Oracle of Delphi and asked her if there were any men wiser than Socrates.
She replied that there were none.
Socrates was perplexed by this; he thought himself rather unwise. However, he didn’t think it was his place to contradict the gods and so he set about trying to understand what the oracle meant.
He sought out and questioned men with reputations of vast wisdom: politicians, artists, craftsmen. He found that all were possessed by the same flaw: they failed to acknowledge the limits of their expertise. They let their proficiency in one area act as proof that they were proficient in all areas and therefore claimed knowledge where there was ignorance, and wisdom where there was foolishness.
When they told Socrates about how the world worked or how humans should behave he would point out holes and contradictions in their logic and ask if they had thought of a way to resolve them; how had they come to have such surety in their knowledge? Often, and especially among those enamored with themselves, the response to such interrogations was the birth of a bitter enmity towards Socrates.
Eventually the man made so many enemies in this way that he was brought before the court of Athens and put to death for ‘corrupting the youth’. Apparently all that involved was young people choosing to listen to the conversations he had in public places.
Socrates didn’t have a religion he was trying to convert people to, he didn’t charge money for the privilege of hearing what he had to say (which he often claimed was nothing), and he wasn’t a politician looking for personal power. He talked with people, he asked them questions, and for that he was killed. Such is the danger of hubris; It can turn you into something that commits evil in the name of righteousness, a demon painted in the guise of an angel.
The wisest people do not think of themselves as wise. They understand that the wiser you believe yourself to be the more you close yourself off to new wisdom. Their knowledge makes them humble, not arrogant.
Humility is the acknowledgement that what you don’t know is more important than what you do know. It is an acceptance of the fact that humans are invariably more ignorant than we are knowledgeable; the universe is just too big. Without humility new information is merely a threat to your status. Conversations are dominance disputes.
Arrogance stifles growth. It whispers to you: “I know everything that’s important” and if you know everything that’s important then why learn anything new?
Arrogance strips you of power. If your life isn’t going the way you want and you believe there is no way for you to improve, then you have no option but to pray for the universe to be different, or to busy yourself cursing its nature.
Once you’ve decided that you are definitely correct everything that goes wrong is the consequence of a cosmos that simply isn’t set up for things to go right. The only other variable in this life is you, and if you relinquish control over yourself, then you relinquish control in its entirety. Nothing now but a marionette to be pushed around by the tides of fate, hands tugging at strings that frayed to nothing while you were away bragging about their strength.
The problem with being humble is that it is hard. It is painful to be wrong and it takes work to fix it. To be humble is to be aware of all the ways you fall short of perfection and being imperfect hurts. But we are humans, and we have no say over the dilemmas we inherit, no choice but to make hard choices. Yes, it is difficult to do the right thing, but it is even more difficult to exist with yourself as a creature who does what is wrong because it is easy. So strive to be humble my friends, take good ideas from wherever you can find them and replace them when you find better ones.
There is no shame to be found in simply not knowing, and plenty to be found in pretending you do.
By James Rowarth Bell
It is true that many people today are not humble. With social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. everyone seems to have an opinion on everything and its gets voiced loudly. Some people are just uninformed and some try to manipulate others. The world would be a better place if more people would stay humble.