Pride goes before the fall, as we’ve all heard. We’ve watched the Howard Hugheses and Elizabeth Holmeses of the world, so enamored with illusions of grandeur they can’t even recognize the ground disappearing from under their feet. We’ve seen successful leaders shift focus from doing what is best for their organizations to doing what is best for their personal gain, and the ensuing chaos which follows such choices. Pride shows up in less flamboyant ways, too. It’s easy to spot arrogance when it’s announcing itself across the internet; it’s much more difficult to notice the plank in our own eye. It’s no less disastrous in our own lives, though.
Today, we’ll look at humility and its role in helping us live well. We’ll examine how practicing humility allows us to continue to grow and improve and look at a simple way to re-frame our goals, resulting in more accuracy and humility and less pride.
Pride is a False Promise
The problem with ego is it poisons the one thing we need to navigate life well – our mind. When every potential action, choice, or idea is tainted by whether it helps your ego, you lose all prospects of making a good decision. This promises to wreak havoc on every aspect of your life.
Pride will break down your relationships; it will affect your career and opportunities. It’s no wonder then, that C.S. Lewis called* pride, “a spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.” Pride isolates. It cuts off relationships and potential connection. Ego protects itself by lashing out at others, tearing them down to preserve pride’s precarious position. Pride tells us we’re above the little people, that we deserve those things which are “off limits,” or that the rules simply don’t apply.
As I’m sure you’ve gathered by now, pride is dangerous because it positions us out of line with reality. Pride impairs your decision-making abilities and destroys your ability to trust your own judgment. Pride will tell you are “not a paranoid deranged” individual, even when all signs point to that conclusion. It will insist you are a genius, when your actions don’t back that claim. Pride simply can not be trusted.
Humility is the antithesis. Humility opens doors – to relationship, to learning, to growth in every area of life. It’s the key to knowing where you actually stand and being able to improve that standing. It’s vital to individual and collective growth. Humility is being able to accept that you need to improve or attend to certain areas. It recognizes a bigger picture, and maintains a long view of history. Humility is required in making truly wise decisions.
Learning
“Throw out your conceited opinions, for it is impossible for a person to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
—Epictetus, Discourses, 2.17.1
To truly learn, we have to value making sense of what we see more than we value being right. As we continue searching to better understand the world around us, our aim should be to learn and grow, not to be right. Ironically, while being “right” is often a temporary state, it implies a finality – that all questions have been answered, the end of the matter decided.
As Epictetus tells us, it’s impossible to learn that which we think we already know. The moment you decide you are right is the moment you stop learning. However, when we learn with the expectation of learning our entire lives, we cultivate intellectual humility.
Intellectual humility can be described as having a small bias blind spot. It means understanding that we each have inherent judgments and preferences we aren’t even aware of. By definition, we can not see our own blind spots. Intellectual humility is the recognition that your position may turn out to be flawed or incomplete. It’s admitting that we have blind spots. It’s understanding that as we learn more about the world and how best to solve problems, our position will need to shift to accommodate this new information. To practice intellectual humility is to remain open to the possibility that our understanding or perspective may be a bit off. Instead of shutting down progress, intellectual humility gives the to freedom to grow and evolve your thinking.
Instead of trying to always be right, we should seek to understand more. It’s similar to knowing ancient cultures thought the world was flat. As more information became available, leading thinkers realized this was not true, and adjusted their perception of the planet. It’s not as though the earth actually was flat until Magellan sailed with Spanish fleets around the globe, but that our understanding became more accurate. The facts didn’t change, but our understanding of the facts did change. We adjusted our views in light of more detailed evidence. This is how progress is made in the scientific community, and we should likewise consider it progress when we update our own understanding of any topic to reflect new (or new to us) information.
Adjusting and updating our views when we learn new information is an asset and a healthy perspective. It means you are learning, growing, and understanding more about your surroundings. Intellectual humility means you care less about being right and more about having an accurate understanding of the world. It should be applauded and adopted, not discouraged. Unfortunately, we can see many areas in society, where this asset is under-valued; instead of aiming for accuracy, too many people claim to be right.
Pride cares about being right – and being seen being right. Humility cares about being accurate.
Aim for Less Wrong
Sometimes, simply adjusting expectations can help make our goals clearer. James Clear’s advice on being “less wrong” is a starting point for developing more intellectual humility. He writes,
“A strategy for thinking clearly: Rather than trying to be right, assume you are wrong and try to be less wrong.
Trying to be right has a tendency to devolve into protecting your beliefs.
Trying to be less wrong has a tendency to prompt more questions and intellectual humility.”
As technology improves and and our understanding of the world around us continues to advance, our perspective and opinions need to evolve with those breakthroughs. Looking back over the centuries of scientific advancement illustrates how exponentially our understanding of physics, the universe, and natural processes has expanded. Humanity gazes up at the stars for centuries before we ever invent a telescope to enhance our view. Then, using that technology, we discover the orbits of the planets, recognize stars, and learn about the seasonal cycle. We realize Earth is not the center of the universe. We recognize our position in relation to other bodies. Then, we begin to see just how precarious life is, as we struggle to find evidence of life outside this peculiar globe. We build machines capable of lift and propulsion. Man walks on the moon. We send a satellite into space, continually orbiting our small blue marble. We continue to explore and learn about other galaxies and solar systems, reaching planets light-years away. All of this is only possible through the constant revision of what we know to be accurate, through the endless pursuit of being less wrong in our understanding of the planet.
The aim of science is to be less wrong. The mission of science, and all learning, is to continue exploring new ideas, asking new questions, traversing new frontiers, and emerging each time with a richer and more complex perspective of the world around us. The scientific method itself provides a model for our own understanding and questioning. Start with a question. Look at relevant data and observe what is happening. Form a hypothesis, a reasonable and informed guess. Articulate a question or experiment to test that hypothesis. Design a method of testing that hypothesis. Run the test. Review the results. Discuss those results, asking questions about what they show and how future tests could further our understanding. There is never an end point, a final “right” answer. We are always thinking about what comes next and the implications of what we now know. We are seeking to know more and understand better, not simply shoring up a position.
Pride clouds our judgment on all accounts and prevents learning. The antidote to pride is intellectual humility. Aim to be less wrong, about more things, more often. This humility is what leads to true breakthroughs and successful lives.
*Mere Christianity
