Armed with a concept of justice based and centered on human worth and dignity, and aware of suffering and evil, we can begin to build a sound and enduring ethical system. Humility is an essential first step.

• Humility — true humility — is one of the most expansive and life-enhancing of all virtues. It does not mean undervaluing yourself. It means valuing other people. It signals a certain openness to life’s grandeur and the willingness to be surprised, uplifted, by goodness wherever one finds it. [Jonathan Sacks, “On Humility.”]
• There is nothing noble about being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self. [Hindu proverb]
• Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. [The Bible, Philippians 2:3-4.]
• I saw that we’re all doing the best we can. This is how a lifetime of humility begins. [Byron Katie, Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (Harmony, 2002), p. 78.]
• Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says “Everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved in the writing of this book.” [Carl Sagan, interview with Charlie Rose, 1996.]

Humility is a global and deferential virtue. It expresses a relationship between the self and others and/or the world. Thus, humility implies a respect for the views and aspirations of others, and also an awareness of our cosmic insignificance, as expressed in Carl Sagan’s “The Pale Blue Dot.” Being humble means seeing the value in others, and their worth; listening to and learning from others, and reading; asking questions; being willing to change; being moderate in tone and presentation; and helping others.

“Humility is the orphaned virtue of our age.” Rabbi Sacks argues that this is because our societies have been transformed from communities of friends into anonymous landscapes of strangers. The point bears watching but I am also inclined to think that success is a bitch-goddess, not only in its pursuit but also in its attainment: we who have lived well are inclined to think we gained access to a vast stock of material goods, technologies and services all by ourselves. Here, too, we are guided not by what is true but by what we wish was true. Too many of us act like the baseball player who starts out on third base and thinks he hit a triple. In the United States in particular, we are plagued by the idea that successful entrepreneurs are the best among us, when in fact they are merely the ones whose strategies and abilities were best suited to success in business; their success rests on the backs of countless numbers of people who have gone before them, the social, economic and political framework that protects property and allows businesses to exist and thrive, and those who labor now to establish and maintain that framework.

In our daily lives, too, we often forget our place among others and in the scheme of things. It is in this sense, perhaps, that the loss of close communities has diminished the value we attach to humility. Anything that disorients us among others or in the universe is likely to interfere with our sense of humility. “No man is an island,” wrote John Donne; living this way is the beginning of humility.

Sacks writes that humility “is what opens us to the world.” This is an excellent statement of humility’s place in our Human Faith model. Before we can see others, we must empty our cup of ourselves.  To see the world as it is, we cannot imagine self as a colossus astride the Earth. Humility is only a first step toward an ethical and spiritual life; but it is an indispensable first step.

Humility does not mean that we cannot do great things; just the opposite, humility is a foundation for greatness. Great people have no desire to boast because they live the quiet assurance that comes from understanding who they are and where they fit. Einstein insisted that he had only two ideas in his life; for him, an idea was something that no one else had ever considered. Two of the wealthiest men on Earth, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, have vowed to return most of their wealth to the society from which it came. The great artist who sees genius as a gift must guard against seeing inborn talent as a personal reward, an inclination that the idea of talent as a “gift” encourages. In every case, our challenge is to remember our relationship to others and the world, and live accordingly.

When we focus on humility, we begin on life’s road anew. Suffering has stripped us bare. We have identified ourselves as living beings who seek justice and the avoidance of suffering. Now we set about to accomplish those ends. The first step in learning is to acknowledge that there are many things we do not know or cannot know; that there are many things we cannot do; and that the universe does not shape itself to conform to our desires. In this way, we can best appreciate what our framework is. This is not to suggest that this is the order in the development of knowledge beginning with early childhood; it is not. Instead, it is a framework for reconsidering what we know at this point on our calendar. This is the essence of humility in our model.

Its opposites include arrogance. Researchers have identified “three types of arrogance (individual, comparative, and antagonistic) and six components contributing to them, each logically related to the next. The components progress from imperfect knowledge and abilities to an unrealistic assessment of them, an unwarranted attitude of superiority over other people, and related derisive behavior.” Arrogance of all kinds is personally and socially detrimental.