I liked starting with quotes so much I’m going to do it again.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrue humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.\u201d – C.S. Lewis<\/p>\n
“Let us pray that we ourselves cease to be
\nthe cause of suffering to each other.
\nWith humility, with awareness of the existence of life,
\nand of the suffering that are going on around us,
\nlet us practice the establishment of peace in our hearts and on earth.”\u00a0 – Thich Nhat Hanh<\/p>\n\u201cThere is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.\u201d – Ernest Hemingway<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
These thoughts come to me as a natural extension of what I was writing yesterday.\u00a0 One of the more severe problems with progress that I see in the world is that people aren’t truly willing to listen to one another.\u00a0 It happens on every side of every issue, and of course the reasons for it can vary.\u00a0 Usually it has to do with assigning that person to a particular group, and categorizing them as an illusory “other”.\u00a0 That group you have assigned them to is one to which you have already previously assigned some agenda or set of reasons for why they think that thing.\u00a0 It doesn’t matter what they say, really.\u00a0 YOU know better.\u00a0 YOU know the reason why they really feel the way that they do.<\/p>\n
It’s not something that I think we are particularly cognizant of.\u00a0 It is a trap that is easy to fall into.\u00a0 It is perhaps a byproduct of how busy we are in life… we want to lighten our load by categorizing people so we don’t have to deal with the effort of treating everyone as an individual, genuinely listening with presence and interest to what they have to say.\u00a0 Even if we are certain that they are wrong.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0 Perhaps they are, but you will do no harm by genuinely listening and then offering your heartfelt response to what they actually said.\u00a0 Besides, on any issue you should be willing to accept a small possibility, however unlikely, that you are mistaken, or at least that there might be some new aspect that you may learn from a person who sees it differently.<\/p>\n
Another aspect of this superiority complex is when we come across someone who perhaps believes something that we used to believe but no longer do.\u00a0 Or maybe they simply believe something based on what we see as faulty reasoning.\u00a0 If only they understood it correctly, they would see how I am right.<\/em><\/p>\n
This is something that I see constantly.\u00a0 Among people I know, and among people I don’t.\u00a0 And even though (unfortunately) I’ve most likely done it myself at some point… it drives me crazy when I see it.\u00a0 It results in talking down to someone… or talking down about someone when they are not present.\u00a0 Again, this sometimes is done to certain groups.\u00a0 Among progressive Christians, it is something that commonly happens concerning those more traditional in their beliefs.\u00a0 Perhaps those people are missing the point, but when we treat them with contempt by talking down to or about them, we are only furthering the divide and creating a barrier to enlightenment.<\/p>\n
We should always start with the presupposition that we know nothing.\u00a0 That which we think we know, we could easily be wrong about.\u00a0 Things I once believed quite firmly, I now think are completely wrong.\u00a0 In another 20 years, I may think those same things about what I believe now.\u00a0 I cannot know for sure what is true, and so I should not treat with contempt someone who, it seems to me, is behind the curve.\u00a0 For one, knowledge is not an all or nothing proposition.\u00a0 It is quite possible that someone I disagree with on fundamentally everything could bring me some form of enlightenment on a particular idea or issue.\u00a0 As the, perhaps archaic in the digital age saying goes, “even a broken clock is right twice a day”.\u00a0 Even someone we cannot help but perceive as a “broken clock” has the capacity to teach us, and we should be humble enough to accept them as a potential teacher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I liked starting with quotes so much I’m going to do it again. \u201cTrue humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.\u201d – C.S. Lewis “Let us pray that we ourselves cease to be the cause of suffering to each other. With humility, with awareness of the existence of life, … Continue reading Humbleness<\/span>