humility Archives | Neel Burton

Synonyms, or Opposites?

Socrates at his trial — Socrates: humble, but not always modest.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

If you are brilliant and know that you are brilliant, is it arrogant to say so? And if you pretend that you are not, is that humility—or merely modesty?

‘Modesty’ and ‘humility’ are often used interchangeably, but they are actually very different concepts.

‘Modesty’ derives from the Latin modus, ‘measure’ or ‘manner’, and means restraint in appearance and behaviour. It is the reluctance to flaunt, display, or otherwise draw attention to oneself.

Modesty often implies a certain artfulness or artificiality, perhaps even insincerity or hypocrisy. In Dickens’s David Copperfield (1850), Uriah Heep is characterised by his obsequiousness, and often brings up his own ‘umbleness’ in an attempt to disguise the true scale of his ambition. Modesty often poses as humility, but, unlike humility, is superficial and external rather than deep and moral. At best, modesty is no more than good manners.

Indeed, modesty can sometimes be a subtle form of vanity or advantage-seeking. By conspicuously understating some trait or achievement, we may be inviting others to contradict and praise us, or to like us better. The ego has not disappeared; it has merely become more cunning.

‘Humility’, like ‘humiliation’, derives from the Latin humus, ‘earth’ or ‘dirt’. Unlike mere modesty, true humility derives from a proper perspective on our human condition: one among billions on a small planet among billions, like a spore on a crumb of cheese.

Of course, it is nearly impossible for human beings to remain this objective for very long, but truly humble people are nonetheless far more conscious of their cosmic insignificance, an insignificance that verges on non-existence. A speck of dust does not think itself superior or inferior to another, nor does it concern itself with what other specks of dust might or might not think.

Enthralled by the miracle of existence, the truly humble person lives not for herself or her image, but for life itself.

In sum, to be humble is to subdue our ego so that things are no longer all about us, whereas to be modest is to protect the ego of others so that they do not feel uncomfortable, threatened, or small, and attack us in turn.

Because genuinely humble people often have a great deal to be modest about, they may need to slap on an extra thick veneer of modesty, or simply give up the game.

Humble people do not, as is often thought, have a low opinion of themselves. Instead, they have an accurate opinion of themselves, and, probably, of us as well. They neither elevate nor diminish themselves, but seek to see themselves and everything else for what they truly are. Erasmus (d. 1536) could not have put it more pithily when he said, ‘Humility is truth.’

If humility is truth, modesty is often a lie—so that the two can sometimes come into conflict. Modesty may require us to gloss over the truth to spare the feelings of others; humility, on the other hand, may demand that we speak the truth. Whereas Uriah Heep was modest without being humble, Socrates was humble without always being modest.

The Case of Socrates

In 399 BCE, at the age of seventy, Socrates was indicted for impiety. He was accused of ‘studying things in the sky and below the earth’, ‘making the worse into the stronger argument’, and ‘teaching these same things to others’.

At his trial, he gave a defiant defence, telling the jurors that they ought to be ashamed of their eagerness to possess as much wealth and reputation as possible, while not caring for or giving thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of their soul.

After being convicted and sentenced to death, Socrates addressed the jurors, saying:

You think that I was convicted through deficiency of words—I mean, that if I had thought fit to leave nothing undone, nothing unsaid, I might have gained an acquittal. Not so; the deficiency which led to my conviction was not of words—certainly not. But I had not the boldness or impudence or inclination to address you as you would have liked me to address you, weeping and wailing and lamenting, and saying and doing many things which you have been accustomed to hearing from others, and which, as I say, are unworthy of me. But I thought that I ought not to do anything common or mean in the hour of danger: nor do I now repent of the manner of my defence, and I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live.

Throughout his long life, Socrates had been a paragon of humility. When his friend Chaerephon asked the Delphic oracle if anyone was wiser than Socrates, the priestess of Apollo replied that no one was wiser. To discover the meaning of this divine utterance, Socrates questioned a number of people with a claim to wisdom, and in each case concluded, ‘I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.’ From then on, he dedicated himself to the service of the gods by seeking out anyone who might be wise and, ‘if he is not, showing him that he is not.’

Was Socrates lacking in humility before the jurors? Was he, paradoxically, being arrogant by bragging about his humility? Perhaps he deliberately put on a brazen display because he wanted to die, because he understood that by dying a martyr his teachings would be preserved for posterity.

Or perhaps genuine humility can seem like arrogance to those who are truly arrogant.

The more arrogant someone is, the more modesty they require from others.

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The Psychology of Snobbery

A wine snob — The snob mistakes the appearance of discernment for discernment itself.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Why you shouldn’t be a snob, and how to avoid being one.

The protagonist of the British sitcom Keeping Up Appearances is the social-climbing Hyacinth Bucket—or ‘Bouquet’, as she insists upon being called. To give the impression that she employs domestic staff, she answers her beloved pearl-white slimline telephone with, ‘The Bouquet residence; the lady of the house speaking.’ The originally working-class Hyacinth spends most of her time trying to impress others in the hope of passing off as upper-middle-class, while looking down on anyone who does not meet her approval. This is the simple but effective recipe for five seasons of timeless British comedy.

Hyacinth is funny because her snobbery is self-defeating. Every attempt to advertise her refinement instead advertises her insecurity.

It has been claimed that the word ‘snob’ originates in the Latin sine nobilitate (‘without nobility’), used in abbreviated form—s. nob—on lists of names by Cambridge colleges, passenger ships, etc. to distinguish between titled and non-titled persons. In fact, ‘snob’ was first recorded in the late eighteenth century as a term for a shoemaker or his apprentice, although it is true that Cambridge students came to apply it to local tradespeople, townspeople, and anyone unaffiliated with the university. By the early nineteenth century, ‘snob’ had come to mean ‘a person who lacks breeding’, and then, as social structures became more fluid, ‘a social climber’. Thackeray’s Book of Snobs (1848), a compilation of satirical articles, cemented the word in the public lexicon.

At the heart of snobbery is the tendency to mistake status for value. Applied to people, this means mistaking social status for human worth; applied to things, it means mistaking prestige for quality. The snob identifies with the relevant markers of status or prestige (wealth, education, accent, address, brands, cultural tastes…), uses them to bolster his own status, and denigrates those who lack or disregard them. ‘I’m not a snob,’ said Simon Le Bon, the lead singer and lyricist of Duran Duran, in jest: ‘Ask anybody. Well, anybody who matters.’

Case Study: The Wine Snob

As a wine writer, I may sometimes pass for a snob.

In my defence, snobbery is not simply a matter of discernment, or of having high standards. A so-called wine ‘snob’ who enjoys and even insists on good wine may or may not be an actual snob, depending on the degree of his or her prejudice (from the Latin praeiudicium, ‘prior judgement’). To exercise judgement and discriminate between things is not necessarily to discriminate between people.

If wine is a case in point, this is because it can be tasted blind. Hide the label, price, producer, appellation, and vintage, and there is no longer anything to lean upon but the wine itself. Blind tasting can be wonderfully humbling as great names fall short, newcomers triumph, and prejudices dissolve in the glass. This proves the point: the more we rely on prestige indicators, the less we taste, or experience.

I’m quite happy—in fact, happiest—drinking an inexpensive or little-known wine, so long as it has a story to sing. To my worst enemy, this might be a way of being a snob while escaping the label, a meta-snobbery known as the meta-snobbery of authenticity—but let’s not get too meta.

The Psychology of Snobbery

Some sommeliers, immersed as they are in the world of wine, can place undue value on wine knowledge, to the point of deprecating their own seemingly ignorant patrons—a phenomenon lightheartedly referred to as ‘sommelier syndrome’. In mitigation, the snobby sommelier, like many a snob, is defending not only status but self-conception.

Aside from its unpleasantness to others, snobbery tends to undermine the snob, their achievements, and the interests and institutions that they represent. The Member of Parliament Jacob Rees-Mogg did himself, his party, and the UK House of Commons no favours when he compared people who had not attended a public school (fee-paying school) or Oxbridge (the universities of Oxford and Cambridge) to ‘potted plants’.

Snobbery betrays rigidity of thinking and, by extension, poor judgement, as with those British aristocrats (Unity and Diana Mitford, Lord Rothermere, the Duke of Windsor…) who, despite their elite educations, came to sympathise with Nazi ideology. The thinking, in so far as it can be called thinking, is not merely rigid but warped. Snobs pigeonhole people according to skin-deep criteria such as their birth, profession, or accent, and, on that basis, either embrace or denigrate them. Like wine snobs who ‘drink the label’, they often miss out on real value or originality. As company, they are utter bores, constantly detracting from the rich texture of life and unable to marvel at anything other than through themselves.

Inverse Snobbery

Closely related to snobbery, and presenting some of the same pitfalls, is ‘inverse snobbery’. Inverse snobbery is the disdain for those same traits that the snob might hold in high regard, combined with admiration, whether real or feigned, for the popular, the ordinary, and the commonplace—and, in this case, not just with the aim of winning an election. Inverse snobbery can be understood, in large part, as an ego defence against the status claims of others; and it is possible, indeed common, to be both a snob and an inverse snob, for instance, looking down on someone’s privileged education while boasting about one’s own working-class credentials.

Inverse snobs make the same fundamental mistake as snobs: they judge according to status rather than substance, merely reversing the signs. An expensive restaurant must be pretentious; a successful artist must have sold out; an educated person must be out of touch.

Why Snobbery May Be on the Rise

Both snobbery and inverse snobbery can be interpreted as a symptom of social insecurity. Social insecurity may be rooted in early experiences, especially feelings of shame at being different, or a sense of privilege or entitlement that, in later life, cannot be realised. Or it may result from rapid social change. For instance, after Brexit in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the US, the ebbing of influence from established, educated elites seemed to lead, on all sides, to a surge in both snobbery and inverse snobbery.

In a similar vein, some snobbery may represent a reaction to an increasingly egalitarian society, born out of a deeply ingrained human instinct that some people are better than others, that these people are more fit to dominate or rule, and that their rule tends to produce better outcomes—although, of course, one need not be a snob to share in that belief or intuition. Whatever its source, snobbery can serve as a mechanism of class surveillance and control—as can, paradoxically, inverse snobbery—entrenching existing social hierarchies and the status quo, or status quo ante.

The Way Out

In some cases, snobbery may be a manifestation of narcissism or excessive self-regard—which points to its antidote, namely, humility. Instead of looking inward, or sideways, the person of genuine taste looks outward, toward the thing itself.

Humility on its own can be hard to achieve. Taken to an extreme, or to its perfection, it approaches the dissolution of the ego, which in certain Indian traditions amounts to liberation. This requires a highly philosophical mind, or drugs.

Alternatively, it may be possible to arrive at humility indirectly through the more achievable route of empathy—including empathy towards the snob. Snobbery (‘snobbishness’), said the writer Hugh Kingsmill (d. 1949), ‘is the desire for what divides men and the inability to value what unites them.’

If humility corrects the relation to the self, empathy corrects the relation to others, and, indirectly, the relation to the self.

Reason, as Hume held, is but the slave of the passions: employing empathy to alleviate snobbery is, I think, an excellent example of better feeling opening out onto better thinking.