What is humility? Modesty? In your experience friends, does nature show any preference for modesty?
There are ideas of humility, and these ideas are indoctrinated into us quite thoroughly. Every effort is made to convince us that humility is a virtue. To the point that self sabotage is one of the most common neurotic behaviours, if not the most common. We strive to be mediocre in order to preserve the illusion that we are good little boys and girls, and yet we likewise have all likely known people who seemed to demonstrate what we are taught is the opposite quality, arrogance.
In daycare, another girl told me I was rude when I was showing off a picture I drew. The conditioning starts that early, and it contributes to emotional healthy maturation how?
I don’t know. It made me feel bad. It turns to shame. In fact, the shame epidemic has been the basis of more than one theory of mental illness, and yet we cling to it as if it were a virtue. There is a reason though.
There are those who avoid the shame stigmata by adopting the authority of God in both the religious and secular sense. People who lay claim to notions of the greater good, who label themselves the keepers of the greater good. They defend shame with a passion. If people feel ashamed, it makes them quite tractable, easy to control. It makes women buy toxic chemicals to supposedly beautify themselves. It makes men reject any of their softer or more intellectual or creative impulses in favour of being a provider, because anything is better than being a non entity in the consensus.
Yes, an aging women is not “Taking care” of her self. I really hate that idea. The whole beauty industry is based on instilling fear and insecurity. Society at large is based on this. The glue of the herd is the fear of the outside, and keeps people subordinate to those who can finagle themselves into positions of privilege.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not against alteration of the public image, because alteration as a creative act can be revelatory more than obscuring. We can wind up showing a reactionary shame by entirely avoiding those behaviours we know we are being coerced into. The rebel is as much a slave as the submissive soul. True humility does exist, but our word for it doesn’t explain it well enough.
Shame is something that goes with depression, is it not? And also in people who get in angry rages? It is, yes. Frustration, depression, shame, in a repeating cycle. These are all linked.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~