June 8, 2016 - Some thoughts about humility and arrogance

tl;dr joj, my friend.

tl;dr joj

A serious side note, though, it's really common that people could actually get mad for extensive bragging or some sort.

Here in my country (ask anyone on Discord of what country do I live.), there's something that is really related to this, and I am not happy about this being one of our traits, and I call that as smart-shaming. It really startles me. Smart-shaming is when during a casual conversation with ideas exchanging from one another (with interest from both parties, of course.); and then suddenly, the other party that received a factual idea recognize the said idea as some sort of an insult. Thus, they could say "Fine then, you're the smart one." or even to the point in which it is more harsh against the one who said the factual idea.

I don't seriously get of why people here limits the receipt of information, and mocking critical thought, as it is also vital to this country's education. I've seen one speaking and teaching his/her "audience" of how to speak English, and then one of the audience just replied : "Nosebleed!". The "nosebleed" statement is just unbearable to hear. The audience are just fools, considering that it is actually taught in schools. Or just in case, we have this in only one word : Anti-intellectualism.

To conclude, I think that one needs to encourage curiosity so that informative conversations will be improved. Try to ask questions and receive much information, so that the nation as a whole will be currently advancing, in intellectual capacity.

I think a lot of the downplaying of talents/achievements comes from the fact that more intelligent people tend to downplay their own achievements, whereas less intelligent people tend to overplay their own achievements. This definitely applies to me, as whilst I've never perceived myself to be very intelligent/skilled and have tended to focus, to my own detriment, on what I am not skilled at (not helped by suffering from depression for around a year or two but I won't get into that).

Personally I have tended to be humble and downplay my achievements, as I never really have wanted to sound arrogant ever, but I have found that its good to take pride at what you are good at, but also to aspire to become better at what you are good at (and accept you can't be good at everything - which took me a while to come to terms with). Also found that, even when downplaying my skills in front of good friends, it usually, at least externally (i can't speak for what they actually think) brings out positivity and that has increased my own self-esteem, as naturally most crave to be validated by our circle of friends/family and use that to plant confidence in ourselves.

I agree that society tends to disapprove on those who hold themselves in "too" high self-esteem, but sometimes with good reason. Nonetheless having very little self-esteem is not good and no-one should aspire to have a low self-esteem, as I have suffered from it and it can become a crippling weakness if not dealt with.

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This post is kind of a mess of jumbled thoughts in a short post but I don't have time to reorder it as by writing this I'm procrastinating on other stuff I should be doing

Thank you hPerks for posting! I really agree with some of (probably all of) the points you're making here, and especially like the little comic which went with a point you were making. I don't really have time to do a massive breakdown of everything I like and everything I want to comment on, but let's just say I like your post.

I think often people can take this kind of thing the wrong way, but really, humility is not always about lowering yourself socially or doing things that not everybody will want to do; it's also about recognising the truth about yourself and not being ashamed to say that you are good at something. This Scott Adams from what you've put here does sound a little arrogant, but he also sounds very smart and very 'self-mature' or 'self-accomplished'. It's nice to see a post like this because humility is one of the attributes I always want to have in life.