This week Bart Everson explores moving from an ethic of dominion toward a Gaian virtue of humility.
Humility is a virtue in many wisdom traditions. It’s my sense that those who love Gaia instinctively recognize its primacy. Those who feel a connection to Earth tend toward a sense of awe and wonder that generates feelings of humility almost automatically.
The English language reflects this. The words “humble” and “humility” share a common etymological root. Both derive from the Latin word humilis (meaning “lowly” in a figurative sense and “on the ground” in a literal sense) which in turn derives from humus meaning “earth.” The connection to the English word humus is obvious. The hypothetical Proto-Indo-European root is *dhghem- (earth), which is speculated to be the origin of the word “human.”1
It’s not too hard to make a symbolic leap here and conclude that humans ought to be humble. After all, humans come from the Earth, just as all life does. We shouldn’t imagine ourselves to be above all other beings. Yet, clearly, some humans have a proclivity to do exactly that. One doesn’t imagine slugs and squirrels need reminders to stay humble. Even mighty eagles seem to know their place. Do we?
I’m speaking here to the humanity I know best, which is the colonized, Christianized, industrialized, European-dominated Global North. Indigenous cultures seem to situate themselves in the web of life, which might reflect a basic humility, though I’m cautious of generalizing. I will assert, however, that the clash of cultures between Europeans and First Nations in the Americas might have been avoided, or at least ameliorated, if the colonists had practiced humility. In fact, Rick Potts argues “humility is the opposite of a certain sense of the word ‘dominion’.”
We started as this and will end up as this. (Image from Natural Resources Conservation Service Soil Health Campaign via snl.no.)
True Confessions
I cannot say that my life has been defined by humility. To the contrary, in my youth, and in my young adulthood especially, I was oftentimes arrogant. Though I hope that aspect of my personality has mellowed with time, I suppose that I am still more proud than humble.
In college, and through my television-producing years, I tried to justify my existence through sheer force of will, with all my creativity generally bent toward self-aggrandizement. I’ve often thought of this approach as “storming the gates of heaven.” That was a driving impetus behind the independent television series, Rox.
What’s that? You’ve never heard of Rox? Well, consider yourself lucky. While technically still in production, our heyday was the early 1990s, when we explored the lowest levels of audio-video quality through the local public access channel in Bloomington, Indiana. Our technical ineptitude was exceeded — mightily — by our audacity, our hubris, and unwarranted confidence in our own abilities.
The results were absurd and occasionally sublime, leading Wired magazine to call us “the best TV show in America,” while Time magazine recognized us as internet pioneers. Oh, I’ve got a whole file of press clippings.
But there I go again: burnishing my pride. Way back when we launched our website in 1995, I featured a quotation from the fictional Dr. Talos on my homepage: “Would you say that I was much afflicted with the infamous vice of false modesty?”2 No, clearly, I was not.
My last real effort in that vein was The All New Christy Paxson Show. For those of you who don’t know me personally, I should explain that Christy is my wife. She was the star of her own TV show, and of course our wedding (staged with puppets) was a televised event. We had to rent a secondary venue just to contain our egos. The reboot of her show was the subject of my master’s thesis.
That project led me to my first “real” job, when I was hired at Xavier University of Louisiana. I reflected that my approach going forward would be different. I would now be more focused on serving others. When I think of humility, my thoughts go first to that transition.
Even mighty eagles seem to know their place. Do we? (Image from klappe via Pixabay)
New Thoughts for a New Millennium
And so I have found myself for the past quarter-century at an institution where humility is prized, an integral part of our social justice mission. There’s an emphasis on service and cultivating the development of servant-leaders. Much of this derives, no doubt, from our Catholic identity. I’m not Catholic, but then I’m not Black either. Xavier serves a student body that is historically African American, having been established back in the times when segregation was enforced by law.
Among the many things I’ve learned at Xavier is this: you have to humble yourself to serve others, and that’s especially true across differences. To put it in blunt terms, sometimes you’ve gotta recognize you don’t know it all. That can be a hard thing for someone who has achieved the highest levels of education in a given scholarly field, but the way our system works, most scholars don’t learn how to be great teachers in graduate school. If you want to be a great teacher, you have to humble yourself and learn some more. Our white faculty in particular have extra work to do when it comes to teaching Black students. They are navigating and communicating across cultural differences, which can be tricky. This requires humility.
And if we need humility in order to reach other humans, how much more humility is needed to serve our more-than-human kin with whom we share this planet, our fellow constituents of Gaia?
How much more humility is needed to serve our more-than-human kin? (Image of forest stewards maintaining a green ecotourism alley in Benin from Padonou Dotou via Wikipedia)
Practicing Humility
Humility, like all virtues,3 is a capacity that must be developed with practice. Symbolic rituals can be a way of editing our scripts to shift our habitual behaviors. In other words, symbolic humility can lead to real humility, but only if a genuine desire is there.
Among symbolic rituals of humility, a striking example is the Christian practice of washing feet. When a mighty archbishop washes the feet of a prisoner, is he doing it to remind himself of the value of humility? The story of Jesus washing his disciple’s feet suggests that’s the intent. My question for the Gaian community is this: What symbolic rituals might remind us of the requisite humility in our role to serve Gaia and her constituents?
Cleaning up trash comes to mind, particularly other people’s trash. It’s a pain — literally! All that bending and reaching can make my back ache. It’s dirty work, and some might find it demeaning, but it’s also a good reminder. Those discarded plastic bottles and styrofoam cups? That’s my society’s junk. If I don’t clean it up, who will? Trash clean-ups aren’t usually framed as rituals, but perhaps they should be. Perhaps they’d be more powerful if we asked the land for forgiveness. Of course, this is just one idea. I’d love to hear yours.
A ritual of humility? Are there others you’d add? (Image from Alfo Medeiros via Pexels)
Endnotes
1) If you listen to the Earth Eclectic radio hour (see episode 25), you may already know about the new album from Argentinian band El Compost del Sistema. It’s called Humusapiens, a play on words that works in both English and Spanish. And indeed, many of their lyrics reflect a humble, Gaian perspective. Recommended!
2) The quotation is from one of my favorites, The Book of the New Sun by the late Gene Wolfe.
3) Virtue ethics is a philosophical approach that emphasizes the importance of character. Living an ethical life requires developing virtues. This is in contrast to other systems that rely on codes of conduct or divine authority. It’s my instinct that Aristotle was onto something here. I’m hopeful this reflection might prompt our community to begin developing a Gaian system of virtue ethics.
