2026-04-09.2_humility - modesty

humility cannot arise from repression, it cannot be forced or imposed upon a body. telling yourself to be humble and then (personal) e.g. stopping yourself from talking as much as before in order to not take up as much space as before is not humility. it’s modesty. modesty is (in this case) the simulation of humility. they look very similar from the outside but upon further inspection, the cracks and differences start to show. modesty has an ascetic quality and is based on constant self-discipline in order to arise and reproduce itself. in this way modesty is very far from humility, since its focus on self-discipline creates a constant loop of paying attention to the ‘internal’ rather than the ‘external’.

the type of humility i’m trying to articulate here on the other hand has its center in the reality that the distinction between the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ is not so salient as one who has been socialized in a capitalist, individualist culture might think. this humility begins with an acknowledgment and an intention: the acknowledgment that the self/i is only a fragment of and interdependent with community and will always remain so, and the intention to articulate said fragment in ways so as to most effectively and caringly contribute to solidarity and freedom with/in the communities it is a part of.

with these two aspects as a foundation, it becomes clearer why the model of modesty sketched previously cannot claim to be kin with humility. modesty is something that in theory can come easy to a body socialized(indoctrinated) in a capitalist, patriarchal, racist society, because all the tools of repression, force/violence and individualism are already there. the practice of modesty is where most of the difficulties then arise. in the case of humility, the theory and practice must be built and learned in consistent connection with others-in-community, therefore requiring, among other things, much more effort than modesty at the end of the day. but that effort must be dispersed/shared, it cannot, like with modesty, be focused mainly on the self.

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