Humility vs. Humiliation
February 23, 2011
I was thinking about this earlier.
These two words look like they are from the same root word, but how come humility has a positive connotation in describing a person’s character, while humiliation is a very negative word?
Anyway, I went to my trusty source and Googled it.
I found this site that helped to clarify. I don’t know the credibility of this site, but at least I agree with how they are defining the word.
(paraphrased)
Humiliation comes from the Latin root “humilis” meaning lowly, which is from the root “humus”, meaning ground. So literally, it means “reducing to dirt”.
While humility is recognizing and accepting our limitations based on an accurate estimate of our importance and significance, humiliation is an injury to our dignity or self-respect.
So, maybe it’s about perspective again. A person of humility sees and admits their “lowly” state, while a person being humiliated is forced to recognize this. It seems like we will be humbled either way, haha.
I especially like this quote by Dr. Donald Klein: “The truly humble person cannot be humiliated”.
So interesting so interesting!
February 23, 2011 at 5:35 pm
hi fei! this isn’t totally related to your post, but kinda dealing with humility. http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/what-if-your-reputation-is-unjustly-bad
i like that last part. essentially it’s less of us, and more of him- john 3:30. i hope you’re doing well!! how are you??
February 24, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Naly! That’s a really good point! There often seems to be a difference between who we are and whom our image portrays.
That’s kind of crazy to think about, to be misunderstood by people in a negative way for your entire life, and then finally have reputation set straight by God at the end? I was thinking, man that’s a rough life, but then I realized that was the life of Jesus. O.O
I’m doing well!! I should email you sometime, you’re in the suburbs right?
March 22, 2011 at 11:07 am
[...] everything that he did not want to lose. Maybe it’s because I’ve been thinking about humility, but the phrase “God humbles the proud” kept ringing in my [...]
December 30, 2011 at 9:36 pm
[...] being humble is better than being humilitated [...]
January 21, 2012 at 7:32 am
The humiliated person feels that they are in a completely helpless situation without any rights or alternative choices whatsoever. The humble person recognizes that he or she has at least one option even if it is merely a change of attitude on their part. The humble person has the ability to recognize that there is always a possibility to gain a valuable lesson from the experience. They are willing to at least take a “wait and see” attitude toward their adverse condition before passing judgment on their situation.
In addition to the psychological differences between these two words there is a spiritual connotation to the word humility that its near cousin, humiliation, never benefits from. Humility contains within it a seed of positive potential that can turn it around into a growth opportunity for the person. The Chinese use the same word for disaster as they do for opportunity because they see the loss of one man’s business as the growing market for the entrepreneur. A typhoon or tsunami wipes an area clean of exiting businesses and allows entrepreneurs to come in and operate with little or no competition. In the ancient Greek language the same word used for meek (synonymous with humility) was also used for clean or cleansing. It is no stretch to see a similar meaning to the common phrase “no pain, no gain”.
Bodybuilders are not generally know for their humility but when they are working-out they see the truth about themselves, their body and the their potential to gain from a seemingly painful experience. They know the secret to fatiguing a muscle to the point of failure is to work it until they experience the pain. That is; working it to the point that it breaks down and is forced to rebuild itself. A muscle that has broken down spreads apart and opens up new pathways to let blood circulate through the middle of it. It then gains new nutrients in its interior and reassembles itself in such a way that it has fortified itself. The body-builders temporary sacrifice ends up gaining them muscles that are bigger, better and stronger than before, provided that the bodybuilder is humble enough to have the patience to allow the muscle time to heal properly. Delayed gratification is also a form of humility. Some would call this behavior masochistic but it is true humility in the sense that the athlete can see “Without pain there is no gain”.
In the philosophical context, humility is synonymous with teach-ability. The old adage, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is commonly used among Doctors, Psychiatrists and Psychologists. So much so, that it is a rule of thumb in some circles. The exception to this rule is humility. It is easy to see why the Romans saw meekness as having a cleansing effect on the human soul. It, in effect, turned meekness into a “Tabula Rasa” (clean slate) allowing new knowledge to be written on the blackboard of the soul.