The Value of Humility?

Let's face it, humility is a virtue that doesn't pay the bills.

For most of us that is what makes it a virtue! A good work ethic is a virtue, and it pays the bills. But not humility. It may be impossible to place a value on humility.

Humility is the non-profit virtue.

We don't need to calculate what humility costs us, or what price we'd pay, but we also don't need to commit ourselves to the strange idea that humility is a virtue because it doesn't have a pay-off.

Psychologists tell us that when we do something for someone else we feel better about ourselves. Giving to someone in need, giving gifts, random acts of kindness - they all have a psychologically positive effect on the doer (as well as the benefit of the act for the one done unto). But what about humility?

Humility does not have the same measurable effect as acts of generosity; it doesn't help others when one is humble in and of itself (that is, by itself). Humility needs something more to be a virtue of value.


Without that something else humility is simply humiliation.