Against Being Boastful: Greatness Comes from Act
“He who is proud in the wrong way or beyond what is right is foolish, for he has an incorrect view of himself; “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”; “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”; “A man’s character is his fate, and arrogance blinds even the wisest among us.”; “The greater the pride, the harder the fall. No man is too great to be humbled by fortune.”; “It is easy to be proud when fortune smiles, but pride is the fool’s mask before the storm.”; “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”; “Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.”; “The fool who thinks himself wise is indeed the greatest fool.”; “For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
If there were anyone to point a finger at that did not know anything it would be me. This website, partially, is made for me just to log my ideas. I hope that whatever I write and ramble on here has some substance, just by the volume of what ideas I do have. I can confidently say that I really do not know anything, and my logs or whatever I’ve written on here are just my try’s at complex, multifaceted, intricate issues. It would be facetious to say that we all get it right the first time: if that were the case universities would not exist. Likewise, it is important to not behave as some homogenous blob: accepting whatever ideas are presented to us because of social credit or our environment. The path to Truth, the way things actually work, is a single street that changes its direction for no-one. It exists outside of us and that is a good thing. A large part of being educated is understanding Truth. We risk going in the wrong direction, like a bad map, if we go otherwise.
It is important to be necessarily humble. How else can we be proven incorrect from obviously wrong ideas and be corrected? Is it good and great thing to move in the wrong direction knowingly because of one’s misplaced pride? If that pride had been earned because one believes themselves to be correct in all things, and the best at whatever thing, what does one do when it has been proven undeniably that is no longer the case? When dealing with ideas we must not forget the right intention. We engage in education and knowledge not because of our ego, our “smarts” or whatever social status that it can bring for us. Ironically, an individual forfeits their intelligent character whenever they act like aforementioned. Knowledge does not go well with primitivity and the games of power people play. If one wishes to truly win, however, and this should serve as motivation to the status sorts, one must be open to being corrected. It is a necessary part of the game.
How do we fully express ourselves, our believes and ideas confidently without falling into boastfulness then? If we thought our ideas wrong, we would not believe them.