Humility 2: Follow Your Nose?

I said last time that the common view of humility is false: humility does not deny itself, and it does not decrease our self-knowledge so we only have humility when we don't realize it. So what is real humility, and how does it work?

I'll tell you a secret: I can see my nose.

Not the whole thing, of course, but most of it. And I doubt I'm especially blessed in this regard. You don't need a long or large nose to see it. And all going well, you can see past the end of your nose, which is like seeing the forest for the trees.

So what?

Simply this: again, no doubt like you, I am humble about my nose. Some people may be obsessed with the protuberance, thinking it either beautiful or ugly, but most of us probably don't think much about it.

That's the point.

I can go for amazingly long periods without noticing the thing, usually because I'm looking at something else--words on a page, vehicles on the road, and so forth. But it's there, and I know it. I can shift my attention to or from it at will.

That's humility. I've had a few moments when I realized, to my surprise, that I was being humble. Now, I often ruined it by wanting to advertise the fact. But sometimes I would just think, "Huh. That's interesting." Then I returned to the matter at hand.

If you are humble, you do not lack self-knowledge but self-absorption. A humble person can be aware of his own humility without feeling any urge to publicize it. "Look at me--I'm humble!" is wrong not because of the last clause but because of the first. A humble Christian will always say, "Look at Jesus!"

But then, a humble Christian will always be looking at Jesus, not at his own nose.

Humility 1: False Humility

I recently heard a gentleman talking about humility. He mentioned asking people at a retreat whether they were humble. Some sucker bit and raised her hand--Ha! She isn't humble, or she wouldn't raise her hand!

How droll!

How totally, almost damnably false.

This peculiar view of humility is common, unfortunately: it is the Virtue That Dare Not Speak Its Name. The first (and perhaps still the only) writer I've seen get this right is C. S. Lewis. Unfortunately, many of his "fans" have never read his writings. Pity, that.

Anyway--it doesn't take much examination to locate the problem. Suppose there is a truly humble person. You ask him, "Are you humble?" What does he--can he--answer?

1. If he says "Yes," we automatically dismiss his claim: it's a trick question for which an affirmative answer is impossible even though we have already stipulated that it would be true. That is, we have excluded truth as a possibility.

2. If he says, "No," then he is at best mistaken or deluded and at worst lying. So the only answer we will accept is a mistake, a delusion, or an outright lie. And this is a virtue?

Note that real virtues do not cost us self-knowledge: it's the vices that numb us to reality. That's why we like them. We drink to forget, in other words, though we get drunk on Pride, Wrath, Lust, and so forth. If we concentrate on vices, they will blind us to the guy on the cross and to the same guy not in the tomb but enthroned at his Father's right hand. If you fight vices and exercise virtue, you'll know as much about yourself as your friends and enemies do.

So the fact that this so-called humility at best calls for loss of self-knowledge tells us that it's really a vice. Its patron sinner is of course Uriah Heep.

Someone will probably claim that my thought experiment assumes an impossibility: no one is truly humble. Untrue: at least One was truly humble--and he said so in Matt 11:29! So by the usual reasoning, Jesus himself was guilty of the sin of pride, which would interfere with his being our Savior. Drat.

Next time, I'll explain what real humility is, and why it's as plain as the nose on your face.

The House of Arden: A Free Book Review

The House of Arden (free audiobook here) by Edith Nesbit is about a brother and sister who try to find an ancestral treasure so they can restore the ancestral home. All this naturally involves a magical white mole and a lot of time travel.

The setup is simple enough: Edred and Elfrida Arden live with their Aunt Edith (wink-wink, nudge-nudge), who seldom ridicules them for their names. Their dad has gone to South America with Uncle Jim (just Aunt Edith's fiancé thus far) to make a lot of money and be declared dead. Everyone needs a hobby.

Incidentally, Ardens are dropping like flies (everyone still needs a hobby), and Lord Arden's passing sends his title looking for an heir; with Papa Arden out of the way, it lands on Edred with the unerring accuracy of a cartoon piano. This means that Edred has a couple of days to find and utter a spell that will lead to the revelation of the long-lost family treasure. Plucky monkey that he is, he succeeds, but all he gets is a grumpy mole that tells him he needs some old-fashioned character development first. This can only mean a bunch of adventures.

And it's here that the story starts to wobble a bit. For one thing, we've already been told that each generation of Ardens conveniently features a boy and girl named Edred and Elfrida, respectively, whose place our pair manage to take in whatever time they appear. Then we encounter a nice old lady who is called a witch by superstitious rustics when she's really just really, really smart and does time travel and can summon the mole and--wait, she is a witch, though, isn't she? Hmm.

That's never clarified, unfortunately. The line between magic and really weird science is vague at best here, and perhaps what she does can be considered non-magical in terms of the story. But I doubt it--and that means the author has lied about the witch's nature, which is a no-no.

There is some good historical fiction in the adventures, which is a positive. But we also start generating lose ends. People turn up and are apparently important, but the arcs go nowhere. This becomes especially bad near the end, where several situations are set up only to evaporate, and in the end we get a Big Cosmic Lesson that is fine but contrary to the overall direction of the story.

In sum, I got the impression that Nesbit had a major change of personality while writing the story. In fact, there are a few places where the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next simply don't mesh. But the last chapter doesn't mesh with the rest of the book, and that's fatally bad. So while I'm generally a fan of Nesbit's work, I can't recommend this one.

32 Caliber: a Free Book review

32 Caliber (available here as a free audiobook) by Donald McGibney is difficult to describe adequately. I admit I didn't care for the opening, which shows us how low and icky the villains are. However, after the fatal "accident," there are a lot of twists and turns that somehow aren't annoying. (I generally dislike sequences such as "X did it!" "No, Y!" "No, Z!" "I still say it was X!") The solution is rather ingenious; I considered something of the sort but didn't think the author would do such a thing.

Some issues:

1. As noted, the first part, especially the second chapter, ticked me off. Not my kind of material. However, it's fairly brief.

2. The narrator is a successful lawyer, but he's remarkably impulsive and hot-tempered. A successful lawyer keeps his cool while his victim explodes.

3. Technical quibble: the putative murder weapon is variously referred to as a "revolver" and an "automatic." Flip a coin, McGibney! It's eventually described as having an ammo clip, so it's evidently an automatic. Some people use "revolver" when they mean "handgun."

4. There's an ongoing message that at least some women need to be abused a bit as a prelude to romance. No: women generally want a man who can take charge, but that's not at all the same as abuse. Even pretending to despise someone to get their interest is dishonest and manipulative. I would probably write off Mary as a potential love interest. Too obnoxious.

Conclusion. I recommend this regardless. It's milder than most mysteries you'll see today, and it gives you a good feel for an earlier time, when people were just beginning to come to grips with a major new technology.

Wash Your Hands!

Since I've been virally active lately, I thought I'd explain how to avoid that fate. Lesson One is Wash Your Hands!

Not too long ago, I was looking over a kind of refresher course for health-care workers, and they had a section on washing your hands. It was very inspirational; I soon decided to wash my hands of the whole business. The advice was easily divisible into the obvious and the arcane. For example:

Use the bathroom - Wash your hands
Pet animal - Wash your hands
Pick your nose - Wash your hands

But also

Wipe your fingerprints off the blood-stained knife - Wash your hands
Accept bribe - Wash your hands
Say naughty word - Wash your hands and your mouth--with soap!

The most surprising one for most people, however, was

Wash your hands - Wash your hands

Yes, the sink is a breeding ground for microscopic vermin. So are towels. You should always follow up washing your hands by washing them again. In fact, I'm working on a device that will spray clean water from a canister onto your hands, collect and re-purify the water, then cycle it back into the canister, making perpetually clean hands possible.

I've tried interesting the federal health bureaucracy in this project, but they have pointed out that since cleanliness is next to godliness, it would violate the separation of church and state, so they are no longer recommending washing of any kind.

Politics. It's a dirty game.

Now wash your hands!

Dark World: Angels and Demons

(The story begins here.)

“He was lying, you know,” Lassiter said as the noise of the Better Angel Foundation fell away behind them.

“Of course he was,” Dr. Fleming muttered. “Which lie do you mean?”

“He had a symbol on his wall that looked like the one on that dagger at Dvorak’s—the one I saw in Germany. He also had a diploma from Leipzig.”

“I knew about Leipzig. Yes, he knows German—better than you do, in fact. And he should’ve known I knew it. Then there’s his remark about folie à un becoming folie à plusieurs; it doesn’t, at least not often. He should know better about that, too: he’s a licensed psychiatrist, and he has also studied psychology. He knows far more about such things than I do, though I do know enough to catch that lie of his. He’s changed more than I would have believed possible.”

Darren scowled. “I think he’s had help.”

“I’m sure he has. Not demons or anything, but biochemical enhancements. There are certain substances—hormones, for example—that can modify the body. They are safe in naturally occurring quantities, but when someone tries a larger amount or higher concentration, I begin to get nervous. It simply isn’t safe, and he must be well over that line.”

“What about the wind?” Lassiter asked. “What happened back there? You both felt the wind, didn’t you?”

Darren nodded. “The door opened again, but it was different this time. I’m not sure how or why. It seemed to be an answer to prayer, though, and I had a sensation of hope.”

“So did I.”

Dr. Fleming shook his head. Then he pulled off the road and parked behind some greenery. “I no longer have a plan. I thought Adam might be annoying yet helpful. Instead, I can’t help concluding that I’ve unleashed another danger on us all. I doubt it would be safe even to return home for a while. So I was serious: do either of you have a plan?”

“I’ll pass,” Lassiter said. “I don’t know anyone helpful—I doubt I could even get us a place to spend the night. But won’t we need more supplies before the next full moon?”

“I can probably get any we actually need. Darren?”

“It’s too late to get very far before nightfall. I’m not sure which troubles me more: spending the night outside or trying a driving marathon to reach…”

Dr. Fleming waited very briefly before asking, “You’ve thought of a destination?”

“Perhaps. A gentleman who almost adopted me—and a…” His voice broke off, and he began again, “We’ve been overlooking the linguistic angle, perhaps. He could be a great help. He lives just outside of Boston—if he’s not abroad somewhere.”

“Beans for breakfast it is,” Dr. Fleming muttered as he pulled back onto the road.

Next: Good Morning, Beantown

Dark World: The Specimen Speaks

(The story begins here.)

“I still don’t know what’s going on,” Lassiter said, “but I am beginning to figure out who I can trust. Fleming and Christopher, here, have had some success getting my problem under control, and they don’t treat me like part of a freak show. And Christopher says there’s a real world out there that calls to something inside me, which is certainly how it feels.

“But you—I’d really like to believe you, and I’m finally starting to realize that’s a bad sign. Besides, you sound like some people I ran across a while back. Kennen Sie den Herr Manfred Althaus?”

Dr. Newman smiled. “I am afraid that German is not one of my accomplishments, sir. I am merely an American.”

Dr. Fleming touched Lassiter’s arm. “Perhaps this was ill-considered. I know you are very busy, Adam, and it wouldn’t be worth the trouble to work against whatever personality conflict has arisen here. We’ll keep in touch, and I’m sure we shall seek your advice in the near future.”

Dr. Newman’s smile changed almost imperceptibly. “Your friend is sick, Victor, sick and dangerous. Mental conditions can prove contagious as well as any other disease: folie à un so swiftly becomes folie à plusieurs. I would regret to have to quarantine you all.”

His tone was so calm and reasonable it seemed wicked madness to resist. Training told Darren it would be wicked madness to give in. He prayed not only for himself but for his friends, and again the answer was not what he expected.

A breeze stirred the air, a breeze Darren himself could feel. Nor was he alone: Dr. Newman ceased to notice his visitors and glanced back, trying to find the source of the current. He murmured softly, almost musically,

“En la mondon venas nova sento,
Tra la mondo iras forta voko,
Per flugiloj de facila vento…”

His voice trailed off, and his guests filed out at high speed. Darren just caught a hesitant call: “Ho pordo—porda vento, venta pordo, venu por mi, malfermu por mi…”

“I don’t know what the language is,” Darren muttered to himself, “but he scarcely knows it himself. That’s the hesitation of someone trying to remember a forgotten tongue.”

The receptionist met them just outside the door. She was startled, and the gun in her hand wasn’t properly aimed when she called for them to stop.

“You first!” Dr. Fleming retorted, making some kind of motion with his hand. Darren barely saw a fine mist fly out and apparently strike the woman down. The doctor slowed her descent and waved the others on. “I think I’m getting used to this. At least I’m prepared anymore, though I somehow doubt it would’ve taken Newman down.”

They rushed outside and piled into the car. “Quick!” Dr. Fleming said. “This place does have gates, and I don’t have an unlimited supply of that spray.”

They started for the exit at high speed, slowing to something less suspicious only when the gates came in sight. The doctor waved cheerfully at the guards; then he gunned the engine as a bell sounded and one of them reached for a switch.

“I shall be a man and admit that all my friends are psychopaths,” the doctor said. “Can either of you do any better?”

Next: Angels and Demons