On Intellectual Humility and Why I'm Annoyed with the World Around Me

I feel like I don't truly know anything.

Yet everyone around me seems to have it all figured out.

It drives me crazy.

I am a pretty voracious reader and ingester of information. I like to be informed. I like to get down to the crux of the thing and figure out the details. I also don't want to have an ego. If I'm going to have an opinion on something, I'm going to: 1. Have a well-articulated reason and 2. Understand why someone might not agree.

This makes opinion-building a process, and not an easy one. Doing research into things, even if it's personal, takes time and thought. And I have found that the more you dive into something, the more nuanced it gets. Anyone who says they "did the research" and it conveniently lined up with exactly how they thought before and caused them to be more arrogant about it should be met with extreme suspicion.

Maybe it will bolster your previously held belief, but it should also bolster humility in the space of those ideas rather than a deeper arrogance. If that's not the outcome, you're not doing research; you are simply stroking your own ego.

Humility plays a primary role in intelligence. Humility attempts to understand, to build bridges, to teach rather than lecture. Anyone well-versed in a subject should also know the myriad of ideas in said subject. They should understand why someone would land on xyz rather than zyx. And that understanding of the "why" should be the thing that fosters discussion rather than argument. I may not agree with your stance, but I understand how you got there, and here are my reasons why I differ.

Humility feels gone, though. Humility as an important character trait seems almost non-existent in our culture. At the very least, it is not commonly praised as a virtue. You see it lacking in the "thought leaders" of today, where every YouTube video or article about any sort of "debate of ideas" needs violent and arrogant rhetoric to get views. You see it in your co-workers who won't budge on an opinion because it is actually about power dynamics more than what they actually believe. You see it in friends and family who confidently share any opinion with an automatic presupposition that everyone around them must see things the exact way they do.

It's all a lack of humility. It's all an inability to see the nuance. Everyone wants to die on every hill, and no one notices all the hills are made of sand.

I can't stand it. I want well-held opinions. I want discussion. I want to be able to share things without people freaking out or getting offended and angry. I want people to live by the Aristotelian ideal that "it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

I just want people to have intellectual humility and to stop acting like they have it all figured out.

Because I don't, and they're making me feel bad.