Un-avoidable Humiliation?
My aunt repeated often a sentence that had a real impact on the way I looked at many things in life. She frequently said, with a strong conviction: “work is humiliation”. Beyond the metaphorical meaning of how physical mandatory work (the only kind of work my aunt experienced in her life) leads to mistreating the body, therefore humiliating it, this violent and scary statement has intrigued me. We spend more than half of our lives working, therefore humiliated!? This is a story no one will look forward to living or being its hero!
In a serious attempt to escape from the darkness of this equation, I asked myself few questions, hoping that the answers will shed a new and a brighter light on this harsh statement. At the same time, it aroused my curiosity around the topic of humiliation. What if it is not just related to work, what if it is more about a kind of life we lead?
Starting with the original statement, the first question I asked myself was: “why are most workers exposed to humiliation, and often accept it? The simple answer is because they need to fill their stomachs, cover their bodies, and sleep under a roof. And for these basic needs in life, people support the humiliation that accompanies their work. Then, would refraining from work protect us from this kind of humiliation? Not really! As long as our basic needs are not met, we are exposed to it. Work is not the cause, but one of its vehicles. Without being a huge revelation, the real question is whether we have enough money to secure our autonomy or not? If we don’t, we will need, at some point, someone to help us in some shape or form and, consequently, we run the risk of being humiliated. If we do have enough money, then we can avoid the first kind of humiliation, the “material humiliation”.
Since most of us are not born in wealthy families, then are we condemned to be humiliated? The pragmatic solution is to make enough money, in the quickest way possible, to shorten both the period where we might be vulnerable to humiliations and the time it will take us to recover from having had to live through them. Clearly, if making enough money, fast, is not possible, then either we find a way to bear the humiliation if it serves a more vital purpose, and the clear majority of people are in this situation, or we decide to belong to the minority who refuses any kind of humiliation, no matter what achievements it enables, and decides to live, and most probably die, at the margin of society. This reminds me of another statement that my aunt used to say, but less often than the first one, and with less conviction: “it is better to die than to lead a life of humiliation”.
Through humiliation people interfere in other people intimate lives, they strip them of their defenses, and trample their dignity and self-esteem. The humiliated person starts doubting the foundations of their lives, they are paralyzed by the fear of any mistake they might commit, which could lead to more humiliation. Eventually, this latter destroys completely the soul of the individual.
Imagine we had or made all the money we need, are we then safe from humiliation? No, we are not! Because: “One day he met her and she met him. Then he loved her and she loved him. He spent time with her and she spent time with him. He decided to tell everyone about her, and she told everyone about him. He permanently missed her and she got used to him. He continued to like her, and she stopped liking him. He wanted to stick with her, and she broke up with him. He never stopped to love her, and she found a new lover. He went into a depression, and she didn’t know about it…”
When he continued to like her and she stopped liking him, he felt the first whiffs of a potential humiliation. When he didn’t leave her and she left him, the winds blew his way the burden of a still avoidable humiliation. But when he continued to love her and she replaced him with another lover, and he got depressed on his own, then humiliation started sleeping in his bed, using his pillow and cover and eating with him breakfast, lunch and dinner.
This is what I call the “emotional humiliation”! It is not limited to man-woman relations, even though it is more obvious and impactful in this case. There is a theoretical way to avoid emotional humiliation. You can decide very early in your life not to love anyone at all! Besides the fact that this is nearly impossible, if you make such a decision and abide by it, then you will be living a loveless miserable life, facing much more serious problems than humiliation! In reality, every person, at some stage of his or her life, will live through an emotional humiliation. The most useful thing to do when this happens is to treat it as a temporary phase, to extract from it few lessons to avoid making the same mistakes in the next relation. There are circumstances that can attenuate its impact, and the most effective ones are when the person who is going through this bad moment in his or her life, has few other people he or she cares about and can share with them authentic and deep emotions and get back from them a real sense of love, pride and self-esteem. If the person is deprived from such possibilities, then this “emotional humiliation” can certainly lead to a deep depression and then … who knows!
Humans are vulnerable to material and emotional humiliations! They affect us and make us sad or depressed, because they get to our soul. There is a third path to get to someone’s soul, the path of the mind.
Firstly, it is important to note that the “intellectual humiliation” affects only people who have a mind and use it! Meaning people who have ideas and point of views and they are willing to defend them with strength, determination and in every appropriate occasion. The intellectual humiliation could happen in two cases:
The position (ideas and point of view) taken is superficial and weak; therefore, breaking it is easy, leading to embarrassment.
Regardless of the depth or strength of the position, the defence of this position is not built on strong and sound logic, again leading to defeat followed by humiliation.
Our protection against it lies in our intelligence strengthened by knowledge and wisdom. First we must accept that knowledge and wisdom, in addition to intelligence, are indispensable to preserve our dignity, then we must deploy every effort to acquire them. The knowledge needs to be encompassing to all fundamental subjects that shape the mind of a person. If we don’t feel a natural inclination to acquire the necessary knowledge and we don’t force ourselves to do it, then we will be exposed to intellectual humiliation. As for wisdom, there are no books to teach it. People, with the right abilities, acquire it with time and the different experiences they live. Finally, our intelligence imposes on us the use of our acquired knowledge and wisdom all the time, in all situations.
Money, love and intelligence have in common one ultimate goal: “power”. What is money for, if not to create a sense of power? What good is a love that has no power on the loved one? And finally, what is the use of intelligence if it is dominated and enslaved? Power is applied in different situations and on different things. From pets, to children, partner, family, friends, and colleagues, from individuals, to entire populations and nations! This power that breeds authority is a beacon of pride for every human that practices it, in every field. This power uses money, love and intelligence to feed and express itself and to dominate other people, allowing, thus, its owner to win over his/her anxieties and to gain an illusion of superiority and security.
The “power humiliation” is probably the harshest and the most difficult to recover from. It happens when someone strips you from your power or authority in a very offensive way, and in front of those on whom you were applying this authority. It leaves a very deep wound in the soul of the humiliated, a wound that might never heal. Here is a concrete example that will clarify this idea:
“John is a father and an employee of “Company Inc.”. One Sunday he took his teenage son to his office to show him proudly where he works. As they were walking around, he noticed that Jack, the boss, is in his office, so he entered with his son to greet him. After a quick hello, Jack asked John about the Alpha project he is leading, and wanted to understand the reasons for the multiple delays as the rest of the employees are putting the blame on him. John was a bit surprised by the tone of Jack, and the accusations, but being passionate about the project, and feeling empowered in managing it, he told Jack not worry, he is fully in charge and the project will be delivered on time. He added that it is Sunday after all and if Jack had specific questions about Alpha, he would be happy to answer them the next day, on Monday. Jack didn’t like the assertiveness and audacity of John’s answer. Without much warning, he started shouting at John, with aggressive and demeaning words, from idiot to stupid, through the range of qualifications describing John incompetency. He finished his screaming by taking away the ownership of the project from John “to find someone intelligent and reliable who can really lead it, manage it, and get it done!”
All this took place in front of John’s adolescent son. Thus, this visit, which was intended to impress the son and make him prouder of his father, turned into the worst humiliation and belittling of John authority as an employee and more importantly as a father. There is no doubt that John’s son never looked at his father the same way again after this “power humiliation”. His look has been tainted with disappointment and a bit of contempt. The soul of John has been crushed in its depth and he will never completely recover from this incident.
The “power humiliation” is a result of using higher power to destroy the power of the other and break his/her personality and soul. The only prevention from this possibility is to continue to increase our own power to protect our authority, and to make any person, who wants to belittle it, think long and hard of the consequences of such an attempt. The Arab Bedouins discovered this equation long time ago, even if they express it from the aggressor’s point of view: “If you humiliated someone, kill them, otherwise, one day, they will kill you”.
In conclusion, humiliation is an integral part of every human, since there was more than one human on this earth, and they tried to create relationships among themselves. It is born from:
the disagreement between two people
the radical and unshakable belief of each of them in the superiority of his/her position and logic, and
the deeply rooted need to convince the other of the rightness of their own point of view and the wrongness of the other’s.
This fanatical belief in our position and this relentless need to be right creates a clash, and the only way to emerge victorious from this clash is to crush the position of the other person, by all means possible, material, emotional, intellectual, and by force. The first consequence of this victory is the humiliation of the other.
We cannot deny that some people have reached a level of knowledge and power far superior to the rest of us, and it is a very good thing when it is shared with and transmitted to others. Unfortunately, often times, this knowledge and this power, as much as they make people’s brains big, they make their ego even bigger. Then the obvious chain of consequences happens: for the ego to become even bigger, its carrier needs to make the other’s ego look smaller. And for these egocentric individuals, humiliation of the other is the quickest and most effective way to achieve that.
Finally, and as Yojen T. Veil once said: “those who are using their knowledge and power to humiliate other people, deserve our deepest pity. If they happen to be close to us by nature, then we owe them our genuine and relentless help towards a possible recovery from their mean ignorance and aggressive weakness!”