This is my fourth and final post on Aurelian Craiutu's book Why Not Moderation: Letters to Young Radicals, which was released Oct. 12, 2023. The first post about why I'm reading it is here. The second post, an interview with Craiutu, is here. The third post, on the spirit of liberty, is here.
In June, I went through Yuval Levin's American Covenant
In May, I went through Taylor Branch’s At Canaan’s Edge
In April, I went through John Inazu's book Learning to Disagree.
In March, I went through Mustafa Suleyman’s The Coming Wave.
In February, I went through Nick Troiano’s The Primary Solution.
In January, I went through Michael Wear’s The Spirit of Our Politics.
The book of the month schedule is here.
This is a shorter post on Craiutu's book. I have been off work and offline the last few days, and away from computers except for when I have been watching the Olympics with family. It's been a refreshing few days of spending a lot of time with our kids and my wife.
But I wanted to pinpoint one more line from Craiutu's book that he actually quotes from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, a Jewish leader from England who was Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013, and who passed away in 2020.
Sacks wrote that humility is "more than just a virtue" but is actually a "form of perception."
I like that phrase because of how it communicates a way of life, something that permeates one’s self, rather than an outfit or change of clothes that we try on and then take off when it suits us.
I quote now from Sacks' essay on the topic of humility:
Humility — true humility — is one of the most expansive and life-enhancing of all virtues. It does not mean undervaluing yourself. It means valuing other people. It signals a certain openness to life’s grandeur and the willingness to be surprised, uplifted, by goodness wherever one finds it.
Sacks wrote that his father "had — and this was what I so cherished in him — the capacity to admire. That, I think, is what the greater part of humility is, the capacity to be open to something greater than oneself."
He grounded his view of humility in his faith:
False humility is the pretence that one is small. True humility is the consciousness of standing in the presence of greatness, which is why it is the virtue of prophets, those who feel most vividly the nearness of G-d.
... True virtue never needs to advertise itself. That is why I find the aggressive packaging of personality so sad. It speaks of loneliness, the profound, endemic loneliness of a world without relationships of fidelity and trust. It testifies ultimately to a loss of faith — a loss of that knowledge, so precious to previous generations, that beyond the visible surfaces of this world is a Presence who knows us, loves us, and takes notice of our deeds. What else, secure in that knowledge, could we need?
One of our children asked me the other day to name what super power I would have if I could choose any of them. I said that it would be the power to be generous and kind to every person who crossed my path. That really is a super power.
The next day, I was talking with that same child about social dynamics within their friend group, and encouraged this child to be more confident in themselves but to also think less about themselves, and more about others.
Craiutu writes that all of this is tied up closely with what it means to be a moderate.
There is a close relationship between moderation, modesty, epistemic humility, meekness, and happiness that is not always properly recognized. Our ability to cherish the little joys of life, our openness to cheerfulness, the capacity to enjoy the beauty and poetry of life, and experience true friendship, all of this all depends, to some degree, on cultivating the virtue of moderation.
... For the true and only greatness of humanity depends on -- and is linked to -- finding the middle between extremes and knowing how to remain attached to it. (163)
See you next week for the first post on Neil Postman's classic: Amusing Ourselves to Death