I have been writing a series of essays for Radio 3 about national
characteristics that have, for better or worse (usually worse), been
dispensed with in the past 30 years. These include respect for manual
labour, regarding Sunday as special, not being greedy about food, gentility…
and the regarding of modesty or humility as significant virtues.
Of all of them, I now realise, the last is the most striking change. It is
self-evident that modesty is not prized highly in this age of the selfie,
Simon Cowell, the celebrity memoir, the first-person blog, and industry
awards. (For reasons too strange to go into, I used to be a regular attender
of what were called “The Oscars of the Bus Industry”, until the organisers
received a legal letter from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences.)
I do not claim to be very humble myself. In fact, part of my animus about
these changes is that they have occurred, so to speak, without anyone asking
me, and in defiance of injunctions drummed into me as a child, such as – in
the case of modesty: “Keep your voice down”, “Don’t draw attention to
yourself”; or, if I’d already drawn attention to myself and it was too late
to do anything about it, “You’re a right bighead, aren’t you?”. What was the
source of these injunctions? Perhaps the New Testament and “the meek shall
inherit the earth”. (The American humorist Kin Hubbard once wrote, “It’s
going to be fun to watch and see how long the meek can keep the earth after
they inherit it.”)
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