It's completely a guess, but it seems in the last three decades a marked contrast has increasingly arisen between those who chose to practice humility and those who don't care to. The humble have gotten humbler, beyond what one could hope for spiritually, while the arrogant have pulled such repeated acts of selfish hubris that the world is stretched and threatened in all its aspects, from the economy, to international peaceful relations, to the natural world itself. And just about everyone in between, noticeably, feels and acts, well, a bit humbled, a bit more prone to acknowledge another individual as being in a 'we're all in this mess together' kind of a situation. As well they should.

Maybe it's a start. The immigrant has the humor of the humble, but by and large, humility really is foreign. It's exotic, so much so, people don't even see it. They wouldn't know what to do with it, or where to fit the attitude into the economy. Humility is seen as an obstacle to gainful employment, and maybe it is, unless you are a school teacher. Humility is unreported. Humble people aren't photographed for gossip news stories. The derivative market is better understood.

The non-practitioner of humility flare up like the sun spots that perhaps control them. Passions for hating others grow more zealous. One group of 'religious' people proclaims hatred and destruction against another group, and the other responds by returning the favor none too circumspectly. Slogans are uttered. Our Freedom. Death to America. Democracy. Death to the Infidels. Bin Laden and Bush helped so perfectly by their logical minded cronies who preach the humane way they mete out death and terror.

Ever since Reagan, the humble have been poorly understood, if not persecuted. Loving people are rejected for the love they bring, their Zen ignored. The mentally ill are cast out onto the cold streets. Not a good time to go on strike for better working conditions, either. And meanwhile, the humble approach their small moments of humility, even as basically warned not to 'for their own good, economic, intellectually and otherwise.'

The arrogant go on preaching that they possess great strength and good sense, and the humble go on only wishing to know better.

But once hooked on and capable of the bicycle that is humility, easy and joyful to ride, non-polluting, it's a quiet pleasure to know that one really is, in the depths of a person's own being, indifferent to both praise and insults, obsessions with success and failure, victory and defeat, autonomous, not obsessed about 'national security' or other things that involve inciting fears.

One hopes that over the course of passing years we are reminded that practicing humility is good, practical, economical, generous, healthy and natural, not just something strange, a behavior incomprehensible to the mainstream, seen as a psychological failure of low self-esteem or confidence. And we also see the fruits of those who can only mimic humility while really caring not a whit to practice it, developing all the while in various catastrophes marked by the personal and broader ranging matters, being based on error and lacking.

I make mistakes, hugely and often, throughout my own history. That's the way it is. I"m lazy. I don't even have a real profession. Being humble doesn't quite count as one. Trying to be better at it.