Humility, Curiosity, and Kindness

I aspire to be humble, curious, and kind.

Humility, because how many answers to questions are unknown, and how little a person can know from humanity’s body of knowledge, even if they spent their entire life learning. I've heard that no modern mathematician knows the entire field, at least not since the late 1800s or early 1900s. And that’s just the field of mathematics. Consider all the other fields of knowledge- philosophy, economics, history, physics, engineering, sociology, and so on. We are truly living in the information age. Once you realize how much information is out there, the only true response is humility.

            Curiosity, because in the face of the unknown, and how little anyone can every truly know. For example, when there is a conflict between people, or people disagree, do you try to figure out what the source of conflict is, and try to solve it? Getting to the crux of any problem requires curiosity. Whether it is a problem of the heart or mind, problem solving requires curiosity. Any true problem solving requires an accurate understanding of the problem, or curious nature to get to the bottom of the problem and solve it.

            Kindness because realizing we are all interconnected. If someone is mistreated, then maybe they will mistreat someone else, and so on, on and on. There must be a way to break the cycle of mistreatment and violence. The way to break the cycle is through kindness. As Martin Luther King Jr. said during the Civil Rights movement, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” Kindness and love breaks the cycle of abuse. Economics makes a simplifying assumption that people are rationally self-interested, and in business, there is the idea of shareholder supremacy, where the only job of the company is to generate value for shareholders. However, consider the tobacco industry’s suppression of the science of the harms of tobacco, or the fossil fuel industry’s suppression of the harms of fossil fuels. Should these companies be so focused on rational self-interest and generating shareholder value, to the exclusion of truth, and the suppression of science, and the harms to society? To me, the answer is obviously not, which is a form of kindness.

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