How are you visible?
It was a question that at first perplexed contemporary artist Rebekah Modrak. “Can’t you see me? I’m right here beside you,” she thought.
But the concept — of making one’s self “visible” — soon crept in and took hold of the artists and academics in the university circles in which Modrak exists. She watched as the value placed on visibility and entrepreneurship began to outpace actual achievement.
This “self-promotion ethos,” as she describes it, is not unique to the university world. People of all sorts are increasingly under pressure to put themself out there, to cultivate a personal brand — to market their manufactured alter ego.
Where, in this culture of shameless self-promotion, does humility fit?
To answer this question, Modrak and her colleague, Jamie Vander Broek, put together a book, “Radical Humility: Essays on Ordinary Acts.”
Both Modrak and Vander Broek work at the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art & Design, Modrak as an art professor and Vander Broek as a librarian.
Their book, released earlier this month from Belt Publishing, is a collection of 20 essays, each with its own take on humility.
“Humility is a state of awareness that frees us from centering ourselves.”
Advice and personal stories involving different aspects of humility are offered from the perspectives of journalists, artists, marketers, psychologists and philosophers, among others.
Modrak recently spoke with Street Roots about their book and the concept of humility from her home in Ann Arbor.
Emily Green: There are various uses of the word humility. So first, can you define for our readers the essence of its meaning that you think is most prevalent in “Radical Humility”?
Rebekah Modrak: I think every author in the book has a different interest in humility, or a different attribute that they’re interested in.
The one I tend to turn towards the most is from psychologist Jennifer Wright, who talks about the gravitational pool that we’re all at the center of because our own needs, desires and beliefs are the most relevant to each of us — because we’re aware of them constantly. She described that part of the key to living an ethical life is to reframe this universe so that our needs are just one set in this gigantic interconnected universe. Humility is a state of awareness that frees us from centering ourselves. One of the things I love about that definition is that it’s not fixed.
Humility, in her terms, is something that you can potentially enter into and out of. (It’s not as if) one day, you reach your humble state, and then you exist in that state forever after. There’s a constant sort of ebb and flow as you’re reframing your identity and your own needs.
Green: Your personal essay in this book is about the time you spent in the small town of Aurora, Nebraska. You went away from the university world, where the idea of visibility is front and center, and to a place where people were content to leave the room without having ever announced their status or accolades. I saw a parallel between that and the essay by Lynette Clements, called “Journalism in an Era of Likes, Follows and Shares.”
It seems like the value placed on visibility has really pushed us away, in many ways, from the value of humility. And I was wondering, since your trip to Nebraska and editing this book, if you’ve found any ways to incorporate a degree of humility in your response to that ever-present pressure to promote yourself?
Modrak: One of the things I’ve learned is to draw from experiences that are grounded in real meaning. For me, that exists in loving the process of making work or doing something that I love and the discoveries I encounter, or with my experience in Nebraska, of spending time with people, being outdoors — even in the grocery store where, compared to Ann Arbor, choices were limited.
But I really came to love that in Aurora, and I loved the shift in attention from (the status symbol in Ann Arbor of) what we got at the grocery store to having a potluck dinner with friends outside, and it not really mattering what we ate, and just really enjoying what everybody made because it was something they had managed to put together from the things that they had available. So once I have experiences like that, when I’m in a situation where I am sort of exposed to this call to promote ourselves, or sense of status through other aspects of our lives, like shopping or some of the other things that happen in Ann Arbor, I can always go back to what those experiences are, and they really remind me of what matters, and it’s kind of easy to shrug off all of the other stuff.
Green: Why is examining the idea of humility important at this time?
Modrak: When we started this project, Donald Trump was just starting his candidacy for president, and all of the tweets were beginning, a lot of the insults to different communities. And we really saw humility as necessary in response to that. There’s an amazing poet, Dr. Gloria House in Detroit, who talks about — in light of autocrats like that or problematic systems — the one thing that’s necessary to do is to rebel against those and to find ways to advocate against them. But another thing she said, that’s really necessary, is to think about what you want to replace those with, and what are the ethical values that you would replace those with?
When I was encountering some of the issues around “visibility” and status at the university, and also looking at the national politics, that was the question we were asking: What would we replace these with? And who are the models that we want to look toward?
Along this project, we kept thinking, what’s going to happen if Donald Trump isn’t reelected? Is it going to immediately cease to be necessary to think about this? And what we found is it really hasn’t been, even though we have a more ethical president in office right now, there’s still so many other issues, about leadership, how institutions are run, acknowledging mistakes, so it just continues to be even more relevant.
Green: A recurring theme in the book was having the humility to admit when you don’t fully understand something, especially when you’re debating somebody with an opposing viewpoint. And (New York Times columnist) Charles Blow’s essay in your book really got at this. He asked readers to think about what it can mean to just be open enough and humble enough to listen to someone you disagree with. His example was President Lincoln and his conversation with Frederick Douglass. And he described Donald Trump as being the antithesis to that because Trump doesn’t listen to people he disagrees with. But if you’re a liberal person who voted against Trump, do you think there’s something to be gained from listening to an avid Trump supporter?
Modrak: I do think everybody has something to say. I think avid Trump supporters, there’s probably a lot I disagree with and a lot, I probably know from the outset, is going to be inaccurate, because I think Trump tells them a lot of untruths and really encourages conspiracy theories. But at the same time, people have broader lives than that, and they have goals and aspirations and fears that are completely legitimate, that may have encountered different influences along the way, and maybe it’s been healthy to have those fears, and those beliefs and desires. So sure, everybody has something important and necessary to listen to.
I do identify with liberal politics, but I will say that a lot of the issues I’ve encountered in my own life, for example, at the university, where I saw a lot of people fail to acknowledge mistakes — those were presumably liberals also. And recently, for example in Ann Arbor, there’s been a huge open schools debate, and I’ve seen a lot of people in my community start to refer to teachers as public servants, and tell them because they’re taxpayers, they get to tell the teachers when to go back to work and behaviors like that, that I find really problematic and anti-union. And these are presumably liberals. So I think I’ve come over the last few years to really understand that people of all political persuasions fail to act ethically, and also tend to support their own interests ahead of other people’s interests. I don’t think that’s a Republican or Democratic trait.
Green: This book really inspired me to think about my own core values, and how my ego can sometimes get in the way of living up to them. And each essay has a little nugget of advice, in terms of how to overcome that, and for me, the essay “Don’t Be a Know-It-All” had some really good ones, such as always asking a question before offering advice. Was there a suggestion among the essays, like a little exercise or practice, that really stuck out to you in particular?
Modrak: Yeah, it’s funny, that one stands out for me a lot, too. I was just writing to somebody about that today. It comes up all the time, like yesterday, my daughter was making a pie crust, and she dumped the flour on the counter, and then put the butter on top. And then she was rolling it over with a rolling pin, which I’ve never seen before. I was about to say, “That’s not how you make pie crust.” And then I remembered that essay, and I was like — ask a good question first! And so I just asked her questions. And it turns out, it was the best pie crust I’ve ever had. I’m really glad I held off on judging it. So I’ve been keeping that one in the forefront of my mind.
I think the other one that stands out for me is to apologize every day, and how important it is for children to hear apologies from adults, and that it’s way more important than telling kids what you know, and all the things that you know and showing them how smart you are, and worldly as an adult. It’s much more valuable for them to hear adults apologizing.
Green: It’s funny how much this book comes up with parenting advice. There was an example, if you’re a white parent and your child is curious about the Black Lives Matter protests, rather than trying to be the all-knowing adult figure and explaining it, saying something like, “Well, I don’t fully understand either. Let’s go find a book written by a Black American and we can learn about it together.” I thought that was another really good piece of advice.
Modrak: I do, too. I think this idea that we have limits to our knowledge, and that’s not a bad thing; that’s just what it is. And so we shouldn’t pretend to speak through the experiences of other people. It’s really important, and helping other people understand that their own experiences are limited — and it should be and it must be — we can’t experience everything. So then how do you find out what these other experiences are, and asking other people is the best way to do that.
Green: What are you hoping readers walk away with after reading “Radical Humility”?
Modrak: What was really important was that these principles weren’t abstract. There are a lot of philosophy books written about humility and the definitions of humility, or historically how humility has ebbed and flowed in terms of its popularity or standing. For me and for Jamie, what we wanted was an understanding of how humility is experienced in people’s actual lives — through encounters with other people, through job loss, through changes in their family, through workplace situations.
I look to a lot of these essays, like (Richard) Boothman’s, who writes about his attempts to shift the hospital system away from strategies based in “deny and defend” and to apologize for mistakes, when I need a reminder that there are people out there who are trying to change the system who are trying to hold institutions accountable. What’s also really valuable that exists in an essay like that in terms of a larger institution, also exists, for example, in an essay, like from Kevin Em, where he talks about his experience as a cook and what it’s like for someone to come over to him and show him, “Here’s how you can clean your knife a little bit better,” and being open for that, how it creates a culture that’s really meaningful for him compared to the tech industry that he came from.
For me, it’s the specifics; they are not just abstract theories, but are lived practice.