Those who follow my work know that, in my view, one of the deepest roots of human suffering and misery is what I call “internalised humiliation”: the belief that we are small, insignificant, and powerless- and, consequently, that other human beings are too. This belief is often imposed upon us and operates unconsciously. Internalised humiliation is a profound human problem, taking countless forms and producing an extraordinary variety of consequences and suffering.
One of the most common ways it reveals itself is through self-effacement.
By self-effacement, I mean seeing yourself as weak or insignificant while giving someone else so much importance, authority, and weight that you begin to surrender your own reason and agency to them.
Look around you. One person turns a king, prince, or artist into an idol and worships him. Another makes Nietzsche the answer to everything. A third clings to Rumi. For a fourth, Buddha has become almost a god, while a fifth cannot stop chanting, “Marx, Marx, Marx.” Many of these people produce no ideas of their own, hold few genuinely independent views, and do not even grant themselves the courage to create, criticise, or innovate. Deep down, they do not consider themselves worthy of having, let alone expressing, an opinion of their own. That is self-effacement.
My friend, let us assume that the person you admire really is good, great, influential, important- everything you say they are. Fine. But for a moment, take your eyes off them and ask yourself: Who are you? What do you have to say to the world? What is your own weight? Where is your place? What is your contribution?
If that person is not truly as great or influential as you imagine, then perhaps it is your own judgement that needs to be examined. And if they genuinely are important and influential, ask yourself another question: What made them important? How did they become influential?
You will find that influential people, too, learned from others and were shaped by those who came before them. But they did not stop at being influenced. They did not hand their minds over to someone else. They were not intimidated by one person or intellectually captivated into submission by another. They gave themselves permission to think, to doubt, to criticise, to change things, and to create new ideas, methods, or ways of being. They learned from others, but they did not become photocopies of them.
It was through precisely this courage and self-belief that they did something new, said something new, opened a new path and, in the words of Hafez, dared to “break open the roof of heaven and cast a new design.”
Had they merely imitated the thoughts and paths of others- or turned someone into an idol to be worshipped- they would have become little more than faded, tedious copies of somebody else: one among thousands upon thousands, all imitating, all repeating, all replicas of one another.
What is particularly interesting is what happens when you speak to some of these people. The moment they see you question a certain claim or express a view different from the person they admire, they do not ask for your reasons. They do not stop to consider your argument. Instead, they immediately say: “Who are you to have an opinion?” Or: “Who are you to disagree with so-and-so?”
Their self-effacement has become so deeply rooted and self-evident that they cannot even comprehend another person’s confidence in their own capacity to think. What they are really telling you, without saying it outright, is: Who are people like you and me to do such things? Be like me. Be like everyone else. Follow. Imitate. Consider yourself too small to question, criticise, or think for yourself.
To borrow an image from Rumi, they see through the distorted vision of ahvaliyat- double vision. They imagine that a person must first become “somebody” before earning the right to have an original thought, as though an important person first becomes important and only afterwards creates something of value. As though Ferdowsi had to become Ferdowsi before he could write the Shahnameh! As though Buddha first had to become a great and influential figure before daring to challenge the intellectual and spiritual traditions of his time and propose another path!
But the reality is the other way around: People become “somebody” by thinking, creating, questioning, taking risks, and opening new paths. So read. Learn. Let great minds influence you. You may even fall in love with an idea. But never hand your mind over to anyone. No human being is so great that you should surrender your right to think in their presence. Learn from othersbut don’t be a photocopy.
Read more in The Tightrope Walker
A book by Sasan Habibvand
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