Don’t do the wrong thing right. “The thing well done” must be a good one.

 Do the undeserving things which you are forced to do, as they deserve, poorly.

The nineteenth and twentieth century created a general belief that people are on Earth to work. The punishing injunction of Genesis* “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground” got skilfully translated into a doctrine of Economy, Morals and pillar of Human Society. This forced us all to find dignity in the work we do, educated without much discussion that we live to work and our life finds meaning in work. Do your job, discharge your function! Give the other man hell! Work, so goes the unquestioned axiom, gives meaning to your life! Another sort of opium for the people, leisure-class excepted, (in times when human labour is less and less necessary in abundant, productive societies). It followed “naturally” that all work must be well done, whatever it may happen to be. 
 


Think again: Is that so? Is it so? Always?
 
Many a fool serves with his competence, energy and a fever of proud perfectionism some stupid industry, wrong cause or a guilty ultimate aim that should be left to fail and rot.
 
Many of us labour, often against our best interest and values, while covering our face with words like duty, contracts, loyalty and excellence or because everybody else around us are pressing us by competing to do it cheap, fast and best. Instead, we should labour only to survive if we must, work only to live better if we can. So many "sub-optimise" whatever they do even when it results in harming the whole by doing a local part too well, without coordination or perspective. Instead, our creative action, if free,  should achieve things we like and deem noble to do within some vision .

Sadly, we know intuitively that from time to time there is something wrong in the grinding, but we are ashamed or feel guilty if we do not perform our technical task beautifully, at quality standards. We are only following instructions, after all everybody is doing it... As if how you own work could be separated from what you do and who you are.

I indulged this error a long time ago and it caused me useless exertion and the persistent regret of being abused. I still lapse from time to time. I love the thing well done! I admire a "pro". It gives one a (false) sense of self-worth.

How do we get so totally "functional" and taken with doing things properly so that we grow servile and morally blind of the final aims and consequences? Are we mere instruments and cogs? Is Homo Faber just a tool in a society turned machine-like?

I understand that honest persons shall do their task properly, in good faith, worth their pay. I respect the toil to survive and feed a family. I join the ideal of building society together. I also understand that in time you are what you do, so that we need to respect our work in order to respect ourselves. But I make a difference between good work and mindless execution. I hate to see good people excelling in stupid task and see great fault in undertaking that serves questionable, absurd and even wicked business.

One can explain, with disapproval, experts and mercenaries doing their questionable trade well, under pretext of "following orders", for fear, greed, a needed wage; but how to judge the honest, good, enthusiastic, gifted fool who sells himself away by compulsion and pride of the “thing well done”, because he cannot help?

Doing the wrong thing as well as you can   – to prove like a peacock to yourself or to other people how skilled and professional you are - is getting used indeed.
 
We should act as persons, with our own mind and personality. Make choices! Do well the worthy thing and - without much fuss - discharge the poor "jobs" we must perform as well but not better than they deserve. 

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*(Genesis 3:19 King James Bible)

 
Morally speaking, you are humble or you are not. Normal people are not humble. We are infected with vanity, small or big. Call it dignity, ambition, honour, self-worth or other names much less honourable, the flaw of pride is a prime mover for us.

Genuine modesty is a rare virtue that cannot be suddenly willed. It grows in time, if ever, when we have to face our limits, by means of intelligence and understanding, through suffering and loss.
 
But you can practice honest humility right now, and it gives amazing power. In time it may become a habit or even the real thing.


Imagine your courtship of humility as the daily hunting of your pride. An easy exercise we can all practice. Soon, it will become a reflex.
 
If you learn thus to catch yourself, quietly, when you are about to be driven by pride, you will, by the simplest of means, harness frustration, stupid expense, imprudent risk-taking, unintentional offending of people, rousing envy, bragging ridiculously, making hollow promises,... a long list of foolish loss that diminishes our choices and so, our freedom.

All you have to do, instead of falling into the vanity game, is to observe that your pride is at work; once observed, you can decide whether you stop being plaid, or, why not, that you allow your pride to be tickled in this harmless occasion – for sheer cheap pleasure, as a treat of indulgence. However, be careful not to fool yourself into addiction.

Detect the many who exploit your pride and flatterers will lick you with no profit. Blackmailers of the loss of face, racketeers of self-admiration will lose a fat client. 

Imagine the practical way towards humility as a choice; a resolve that nobody can humble you, because you do not play that stupid game of pretence. Insult and dare will fall at your feet like the demon armies at the feet of the Buddha. This leaves enemies reduced to their real size; just do calmly the needed to defend your right. 

Imagine humility as seeing yourself and everybody else as the tiny, fleeting, vulnerable, forever ignorant beings which we are in this infinite universe. Mere intelligence proves the truth of this. You will suddenly be wiser than most around you, a Socrates qualified to understand people because you use the same solid measure to judge yourself.

Humility in attitude is to declare yourself agnostic of absolute truth and religion, because if God exists, we are nothing and nobody indeed to pretend that we understand Divinity and fools indeed to pretend that we are entitled to represent Divinity on earth or speak on its behalf. By this awareness you will be entitled to judge how grotesque are the morons and fanatics who pretend to revenge their God or impose to other people their own faith. Humility in science is to draw modesty from the knowledge that science evolves forever and keeps falsifying the methods and the certainties. 

Learn to say: “I do not know”, “It is the first time I hear about this.”, “No, I never read that book.”, "At this point I am convinced that...", "I did not understand" [1] ,“Sorry, I was wrong.”, “Please help me”, “Yes, you were right.” and “I will do my best.” People will respect you if you look them in the eyes while you say these things.

                                                                                        *
Though, to practice humility you need a certain well being. You behave humble because you chose so, not because you were thrown down on your knees and humiliated. To act humble you must have a choice. There must be someone inside you. You need reserves of self-esteem and dignity and courage built up inside you, some experience with pride satisfied. Insecure nobodies anxious to pretend that they know when they don’t or than they can when they are useless, cannot even conceive humility; it is for them like losing their trousers in public.

                                                                                         *

Learn then to flirt with humility! This is a game of the civilised. It is second best after being truly humble but still gives great power, to great rulers as to anyone able to practice the wisdom of modesty, of Chinese "starting from a position of weakness" in everyday life. 

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[1] Read Montaigne: "There is a certain sort of crafty humility that springs from presumption, as this, for example, that we confess our ignorance in many things, and are so courteous as to acknowledge that there are in the works of nature some qualities and conditions that are imperceptible to us, and of which our understanding cannot discover the means and causes; by this so honest and conscientious declaration we hope to obtain that people shall also believe us as to those that we say we do understand."
Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Book II, “Of the most excellent men” (tr. Cotton)
 
[2] The Tao Te Ching, #78, Translation by Gia Fu Feng & Jane English  Vintage Books, 1989