Humility: what's in it for me? The lowliest of virtues has bottomed out in our winner-take-all popular culture. Is there any hope that the humble might rise to the top?

Humility is not what it used to be--if it ever was.

A Jewish story hints at how elusive the ideal is. During the high holy days, a rabbi prostrated himself saying: "God, before you I am nothing." Then the local tycoon prostrated himself saying: "God, before you I am nothing." At that the town beggar prostrated himself. "God, before you I am nothing," he said. The rich man whispered to the rabbi: "Look who thinks he's nothing."

Only grudgingly respected until religion added luster to it, humility still remains unsure of itself. Those who doubt this might ask: When did they last practice humility? When did they hear a homily on the subject? Is humility a quality they specifically seek in a spouse, employee, attorney, priest? The real world is not high on lowliness.

Our communal memory whispers that we once shared life's goods and glory more evenly. Now we compete tooth and claw for the values our civilization holds most dear. Wealth is up there at the top. Near it is the more ephemeral quality of being held in high regard. In the ages of faith, this high regard was conferred especially by holiness. Transcendence was in. Not lately. Now our heroes are sports stars, entertainers, and a small coterie of quite worldly standouts.

Our ideals, in short, have changed. Once the prize was a higher purpose. The Crusades were launched, albeit blasphemously, in the name of God. Such posturing has been replaced by more down-to-earth excuses like national security. When we probe deeper we often find it's about oil or market share or territory or old wrongs not yet avenged. But behind these it's nearly always about ego.

Television and kindred media guide our social impulses. We sail on an ocean of entertainment where ego is king and stardom is the farther shore. We would sail far to find competing icons for adulation. Philosophers, theologians, or dogooders, to take some uncool examples, are no match for the last survivor on reality TV'S desert island. From Derek Jeter to Paris Hilton to Donald Trump, the life we are conditioned to emulate is organized around inflated personalities who are, in an ironic twist, the products of our own misguided creation. The result is a winner-take-all society that has little regard for the deplorable little guy, who happens to be the vast majority of people, who will always, by the standards we have set ourselves, be also-rans.

We seem at a loss to name this mood we're in. Pride comes to mind. But pride, too, is a sloppy word. There are many things we ought to be proud of. The French have separate words, fierte and orgueil, to denote worthy and unworthy pride. This kind of distinction comes in handy when we want to rationalize. We embrace self-esteem, as we should, and it's usually innocent. But how do we measure it? Did St. Francis embrace self-esteem? Ads selling everything from soap to jewelry finish with the kicker "Because you're worth it." And you probably are. But can you feel both worth it and humble?

When the conversation gets heavy, we call the pride arrogance. Nearly everyone has a little, but some wallow in it. Time magazine's Lance Morrow once wrote: "The world's sole surviving superpower, its most fabulously successful democracy, could not be unarrogant if it tried."

One example is the "Bush doctrine," which allows the U.S. president to decide for himself who in the world is evil and ought to be wiped preemptively out of office or off the map. Sometimes we call such toxic self-importance hubris. It was personified by President Bush when he told the Rev. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, "God wants me to be president."

Yet it's too easy to blame President Bush or the other inflated personalities who bestride our world. We put them there. We voted for them or bought their DVDs. We raised them on our collective shoulders. This unseemly exaltation of the few by the many seems to derive from some hankering on our part to pay homage. The result is an unspoken conspiracy between ourselves and the often quite plodding people who unexpectedly find their heads in the clouds.

Some say all this is happening because God is dead. If God is dead, then, as one of Fyodor Dostoevsky's characters contended, "everything is permitted." There need be no restraints. Once, God was so above and beyond us that he kept most humans in their places, in other words humble. Today's more haughty attitude was announced by John Lennon when he said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. To date neither the Beatles nor other superstars have done for the world what we give God credit for doing, such as creating it. The usurpers have in time turned out to be puny pretenders. Among other things, they die.

Humility seems a limp ideal in a pushy, devil-take-the-hindmost world. Lance Morrow again: "Humility is one of the neglected and unpopular virtues, like chastity--a little brown wren of a virtue, unsatisfying, unphotogenic, ill suited to a media age."

And yet, if you google the single word humility, in a fraction of a second you will find millions of references, a mighty footprint for so neglected a concept to make on such a hard-nosed culture. The quality of the entries, though, is seldom a match for the quantity, as if there had been no new thought on the subject for centuries.

Take the entry from the user-generated online encyclopedia Wikipedia: "Humility is the state of being humble. A humble person is generally thought to be unpretentious and modest, someone who does not think that he or she is better or more important than others." It's hard to argue with this but hard to be struck by it. The world nowadays asks: What's in it for me? In the case of humility there are few mouth-watering answers this side of the grave.

The major religions chose humility as the ground on which to build the exemplary life. Judaism expounds a robust humility. Job's tribulations were manifold, but more than anything his pride took a beating. Islam, too, favors self-effacement. "Whoever humbles himself for the sake of Allah," Mohammed teaches, "Allah will exalt him and enhance his honor and dignity."

Christianity is the supreme champion of humility. St. Bernard defined it as "a virtue by which, knowing ourselves as we truly are, we abase ourselves." Thomas Aquinas adds: "The virtue of humility consists in keeping oneself within one's own bounds, not reaching out to things above one, but submitting to one's superior." From the pronouncements of these saints and scholars, a dense body of speculation arose, sometimes as obscure as the notorious angels dancing on the head of a pin. Of the four cardinal virtues, for example--prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance--humility was "annexed" to the virtue of temperance. The purpose here is not to mock the virtues or the saints who championed them but to observe them disappearing in a haze of abstractions when they should be galvanizing people to live lives of wonder.

Healthy caveats usually were inserted into these discussions. We were not to demean ourselves; we would be insulting the Creator if we carried self-abnegation too far. Similarly we were not to humiliate others; humility was each soul's personal project.

Because humility calls on us to go against the grain, divine authority constantly is invoked in support. Matthew quotes Jesus: "Learn of me for I am meek and humble of heart" (Matt. 11:29). Such sentiments still linger as memories but no longer as moral imperatives. If we believe, as more than a billion humans claim to, that Jesus was God, then his was surely an amazing humility. Yet after 2,000 years this virtue remains neglected.

Ever since the early church emerged from persecution and joined the real world, including its pomp and politics, it has all too often failed to practice the humility it never grew tired of preaching. Authority did not lightly brook contradiction or complaint. Perversely, humility became the victim of the church's very success. At the time of his death Pope John Paul II was the most popular person on earth--yes, a superstar, all the media said so. This may be gratifying for the church, but it's awkward to reconcile with the self-effacing persona of Jesus.

Humility shows few signs of making a comeback. This may not be bad news--humility that proclaimed itself would be a sham. Humble people do inhabit the world--unlikely ones such as politicians or celebrities, and millions of others who, without much ado, have their values aligned with what history called humility. In religious institutions of all denominations, humans still try to get life right, including their own self-worth. This is not sentimental bowing and scraping. It is an intellectual self-evaluation in the light of both heaven and earth. Or in the light of earth alone if one does not believe in heaven--there are also humble nonbelievers.

People are almost unanimous in their dislike of the proud. That must mean something. Nearly everyone knows a humble person. Naming names, though, is a risk: We don't know anyone, probably including ourselves, well enough to say who is truly humble. They may even, as the joke goes, be proud of their humility.

Humility has one big thing going for it: Good reasons to be humble abound. If reformers, personal or public, are thinking of ways to improve life on earth, it can't be long before they stumble on humility. Such a new day would, by definition, arrive without fanfare. It would creep up on people. Eventually someone would notice, and there would be an article in Time or Newsweek. The idea might then become popular. Which is not the same as easy, but humanity has not always opted for easy. This newfangled humility would be a surprise to the world, arriving out of nowhere, as Jesus did, who was humble of heart in a brutish and arrogant era, yet brought the world to its knees.

In the private realm of head and heart, despite all life's din, most people have managed to keep a sacred space for eventualities, for mystery. For many that space is vacant just now. The world is rubbing off more on religion than religion is rubbing off on the world. Humility alone may not be the answer, yet no other answer will work without it.

Poet Patrick Kavanagh suggests a modest hope to carry under one's sackcloth:

   Only the poor in spirit shall wear the crown;
   Those down
   Can creep in the low door
   On to Heaven's floor.

By MICHAEL J. FARRELL, a freelance writer who lives in Ireland.