Let's be honest. The things the article is talking about are largely a reflection of people's demands. The type of people who are looking for self help are clearly not looking for lessons in humility. There is a type of person who would experience problems in their life from not having enough humility. Maybe the number of these people who experience enough personal problems to seek self help has gone down. Perhaps this means that our society has actually become more humble, since there isn't a demand for the value anymore. Or maybe it means that people without humility simply don't experience as many problems anymore? Or maybe a lack of humility would prevent you from seeking self help in the first place. You see these statistics could go many ways depending on how you want to interpret them.
The reduction of 'humility'/'humbleness' was across a broad sample of books, not only the self-help section, and was part of a broader study [1] describing the down-trend in many words associated with virtue.
You can indeed interpret these statistics in many ways, but you first need to know the statistics.
Comments
Let's be honest. The things the article is talking about are largely a reflection of people's demands. The type of people who are looking for self help are clearly not looking for lessons in humility. There is a type of person who would experience problems in their life from not having enough humility. Maybe the number of these people who experience enough personal problems to seek self help has gone down. Perhaps this means that our society has actually become more humble, since there isn't a demand for the value anymore. Or maybe it means that people without humility simply don't experience as many problems anymore? Or maybe a lack of humility would prevent you from seeking self help in the first place. You see these statistics could go many ways depending on how you want to interpret them.
The reduction of 'humility'/'humbleness' was across a broad sample of books, not only the self-help section, and was part of a broader study [1] describing the down-trend in many words associated with virtue.
You can indeed interpret these statistics in many ways, but you first need to know the statistics.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254336923_The_cultu...
Thank you for pointing this out.