The silliness of false humility

It's fashionable for certain AA speakers to proclaim their humility in terms such as these:

"When I got sober, I thought I knew things. But now I know I don't know anything at all. I can't trust my mind. My thoughts are always wrong, which is why I have to rely on God."

This is all well and good, and the point, I suppose, is adequately conveyed that conceit and hubris must be punctured: one must be right-sized. But that is the point, right-sized, not minimised.

Going to the other extreme is no remedy. God gave us brains to use, and it is an insult to God to reject the faculties bestowed. Feigned stupidity and ignorance also shift the burden of consideration either to others or God. You think this through for me. I'm too stupid to think, so you'll have to do it for me. This is putting others to work, and there's an awful lot of this going on in AA: rushing to Sally or Susan wearing the false cap of humility, because one cannot be bothered to reason, to look something up in the Book, to read about the Traditions and the Concepts, to read the service manual, to pray, to consult spiritual literature.

When realising one is playing the piano badly, the job is not to give up the instrument altogether but to learn how to play it well.

Furthermore, if one cannot trust one's thinking at all, it is no good saying one should rely on others or on God. The others must be chosen, and, if one cannot trust one's thinking, one cannot trust either one's choice of such proxy thinkers or one's understanding of their conveyed thoughts. Even more hazardous is the sally of relying on God's thoughts: how is someone who cannot trust their thoughts supposed to reliably discern a thought purportedly from God, let alone distinguish it from other thoughts? Godly thoughts are not a particular colour; they do not tinkle with a little angelic bell. Thought is required to apprehend, test, and apply them.

Lastly, from the podium, the opening position is a particularly unfortunate one. The proposition is this: I trust no thoughts of mine—except the thought that I have no trustworthy thoughts. That one is quite reliable, mind, and not only should you take it to be true of me, but you should take it to be true of you, too. Of course, if the individual really does not trust their thoughts, they should stop speaking altogether, because the very thought that one has no trustworthy thoughts will itself be trustworthy. Having sawed through the branch it is sitting on, the thought itself should fall to the ground, unexpressed, a foul bud that will never open.