Humble? Is That Like Insecure?

By Jeremy Seifert, award-winning documentary-maker

I recently got back from a trip across the entire country, coast to coast….and back again. It was part of a shoot for my next film on the issue of GMOs, and the ills and corruption they represent. It’s amazing how getting out on the road, veering from the super highways and onto the smaller byways, can open your eyes and ears to the land and the people.

Most strikingly in the U.S., there is a consistent ignorance about the existence of GMOs, even though they are in nearly 80% of all processed foods and cover close to 160 million acres of our cropland. People say they’ve never heard of them, as they sink teeth into a hotdog derived from a pig raised on genetically modified corn and soy, and a bun containing genetically modified high fructose corn syrup and soy lecithin. I point awkwardly to the ketchup (sweetened with GM corn syrup) smeared onto the corner of their mouth and feel like screaming at the simultaneous ubiquity of ignorance and GMOs. It’s quite the killer combination, and a win/win for the chemical companies feeding us.

There were many memorable moments on the long journey through scorching Californian desert, dry New Mexican forest, yellow Texas, windy Oklahoma, rolling Iowa and Ohio, and great forested East, but one of the most unsettling moments came during a stopover at Applebees. Yes, those Applebees restaurants that you see in the mega strip malls that have wiped out most things local and unique and wonderful. We had nowhere else to eat on a last minute drive from DC to the Stone Barns Center in New York. So we stopped in for some tasty GMOs and a cold beer, and encountered there what just might be at the root of what has gone so wrong with our food and our health.

Our waitress forced a smile onto a very tired face and asked us what we wanted to drink. After much discussion about our beer options and praising her for the flawless recitation of the beer list, we got a real smile and even a little laugh. She zipped back with our beers, and I said, “Wow, you’re quick!”

“Yeah, I’m fast and speedy and on top of it!” She was kind of having some fun now.

“Go on. What else?” I asked.

She paused for a moment, thinking of what else to say.

“And humble?” I suggested, trying to joke a little.

“Humble?” She looked so confused. “What’s that? Is that like insecure? Then definitely not!”

This jovial Applebee moment had turned awkward fast! My friend and director of photography, Rod, and I looked quickly at each other in utter amazement, as we both tried to explain to her what humble meant, and how in many ways it’s the exact opposite of insecure.

It probably hit me harder than it should have and grew in my mind to signify more than it really does, but I can’t seem to shake it. Maybe it’s just that she had really bad teachers and never read all that much? But coming on the heals of so many people saying to me, “GMO? What’s that?” a giant alarm sounded in my head. My God, this is what’s wrong with our country! People don’t even know what the word humble means!

So, what does humble mean? Without looking it up in a dictionary to sound smarter than I am, I understand humble to mean knowing who we really are in relationship to everything and everyone else. It’s having a right understanding of our interdependence with all of creation and interconnectedness with all of life. To be humble is to know your place and embrace it, which gives a person real purpose and joy and a beautiful sense of freedom to be oneself, not striving to be something else or “better” or “more.” Being truly humble, as opposed to wanting to be or feigning to be, also opens the way for the best things we can ever hope for in this life: love, forgiveness, learning, patience, peace, and on and on. If someone is insecure, in that sense of the word meaning “uncomfortable in one’s skin” and “shaped by what others think or say,” that seems to me nearly the opposite of what happens when we are humble.

Okay, I realize I’m just about to lose you all! So, what does a waitress thinking humble means insecure have to do with GMOs? In short, just about everything!

We, as a culture of unprecedented wealth swelling into unprecedented inequality, have turned the universe into a marketplace, and perfectly lived out the paradigm of the Industrial Revolution. We have used our power and domination over against nature, rather than nurturing a humble relationship together with nature. Our lack of humility has allowed this massive plundering of the Earth’s resources, poisoning of soil, air, and water, and a general lack of concern for the whole thing because, well, it’s our right. Humans versus Nature.

This is the same type of arrogance that paved the way for genetically modified food, thinking that we could do it better. And idiotically fighting bugs and weeds with toxic chemicals that create stronger bugs and weeds, which necessitate ever more toxic chemicals, illustrates the foolishness of our hubris. The conceit behind GMOs is only trumped by the greed behind them, and both of these vices stand in direct opposition to the word humble. The word itself is a derivative of humus, or earth, the same root of human. So to be humble is to be truly human, of the earth, and yet our society thrives on Big Ag food that destroys the earth, humus, which is just an indirect way of destroying us, humans.

Our arrogance has only succeeded in achieving insecurity. But in learning to be humble we will renew the earth, live wholly and peacefully, and achieve true security…a right relationship with the earth and one another.

After we thoroughly explained the meaning of humble over against insecurity to our waitress, she said something like, “Oh, well then, I hope I’m humble.”

I agreed, “I hope I’m learning to be, too.”

Jeremy Seifert is director of the documentary DIVE! Living Off America’s Waste , which has won 21 awards at festivals around the world. He’s currently at work on a film about GMOs. When he isn’t dumpster diving, Jeremy can be found in Highland Park, Calif., with his wife, Nuf, and three children, Finn, Scout, and Pearl.