AUTHOR'S NOTE: I reference the AA literature, not as an AA member, but because I happened to read it.
Humility begins with the simple acceptance that that the world and its eight billion or so people are the way they actually are, and not how we wish them to be [1]. For most people, including me, such wishes can easily degenerate into pride-fueled demands. Such pride is the opposite of humility. It is easy to see how world leaders make disastrous decisions because they are drunk with pride, yet the same poison of self-importance percolates through our own affairs, so much so that it is difficult for us to imagine true humility. I therefore propose to characterize humility by contrasting it with its opposite, i.e. self-importance, which, sadly, is so much more familiar. I also propose to use the pronoun "we", both as a confession that I, personally, am guilty of the faults I describe and to invite the reader to similarly "'fess up".
Some examples: rather than calmly assessing the criticism of others and vowing to improve if the criticism is warranted and shrugging it off if it isn't, we tend to take even constructive criticism as a slight upon which we ruminate, sometimes even for years. We self-importantly demand that it not rain on our birthday, even though the weather is not in a position to make any such concession. We don't calmly accept petty inconveniences such as arriving at a bus stop just in time to see the bus pull away. Instead, we demand, at least in our minds, that the world change, perhaps including a reassessment of the schedule of the entire local transit system! Rather than objectively assessing our skills and talents and offering them to the greater good (including our own prosperity), we either boast about these skills and talents or hide from them.
This list of demands goes on and on, but nowhere are we as demanding as with our views on other people. It is almost as though the Creator has asked us personally to advise on corrections! We have views about other people's physical appearance: This one should lose weight, this one should gain, etc. We sit in pride-filled judgement of language and culture, even to the extent of disbelieving that others can have a language or culture different from our own (as with the proverbial American tourist in Paris who simply cannot accept that a Parisian really can't understand English, assuming, instead, that shouting - en Anglais, of course - will solve the problem of the Parisian's hearing loss).
Perhaps the most bizarre of these demands is the demand that people should profess a certain religion. (A special case of this is politics, a secular religion for so many of us.) It is truly remarkable how adherents of each religion claim that theirs is the only True Way, ignoring the fact that they might be equally zealous adherents of a different religion, had they been born in a slightly different time or a slightly different place. Think of it: wars have literally been fought about how to worship "The Prince of Peace"!
In each case, we want to re-write the laws of reality, the laws of psychology, the laws of cause and effect, sometimes even scientific law because we know better. We want to do it our way.
The problem is that our way doesn't work. To the degree that I, personally, have even a shred of true humility, it is because I have been shown over and over and over again that I am not as smart as I think I am, that I don't know anywhere as much as I think I know, or that I am not anywhere near as virtuous as I think I am. At the same time, though, where there has been a loss, there has also been a gain. As I have learned the limitations of my own intelligence, I've come to marvel at; upon appreciating the limits of my own knowledge, I've come to see others' erudition; as I have lost faith in my own virtue, I've come to celebrate the virtues of others.
False humility is a perverse kind of pride. Sometimes, we really are deserving of praise. Sometimes, we really do advance humanity towards something good and true, even if only a little. Yet it is so difficult to own that! Why is it so difficult to say to ourselves, "Yes, I did that, and I am truly grateful to the greatest part of my Being for being able to do so"? In this denial of our own Greatness, is this not also a kind of pernicious self-importance?
Among the more profound truths of Twelve Step Programs is the wording of the 6th and 7th Steps. Consider, first, the 6th Step, the one that says, "We became entirely willing to remove our defects of character". Most people treasure their character defects. We love giving "a piece of [our] mind" to those that violated our self-important view of how things should be. We love sneering at the stupidity of others. Hence AA's 12 Steps and 12 Traditions observes "How many of us have this degree of readiness [to remove all of our defects of character]? In an absolute sense, practically nobody has it." In the section on the 6th Step, 12 Steps and 12 Traditions makes the distinction between being entirely ready to "remove the mania for alcohol" and being entirely ready to remove other defects. The implication is that alcoholism is such an obvious problem that it is relatively easy to let go of, once even a little objectivity becomes available, but these other defects are less obviously detrimental. I would argue that it is only our failure to recognize how destructive these defects actually are - a failure caused by our lack of humility, by the clouding of our vision by our self-importance - that prevents us from summoning the will to let go of these defects, as well. Hence the need for the 7th Step, the one in which "We humbly ask God to remove these defects of character". Given all of the above, it seems pretty clear that we are going to need all of the help we can get, perhaps even asking for that help from a God that we don't necessarily believe in!
[1] Hence the profundity of the familiar 12 Step Prayer, requesting God to "grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things that we can, and the wisdom to know the difference". Most people have none of these, leading to much of the trouble in the world.
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