Hubris will be your downfall

I have noticed that hubris rarely announces itself.
It does not arrive with a trumpet or a villain’s laugh.
It comes quietly, dressed as confidence, speaking the language of experience.

It says: I’ve been here before.
It says: I know how this ends.
And slowly, without asking permission, it replaces listening.

In the hills, arrogance is punished quickly. A man who believes he has mastered a trail stops watching the stones beneath his feet. He stops checking the sky. He assumes the weather will behave today because it behaved yesterday. The mountain does not argue with him. It simply lets him fall.

Civilisation, unfortunately, is more forgiving. It allows hubris to compound.

We praise certainty. We reward loudness. We promote those who speak without hesitation and punish those who pause. Over time, we begin to confuse decisiveness with depth, and repetition with truth. The danger is not that people are wrong—it is that they stop believing they can be wrong.

Hubris is a closing of doors.

It is the moment curiosity is replaced by narrative. The moment questions become inconveniences. The moment disagreement is interpreted as disrespect. Once this happens, learning stops—not because information is unavailable, but because it is unwelcome.

I have seen this in organisations more than anywhere else.

A system works once, then twice, then ten times. Success hardens into doctrine. What began as an experiment becomes an identity. Soon, the system is no longer serving reality; reality is being bent to justify the system. Metrics are adjusted. Signals are ignored. People who point out cracks are labelled pessimists.

This is how collapse begins—not with failure, but with success that goes unquestioned.

Hubris thrives on memory. It says: Look how far we’ve come.
Wisdom, on the other hand, lives in the present tense. It asks: What is changing right now?

There is something deeply human about overestimating our permanence. We forget that most things in history did not end because they were attacked, but because they became rigid. Rivers that stop moving become swamps. Minds that stop moving become prisons.

The cruel irony is that hubris often grows from genuine competence. Beginners are careful. Experts are reckless. The more you know, the easier it is to mistake familiarity for understanding.

In Indian households, elders used to say: “Zyada tez mat bano.”
Don’t be too clever.
Not because cleverness is bad—but because it tempts you into skipping the essential act of paying attention.

Paying attention is slow. It is uncomfortable. It forces you to notice things that do not flatter you.

Hubris avoids this by outsourcing responsibility—to tradition, to authority, to technology, to ideology. Once something else is blamed or worshipped, the self is no longer accountable. And without accountability, there is no correction—only escalation.

That is why hubris is always dramatic in hindsight and invisible in the moment.

No one says, “This is where I became arrogant.”
They say, “This is where I stopped listening.”

The antidote is not humility in the performative sense. Bowing, disclaimers, and polite self-doubt are often just hubris in softer clothing. Real humility is structural. It is building systems that assume error. It is surrounding yourself with people who can say “no” without fear. It is returning, again and again, to first principles—even when they threaten your reputation.

In the mountains, survival depends on a simple truth:
You do not win against nature. You cooperate with it.

Life works the same way.

The moment you believe you have outgrown correction, you are already on borrowed time. The fall may not be immediate. It may even be comfortable for a while. But gravity is patient, and so is truth.

Hubris will not shout you down.
It will nod politely while you walk past the last warning sign.

And when the ground gives way, you will realise—too late—that confidence was never the problem.

It was the certainty.