Our Gemara uses a famous principle of halakhic derivation, אֵין רִיבּוּי אַחַר רִיבּוּי אֶלָּא לְמַעֵט an inclusionary statement following another inclusionary statement implies an exclusion. 

Arvei Nachal (Parashas Eikev) sees this Torah idea as valid in all spheres of existence, and not merely derashos.  A person who seeks to aggrandize himself will lead to his diminishment.  

Socrates was considered by the Oracle to be the wisest man in Athens because he knew one thing, and that is that he knew nothing. In Plato’s Apology of Socrates, he states:

I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.

This is not just a moral idea, but it is also consistent with what we understand about psychology. Human intellect involves constantly making order out of chaos.  The existence of language and mathematics shows the human propensity for imprinting an illusion of meaning from abstract concepts to allow for manipulation of reality.  A chair is not really a chair; it is just a lump of wood and cloth, yet every human instantly recognizes it as a chair, and not a table, even if he or she never quite saw that particular design.  This is why, at least so far, CAPTCHAs (acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) still work to weed out internet bots. 

But there is a downside to this constant human configuring of reality, and that is that we filter everything through a lens of what we need to see and believe.  To some extent this is healthy, as we would go mad if we acknowledged our helplessness and imminent death. (As far as I am concerned, 120 years is too imminent for me!)  Arrogance or the need to feel great will increase this filter fundamentally and cause us to tune out other realities. God is broadcasting His message and goodness in countless ways constantly, but we need to set the dial to the correct frequency. If we are preoccupied with self-promotion we will not hear God’s message. Worse than that, when we engage with other humans who are made in the image of God, instead of seeing God in them, we will see only ourselves, a form of idolatry. 

Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation

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