Pride

I want to start off this post (or discourse, if you like) about pride, by blaming society. I really want to do so because it would be easy, and I could take a safe, third person perspective. But that wouldn't be right, because of all problems, one that almost everyone suffers with just a little bit is pride.

Although when you think of “Pride”, the first thing that comes to mind might be the fact that it is considered one of the “Seven Deadly Sins”. Now that being said, pride is not necessarily bad. For example, we can take pride in our allegiance to our nation (Canada for the win!), and we can take pride in doing good work. If I do something well, then I enjoy being acknowledged, and I am in return more than willing to acknowledge others. But this only goes to a point. To become too prideful ventures into the territory of being vain. Being humble means to go without praise or acknowledgment, and to do it willingly without any hesitation. Yet being humble is a very, very difficult thing to do because it relies more on one's attitude than one's words.

Part of the reason that rampant pride seen everywhere is that, since birth, we have been raised with the general notion that we can do what ever we put our minds to. Basically, the main thing holding us back is ourselves. Now this might be partly true, for as the saying goes "being a good programmer is 3% talent and 97% not being distracted by the internet". But at the same time, very often it is not mentally possible. Yes, mentally. The culture says that the mind has control over matter; basically, if we work really hard then something has to happen. But this leads us to having a false self-discipline. It's the same logic put to work in addictions; if one really wanted to stop, then they could. So we undertake tasks that are extremely difficult, and we fail. Usually it's our own fault, either we were not motivated or not disciplined enough. It's okay, the world moves on. But the false idea is in our head that we could have done it, if we had really tried. It just wasn't worth the effort. It can even become amusing to think about, actually. Failing again and again, but still not realizing the problem. Part of it might be that you just aren't cut out for it, but more likely than not a large portion of the problem is pride. If something doesn't come easy, then it isn't worth expending the energy to do it. Although we could, if we wanted. In our minds we have control, but yet really, we don't.

The following is an excerpt from C.S. Lewis's "The Screwtape Letters"

You must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility. Let him think of it not as self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character. Some talents, I gather, he really has. Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying to believe those talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be. No doubt they are in fact less valuable than he believes, but that is not the point. The great thing is to make him value an opinion for some quality other than truth, thus introducing an element of dishonesty and make-believe into the heart of what otherwise threatens to become a virtue. By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools.

If you were to ask me, I would say that it is the most prevalent form of false humility. It's not very often that you find someone so conceited that they openly boast about their many accomplishments all of the time. No, it is more likely that he would say it in a humble sort of way, not calling much attention to himself at all. But the thing is, though the outward appearance appears to be quite humble, inside that person is taking great pride in their humility. For they believe that they are in fact much better than what they described, but by not elaborating too much they have achieved humility. But the problem is in the mind. They still think that they are amazing at this sort of thing or that. By not talking about it all the time, the pride is only puffed up more and more. Take a personal example. Back in the day, when I was new to the Internet, I tried out some image-editing software, including the industry standard: Photoshop. I didn't actually do much with it, deeming it too complicated I settled for the simpler Paint.net. But you see, I still had it in my head that if I wanted to use Photoshop and do amazing things, I could. So when I saw other people edit images, I was a bit presumptuous. If all they did was raise one bar really high and call it good, then I was a bit arrogant when it came to my thoughts about that. Now this is silly because I was placing my skill above others just because I had the ability to use a program, even though I actually didn't use it. Now, it's true that since then I have done some rhotoscoping with some video-editing software, which is arguably more difficult and tedious. But the point is that I was arrogant in my mind about something I couldn't even do, though I wouldn't have actually said anything about it.

Except for a bit of a disclaimer at the beginning, I've portrayed pride as mostly a negative attribute. And at that, one that only effects one's attitude. But there is much more to pride than that. To have no pride in things can often be quite bad. Take for example peopling renting an apartment. Because they don't own it themselves, they are going to be a lot less responsible when it comes to taking care of things and making sure their animals don't make messes everywhere(assuming that the apartment allows, which some landlords found out too late can often be a bad idea). Or, think about government handouts. When money is given to you for essentially doing nothing, you are not going to be as responsible with it as you would be if you earned that money yourself.