William Blake, Satan Arousing the Rebel Angels
Live your life like you’re the hero in your movie. And right now is when the movie starts, and your life is a disaster. Pretend that’s you. Pretend right now that you are in the part of the movie when it starts and it shows you as a loser.
And just decide not to be a loser anymore.
-Joe Rogan
consider two figures
The first is a stern man of immense will. He left his small town to seek his fortune. He knows what he wants and he strives for it relentlessly. On his way to work, someone cuts him off in traffic, so he speeds up next to the other driver and gives him the finger. He spends almost all of his time doing what he wants or in service of attaining the right or freedom to do it. He sets aggressive goals and goes after them. He does not always succeed, but often does, and thus basks in glory and relishes his complete satisfaction. He takes radical ownership. He does not flaunt, except those achievements which he has worked for and earned, which are considerable. He is an expert in his field, and he has made considerable sacrifice to become one. He will not be insulted, nor taunted, least of all threatened. He handles such situations with a swift vengeance. He does not complain, because he knows only he can change his lot in life - his network, his relationships, his job, his wealth. He gets frustrated when others get in his way. His drive has made him successful; while he is not perfect, he sits at or near the top of every hierarchy he has entered or at least decided not to depart. Once he’s made that decision, he sticks it out. He doesn’t give up. Time is his servant. He is his own master. He loves his country, his family, and his local sports teams. He loves who he is because he made who he is.
The second is a woman of quiet competence. She doesn’t have much, but she protects those she cares about with a relentless and stoic calm. She laughs off derogation and dismisses silly threats, but she will fiercely defend others. She hasn’t sought power, or wealth, or fame, but she enjoys each in proportion that they have come to her through nature, chance, and relationships. She spends a great deal of time doing unpleasant things, but never complains. She spends her days working a medium-status, medium-pay job she’d rather not have to do, but does it well, because it is hers. She never decided to live like she does, but she will never give up, not on her job or her family or her friends, though this leaves little time for her interests. She carries a quiet dignity about her. She gets frustrated when others try to intervene in her life, try to help her, because she can handle things just fine. And she can. She never has extra time, but she makes time for those she cares about. She loves her country, her family, and her local sports teams, even though she doesn’t really watch them. She loves her friends even though she didn’t choose them.
pride
Pride is a strange word today. It has an obvious connection to certain communities and cultural/political salience. That is not the sense of the term that embodies the two figures above. This is the primal, psychological, self-referential pride which permeates so much sociality and interaction. It informs so many of the biggest decisions in life. It is antediluvian and pervasive and not too often discussed.
If you’re like me, you probably recoil from the first figure and respect the second. You might also latently admire the first and pity the second. Each is a caricature of a proud person, and each experiences the dual edge of pride’s sword.
While figure 1 may have alienated others, even exploited them to serve his own ends, at least he enjoys intense experiences of personal gratification. He may however, be empty and unsatisfied, or find himself in dangerous or destructive situations he refuses to ignominiously exit. He may have considerable privilege, if only for his ability to overcome the obstacles (moral, physical, relational, or otherwise) that would hamstring his strident achievement.
Our second figure likely has more and stronger relationships than the first. She is able to handle much outside of her immediate concerns, but (perhaps needlessly) suffers for her strength. She sticks out tough situations, but leaves little room to explore herself or the world, and can’t access the full depth and richness of life. She’s a great friend/parent/coworker, and she’s dignified and respectable but maybe also kind of boring.
So: is pride good or bad then? Or am I encouraging a terminally naive binary that couldn’t possibly capture the complex valence of this primordial notion? Is it helping figure 1 succeed or holding figure 2 back from her potential? Does it encourage or delimit self-gratification?
Maybe it’s all good, and we have other terms that better describe its downsides: egotism, hubris, fanaticism, stubbornness, self-regard, self-indulgence, naivety, and so on.
Or maybe it’s all bad, and we have other terms to describe its upsides: dignity, reliability, self-assurance, competence, glory, confidence, purpose, will, and so on.
incongruous tension
I admit that the motivation in writing this came from the buried knowledge that pride, though (not explicitly) venerated as necessary and healthy and respectable today, was once considered a sin. While we celebrate those who have doggedly pursued their dreams and realized their rewards, our putative moral and spiritual foundation decries pride as an outright evil. Proverbs tells us that it goes before destruction though it’s now hard to find evidence of this vestigial moral circumscription. At the same time, pride also seems a basic requirement, at some level, of existing as an agent in the world rather than as an empty plastic bag caught in the whipping wind of circumstance.
Figure 1, for all his flaws, has many markers of conformist success. He’s able to get on in life, and thus weave a cohesive narrative of where he came from and how he spends his time. Figure 2 has to deal with reality as it comes to her, and this can be brutally discouraging to the psyche.
It’s of course possible that I’m misinterpreting these requirements. Perhaps pure humility and innocence and deference can satisfy the demands of being human with preferences, needs, and desires. Perhaps the positive linguistic substitutes listed above better describe our virtue in self-reliance and assertiveness. It’s also possible that we merely cloak our self-aggrandizement in wholesome language to conceal our more basal, selfish aims. You’ll indulge me in including this long quote from Augustine:
Pride imitates what is lofty; but you alone God are most high above all things. What does ambition seek but honor and glory? Yet you alone are worthy of honor and glorious for eternity. The cruelty of powerful people aims to arouse fear. Who is to be feared but God alone? What can be seized or stolen from his power? When or where or how or by whom? Soft endearments are intended to arouse love. But there are no caresses tenderer than your charity, and no object of love is more healthy than your truth, beautiful and luminous beyond all things. Curiosity appears to be a zeal for knowledge; yet you supremely know all. Ignore and stupidity are given the names of simplicity and innocence; but there is no greater simplicity than in you. And what greater innocence than yours, whereas to evil men their own works are damaging? Idleness appears as desire for a quiet life; yet can rest be assured apart from the Lord? Luxury wants to be called abundance and satiety; but you are fullness and the inexhaustible treasure of incorruptible pleasure. Prodigality presents itself under the shadow of generosity; but you are the rich bestower of all good things…In their perverted way all humans imitate you.
It’s always been strange to me when some superstar who has just reached incredible heights says they did it for their mother. That they worked so hard all this time? That was really for their kids! all while bathing in adulation and material rewards. I don’t doubt that they believe it, but I’m cautious about the stories we tell ourselves in the service of our own gratification.
evaluation
The ostensible and immediate upsides of pride are empirical. The ability to overcome self-doubt, or at least the courage to attempt this, is absolutely a prerequisite for accomplishing anything. The world will not fall into your lap. In some meaningful sense, it is pride that allows me to continue to write stuff and put it on the internet and try to make it as interesting and compelling as I can. It would be easier to succumb to imagined future judgements or write anonymously. Equally, and providing a much stronger illustration, every time we hear an athlete or business person or movie star brim with pride over all their hard work, they are displaying these virtuous upsides.
At the same time, pride might prevent me from publishing anything at all: if it isn’t sufficiently beautiful or profound or entertaining enough to adequately reflect my potential, my self, then perhaps it’s better not put it out in the first place. And I happened to pick an example in figure 1 of someone who has leveraged pride toward material and conventional success. Pride might equally keep him unemployed, in avoidance of work that is “beneath” him. It could engender violence when somebody challenges him at a bar. It could keep him in a bad situation for too long as he refuses to admit defeat.
The downsides of pride are spiritual. The prospect that there may be no good greater than our own fulfillment is enough to leave anyone swaying above the abyss in terror. In being too proud, we risk trampling over the moral barriers which would restrain us and keep us human. It is through pride that we might elevate and prioritize our own wishes in lexical order, and so upset the harmony that we desire. The too proud can never be at peace. Seyyed Hossein Nassr can describe this danger more eloquently than I can:
Such a man envisages life as a big marketplace in which he is free to roam around and choose objects at will. Having lost the sense of the sacred, he is drowned in transience and impermanence and becomes a slave of his own lower nature, surrender to which he considers to be freedom.
Is this the alternative to being a loser?
the real upside
The more surreptitious yet substantive and meaty upside of pride, as embodied by the Joe Rogan quote I started with, is dessert. In a world suffused with pride, reward justifies itself as morally legitimate. Just as with figure 1, achieving success, even at a mild magnitude, carries along it’s own legitimation through a paper trail of hard work. One need not interrogate the ethical value of their own glory or material possessions, as in this worldview they came about (purely?) through the efforts of their holders. Privilege may exist, but as long as we celebrate (only) that which results from striving, sacrifice, and will, we need not move on to deeper questions of worth and distributive justice.
A proper free marketeer might object, in recognizing that rewards both social and economic flow from an imbalance of supply and demand. There is no moral superiority of, say, Patrick Mahomes relative to anyone else. He merely happens to possess skills that are extraordinarily rare and also happen to be in very high demand. Certainly, he’s had to work very hard to become who he is. But even the ability, determination, and pride required to do so have no moral valence. He has merely exploited these traits effectively. And so, he is rewarded.
All of this is easy to say but hard to integrate. Are we all really living like Taylor Swift “isn’t any better” than the next person? Does everyone really believe that?