L
lemondiesel
Guest
We often hear negativity about the notion of pride. Pride goes before the fall, as an example. As with anything, overabundant pride can serve to restrain our thinking. We can become too set in our ways, believing them to be best and becoming hostile to new ideas. “Why fix what is not broken?” we are likely to ask, when confronted with new ideas. We often do this without first asking, “Is there a problem with the way I am thinking?” We suppose we should not fix what is not broken without first asking whether something is broken. This is exactly where pride transcends from mildly egotistic confidence building into a tool of willful ignorance.
So what do we do with that problem? Become humble? The definition of humility contains many disturbing ideas, such as: suggesting a feeling of inferiority or insignificance or a prostration to the superior. However, the definition also includes ideas such as these: not proud or arrogant or courteously respectful. In my estimation, the former definitions are the least humble definitions, the formulations of those who did not truly know humility but observed the humble and made judgments about their behavior. True humility is akin to honesty in that it is the ability to correctly judge ones ability while avoiding the need to express those judgments.
Where pride would have us overestimating ourselves and bragging about our accomplishments, humility would have us recognizing our accomplishments and our abilities without feeling a need to express them to others. That is to say that a humble grandmaster chess player would not go around town telling those who haven’t asked about his skill in the game, but instead might say nothing about it except to someone who asked. Should an opponent sit down with him to play the game, if that opponent is astute enough to ask, the humble chess player might say that he has defeated many well respected players and possesses considerable skill. This - so long as it is an honest judgment - is not in itself prideful, it is only the truth. However, if the opponent does not ask, he would learn of the grandmaster’s skill through practice, likely through his own defeat.
Prideful people tend to view themselves with unwarranted superiority. They place more too much importance on their aptitude with a given skill or status. They might be competitors who feel as if they deserve to win because they have spent more time training than the opponent, and are likely to be greatly disturbed in the event of a defeat. They despair in this case, and do so unnecessarily. We are all in a constant state of improvement (so long as we seek improvement), and a defeat in any endeavor in life only presents another opportunity for improvement. Pride goes with a pitfall that tempts us to give up on learning things we cannot master soon enough for our tastes, but I find truth in the fact that the determined mind can master any task, and the process of mastering every task involves at least as much failure as it does success.
Pride isn’t always a negative feeling, in fact I find it can be helpful. Even the least skilled person can succeed, and upon success the pride a person can feel may help encourage them to keep trying. It is good to be proud of work well done, even if the ultimate result was failure. If you lost a game of chess to a grandmaster, you might reflect upon how well you did in the process. There are always mistakes to learn from, but there is often an equal amount of learning to be gleaned from whatever was done right in the task before it failed. We tend to enter a negative state of mind after a defeat and if we are not careful it can move us away from any desire to continue pursuing a task, but we should always remember that the best way to learn is to fail. The best way to one day win is to lose today and tomorrow, and as often as possible, and to never forget to take a lesson from the losses. We should find the humility to lose gracefully while also taking pride in what was done right, and ideally a balance exists between the two ideas that will take us forward to progress.
If we are to come to understand the truth, we must face it with a mind open both to error and to success. We must never weigh one above the other. What you come to know as a success, you might later realize was actually a failure. The possibility of that realization must never become so distant as to make it inconceivable. There is nothing worth learning that can’t be misunderstood in many ways before it is finally learned. In the end, it is practically impossible to know what is true but one can only attempt as honestly as possible to examine and challenge the things we already claim to know.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” - Socrates (from Apology, by Plato)
This wisdom is useless unless pride is balanced with humility. It demands the humility of submission to error while presenting the audacity of a judgment about what life is worth. Socrates himself was not perfect, and a reading of the Platonic dialogues will show you both the pride and humility of Socrates, often in seemingly absurd relief. On one hand, Socrates was held up by the Oracle of Delphi as the wisest man around while on the other Socrates considered himself ignorant, a truth which is made a wisdom that no one else apparently had. I consider it good practice to occasionally wonder if everything you know may actually be wrong.
So what do we do with that problem? Become humble? The definition of humility contains many disturbing ideas, such as: suggesting a feeling of inferiority or insignificance or a prostration to the superior. However, the definition also includes ideas such as these: not proud or arrogant or courteously respectful. In my estimation, the former definitions are the least humble definitions, the formulations of those who did not truly know humility but observed the humble and made judgments about their behavior. True humility is akin to honesty in that it is the ability to correctly judge ones ability while avoiding the need to express those judgments.
Where pride would have us overestimating ourselves and bragging about our accomplishments, humility would have us recognizing our accomplishments and our abilities without feeling a need to express them to others. That is to say that a humble grandmaster chess player would not go around town telling those who haven’t asked about his skill in the game, but instead might say nothing about it except to someone who asked. Should an opponent sit down with him to play the game, if that opponent is astute enough to ask, the humble chess player might say that he has defeated many well respected players and possesses considerable skill. This - so long as it is an honest judgment - is not in itself prideful, it is only the truth. However, if the opponent does not ask, he would learn of the grandmaster’s skill through practice, likely through his own defeat.
Prideful people tend to view themselves with unwarranted superiority. They place more too much importance on their aptitude with a given skill or status. They might be competitors who feel as if they deserve to win because they have spent more time training than the opponent, and are likely to be greatly disturbed in the event of a defeat. They despair in this case, and do so unnecessarily. We are all in a constant state of improvement (so long as we seek improvement), and a defeat in any endeavor in life only presents another opportunity for improvement. Pride goes with a pitfall that tempts us to give up on learning things we cannot master soon enough for our tastes, but I find truth in the fact that the determined mind can master any task, and the process of mastering every task involves at least as much failure as it does success.
Pride isn’t always a negative feeling, in fact I find it can be helpful. Even the least skilled person can succeed, and upon success the pride a person can feel may help encourage them to keep trying. It is good to be proud of work well done, even if the ultimate result was failure. If you lost a game of chess to a grandmaster, you might reflect upon how well you did in the process. There are always mistakes to learn from, but there is often an equal amount of learning to be gleaned from whatever was done right in the task before it failed. We tend to enter a negative state of mind after a defeat and if we are not careful it can move us away from any desire to continue pursuing a task, but we should always remember that the best way to learn is to fail. The best way to one day win is to lose today and tomorrow, and as often as possible, and to never forget to take a lesson from the losses. We should find the humility to lose gracefully while also taking pride in what was done right, and ideally a balance exists between the two ideas that will take us forward to progress.
If we are to come to understand the truth, we must face it with a mind open both to error and to success. We must never weigh one above the other. What you come to know as a success, you might later realize was actually a failure. The possibility of that realization must never become so distant as to make it inconceivable. There is nothing worth learning that can’t be misunderstood in many ways before it is finally learned. In the end, it is practically impossible to know what is true but one can only attempt as honestly as possible to examine and challenge the things we already claim to know.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” - Socrates (from Apology, by Plato)
This wisdom is useless unless pride is balanced with humility. It demands the humility of submission to error while presenting the audacity of a judgment about what life is worth. Socrates himself was not perfect, and a reading of the Platonic dialogues will show you both the pride and humility of Socrates, often in seemingly absurd relief. On one hand, Socrates was held up by the Oracle of Delphi as the wisest man around while on the other Socrates considered himself ignorant, a truth which is made a wisdom that no one else apparently had. I consider it good practice to occasionally wonder if everything you know may actually be wrong.