Pride as Virtue
How did it happen that pride, once known as one of the seven least favored qualities present in human beings, became a virtue?
It was once thought that pride was at the root of the other six least favored qualities which -for the record-were envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth; in our time somehow this sorry bit of human mischief now holds a hallowed place in conventional thinking. Coaches, mentors, teachers, parents, and others revered for wisdom, express pride in those that they cherish, as if it was a developmental boon! From a cultural perspective it almost seems like bait and switch; how is this night-into-day transformation to be accounted for?
Somewhere conventionality got off track, confusion arose over something very basic to our existence. For those who have studied and know about these things it's often said that there are two kinds of truth, relative and Absolute. On the relative side of the street, the side of manifestation, where all phenomena are located, truth is relative, because seemingly all manifestation is a result of the play of the opposites; up down, right left, hot cold, night day, yin yang, good and bad, etc. On the other side of the street all opposites are subsumed and contained in the Absolute that is beyond limit.
With the advent of modernity, what hitherto had been considered to be a unity was differentiated into three main value spheres; where the good, the beautiful, and the true, were allowed to pursue their own ends without much regard for or mutual interference from the other. The true was taken to be only that which could be seen or measured, it not only limited itself to surfaces, but actually came to deny that interiors exist at all. Mind itself was denied in favor of the brain and its chemistry. A part was treated as a whole, rather than a fragment, when in fact it was only a single color instead of a spectrum.
Reason was extolled, and faith pooh-poohed; the evidence of contemplatives and mystics of all traditions were devalued and seen as nothing but the flotsam and jetsam of a bygone primitive age. There is hardly a clearer example of this than in the work of Ayn Rand, whose appeal was only to reason and whose bitterest scorn was heaped upon mystics and mysticism; completely ignoring the possibility that there is a science of the mind. The chief disciple and intellectual heir of Ayn Rand was Nathaniel Branden, who was one of the popularizers of the notion of self esteem. At this point the hook of bait and switch was swallowed by popular culture.
Now here is where we must be very clear, keeping in mind that on the Absolute side of the street the value of each human is equal to that of every other human, irrespective of their behaviors, nefarious or virtuous; this truth was conflated with the values systems on the relative side of the street where ranking is an every moment occurrence, if not a necessity.
Conventional wisdom in the form of a cultural narcissus looked at his/her own reflection and decided it was good and worthy of a high ranking without reference to any interior norms; the very idea of which had long since been discarded; and the cultural and personal liability known as pride was elevated to a status opposite its prior position and: pride became a virtue.
It was once thought that pride was at the root of the other six least favored qualities which -for the record-were envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth; in our time somehow this sorry bit of human mischief now holds a hallowed place in conventional thinking. Coaches, mentors, teachers, parents, and others revered for wisdom, express pride in those that they cherish, as if it was a developmental boon! From a cultural perspective it almost seems like bait and switch; how is this night-into-day transformation to be accounted for?
Somewhere conventionality got off track, confusion arose over something very basic to our existence. For those who have studied and know about these things it's often said that there are two kinds of truth, relative and Absolute. On the relative side of the street, the side of manifestation, where all phenomena are located, truth is relative, because seemingly all manifestation is a result of the play of the opposites; up down, right left, hot cold, night day, yin yang, good and bad, etc. On the other side of the street all opposites are subsumed and contained in the Absolute that is beyond limit.
With the advent of modernity, what hitherto had been considered to be a unity was differentiated into three main value spheres; where the good, the beautiful, and the true, were allowed to pursue their own ends without much regard for or mutual interference from the other. The true was taken to be only that which could be seen or measured, it not only limited itself to surfaces, but actually came to deny that interiors exist at all. Mind itself was denied in favor of the brain and its chemistry. A part was treated as a whole, rather than a fragment, when in fact it was only a single color instead of a spectrum.
Reason was extolled, and faith pooh-poohed; the evidence of contemplatives and mystics of all traditions were devalued and seen as nothing but the flotsam and jetsam of a bygone primitive age. There is hardly a clearer example of this than in the work of Ayn Rand, whose appeal was only to reason and whose bitterest scorn was heaped upon mystics and mysticism; completely ignoring the possibility that there is a science of the mind. The chief disciple and intellectual heir of Ayn Rand was Nathaniel Branden, who was one of the popularizers of the notion of self esteem. At this point the hook of bait and switch was swallowed by popular culture.
Now here is where we must be very clear, keeping in mind that on the Absolute side of the street the value of each human is equal to that of every other human, irrespective of their behaviors, nefarious or virtuous; this truth was conflated with the values systems on the relative side of the street where ranking is an every moment occurrence, if not a necessity.
Conventional wisdom in the form of a cultural narcissus looked at his/her own reflection and decided it was good and worthy of a high ranking without reference to any interior norms; the very idea of which had long since been discarded; and the cultural and personal liability known as pride was elevated to a status opposite its prior position and: pride became a virtue.
posted by charles at 8:11 AM
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