A Distillation of Pride

Pride is an extraordinary concoction. It can make people great in the face of insuperable suffering. It can also make people get too much ‘in your face’ and become seriously insufferable. Pride is perhaps also the oldest-running identity theft scam. It is almost always found masquerading as self-respect. Historians, journalists, and writers have used the two terms so interchangeably for so long that pride and self-respect appear synonymous today. Maybe the initial effort was to glorify an upright commoner’s ‘self-respect’ into ‘pride’ of the privileged; to make it appear a nobler cause for being shot for standing your ground. Even today, a decent, normal person cannot afford pride. As human characteristics, the two could not be farther apart.

Self-respect is the instinct to preserve one’s own dignity; pride is the compulsion to erode others’ honour and poise. Pride thrives almost exclusively on reverence either cropped from other people’s self-esteem or derived from a select set of crafty subjects proffering unfounded and undeserved praise. For this piece, we exclude self-respect, honour, courage, forbearance, and all other merits of human nature from our premise* and look at pride in its prevailing egotistical, narcissistic form.

Normal, self-respecting people can be funny, preachy, angry, or apprehensive at any given moment depending on how life is treating them. They may sound different at times. They may act strange. Self-respect is charming without any cloak. Pride, conversely, is pretty ugly to sport without any mask. It usually portrays a composed demeanour only till it is being stoked. Without attention and appreciation, it starts getting breathless and manifests as a loud, guffawing, bustling entity that presumes there is no end to its humour, agreeability, and knowledge. Sadly, it is good at nothing.

Pride prides itself on being funny. However, it cannot stop being hurtful. It misconstrues ridicule for wit, sarcasm for intelligence, and humiliation for entertainment. Pride seldom degrades anyone in private to avoid a comeback it cannot manage. It chooses a stage where its crudeness becomes part of a conversation. It plays on the oddity that when everybody is laughing, the one decimated to produce that laughter has no alternative to join in or risk being tagged grumpy. Pride projects it could never hurt a fly; nonetheless, it repeatedly scratches the same old scars of the same old people endlessly. However, it is very prompt in getting hurt. If pride finds itself at the receiving end of a joke, it keeps very deep grudges. It is only a matter of time before it creates an opportunity to scar its offender where it hurts the most.

Pride also believes it possesses uncanny intelligence. It loves giving advice to which it has never subscribed. It makes judgments before processing any information and delivers verdicts on issues it barely understands. Pride goes by the first-mover advantage. Taking time to comprehend a situation is being dim-witted and asking questions is admitting ignorance. Expressing an instant opinion, no matter how irrelevant or idiotic, is the only way to proclaim its intelligence. If people disagree, pride always has its arrogance to fall back on and call them morons who have no ability to appreciate superior brainpower and the harrowing consequences they are destined to suffer for ignoring such wisdom.

Pride also considers itself extremely likeable. It has a keen liking for kindness because it is a soft target. Not because it is weak, but because it bears with pride much longer. Nicety and kindness trust easily. Pride finds it easy to manipulate them into positions of self-assumed caregivers and feed off their loyalty. This rut is endless. Kindness has no sense of self-preservation. Once committed, it can never bring itself around to abandon its ‘responsibility.’  It excuses arrogance as misery, ego as pain, and entitlement as belonging. Pride loves to board in such unwaveringly faithful lodgings, tossing occasional tips and tokens as compensation.

Pride’s primary currency is validation, paid and received in compliments. These are very literal, casual transactions. Gratitude is expensive and pride does not dive into such deep emotions. It prefers the shallows, lest someone’s sincerity wash away its made-up proficiency and reveal the incompetence below. Compliments are cheap. Pride assumes every selfless act can be repaid with a fistful of flattering words it never really meant anyway. This attitude, at times, also becomes the undoing of pride. When a kind heart cares deeply, it mistakes pride’s pretentiousness for a safe space to sometimes be imperfect. Pride has no berth for anyone’s authenticity. Inherent goodness, to pride, is a mirror that shrinks its stature. Faced with courage that disagrees, talents that are more diverse, and opinions and ideas that are better appreciated, pride turns savage for its very survival. Harmless disagreements become betrayal. Honest feedback becomes disrespect. Another person’s praise becomes a personal insult. The mask drops.

Pride, in its essence, is hollow. At its core is a void of insecurity that spills out the moment fragile pride gets dented. First comes arrogance, as pride tries to dominate the room and very often makes a complete fool of itself. Then come self-pity and ridiculous excuses to justify its tactlessness and lunacy. All this while pride is scouring the surroundings to identify other soft targets that it can use to get over that misadventure; alienate the kind heart that is now useless since it will never trust pride again; and establish other pipelines of concern and caring that it can continue to exploit. Most often, pride wins. Decency is too modest to strip itself of its dignity in public. Pride has no shame. It lowers eyes and silences tongues by simply being vulgar.

Have you come across this species of pride lately? It seems to be on a mass-recruitment drive. If pride were synthesised into matter, I am certain it would be a gas. It expands to occupy the entire available space, exerts pressure in every direction on everything around it, and consists largely of emptiness. It pervades homes, offices, friendships, families, and media feeds while remaining surprisingly insubstantial. This is probably the only consistent aspect of pride. It spends an entire lifetime recasting one simple plea: “Somebody, please pay me some attention,” into “You are blessed to have caught my eye.” This is also perhaps the greatest tragedy of pride. Most people are never looking for greatness. They are simply hoping to meet another decent human being.

*This article comprises the author’s personal opinions on generic human behaviour. It is not intended to disrespect or stereotype any individual, organisation, or fraternity, including the LGBTQ+ community.