Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Pride


"Pride is excessive belief in one's own abilities, that interferes with the individuals recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity."
From
here


For most of my life people have tried to teach me that pride is bad. If I display confidence it is regarded as arrogance, if I refuse to loose it is considered overly competitive or mean. I disagree. See we have been flooded with the ideals of the seven deadly sins, or even more recently with the negative side of pride. E.G. "white pride", "black pride", nationalism, and "gay pride."
This is being used to separate "us" into clicks and cliches. Pride in yourself is a fantastic tool, do not fall into the trap of a singular ideal. Stand up and have some pride in yourself, your life, your abilities or lack of. All of it defines YOU, take pride and strength in that fact. See no self respecting man who has pride in his life, and its position in the world, would stand for oppression. The greater good? I am that greater good because of pride. I am proud of my life, wife and children. I am proud of the accomplishments I have made. I am proud that I have carved out a little space on the Internet to vent and debate with others. Do I have pride, hell yeah. Is it sinful or bad? Not in the least. I learned a long time ago that if you want to appreciate life, you must accept death. That acceptance led to pride. I search for experience in what life I have left, and take pride in what i accomplish in that time. You may not agree with me or my life's choices, that's okay, I am still proud of it. Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1741-"In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility."
I believe this at my core, pride is meant to be embraced it is your conscience and should be your driving force. Instill pride in your community and it thrives, instill pride in your children and they flourish.
Have faith, stand strong, stay proud.
Jason
III

2 comments:

ReverendFranz said...

I like this article especially, though ill admit the formatting was a bit hard to read. I didnt comment at first because i didnt know exactly what to say, but i knew it reminded me of something.

I think what I take away from this mindset of pride, personally, is that we will never become equal by beating down the exceptional and the proud, not only because it is amoral to do so, but because it is impossible to do so. I think your quote from Franklin (which Ive never seen before) seems to sum it up quite well. Pride is an indominatable and uniquely human attribute, not to be despised, but encouraged as the driving force behind exceptionalism.

Real equality will come, not when every man is as humble as the meek, but when every man is as proud of themselves as the people they admire are of them-selves, and instead of envying them, they will endeavor to learn from them.

Anyway, I remembered what it reminded me of, a letter written last year by Bruce Siddle (who recently purchased the Detonics name and is reintroducing some great classics, as well as some new innovations) as an explanation of his Warrior Science Group. I highly recommend giving it a read.

http://www.warriorsciencegroup.com/bruceblog/?p=12

Thanks for the food for thought, Keep Thinking, Keep Fighting, and Stay Proud.

Jay21 said...

"Real equality will come, not when every man is as humble as the meek, but when every man is as proud of themselves as the people they admire are of them-selves, and instead of envying them, they will endeavor to learn from them."
BINGO Reverend. This post was literally a "vent" over a comment on drive time radio that pissed me off. Strangely it was one of my more backlinked articles, I guess i need to shoot from the hip more often.

Jason
III