Pride: The Seven Deadly Sins

Arrogance is an emotion which almost all cultures love to hate. Even from antiquity, this most human of emotions, sometimes given names such as “pride”, “hubris”, “elitism”, and “pretentiousness”, has appeared as a force of undoing, evil, and destruction in drama, mythology, scripture, poetry, art, and literature. Historical examples abound, from the view of hubris as the principal crime one could commit in ancient Greece (and therefore its use as the principal flaw by which the protagonist is undone in Greek tragedy) to the mention of Pride as one of the Seven Deadly Sins in Christianity. The modern era doesn’t escape either: “pride comes before the fall” has become a common maxim, while commonly sought-after qualities in an employee include
“team player” and “good work ethic”, the latter of which assumes a generous heaping of humility. Despite having a reputation for being the most productive members of the team, workers with knowledge of their own competency are labeled “hotshots”, typically cast as young college graduates who have yet to come to the inevitable realization that they can never accomplish anything (despite their existing accomplishments) as they plumb the corporate depths. Those in the upper echelons of science and business aren’t spared either; in fact, they have been negatively stereotyped enough to become de facto archetypes of their own, as attested in cultural media as mutually diverse as Frankenstein and “Snakes on a Plane”. Such characters are invariably cast in a negative light, often causing catastrophe through sheer hubris. We are bombarded with such messages to deeply drive home one principal social ethic: it is not the place of the individual to assert mastery, but to serve. An attitude of self-worth is anathema to such a notion of service: one cannot serve when one is secure that his own worth is greater than that of his master, nor can a master comfortably rest knowing that his servants are inherently more competent than he will ever be. Therefore, society deems that this attitude is threatening and must be suppressed.

Society, however, is not static.
It grows and changes through the efforts of… whom? Certainly, corporations, groups, collectives, organizations, and teams all have a significant impact on social progress; one need only look at a professionally produced movie, video game, building, or even a theoretical field of inquiry to know that such things were built by the labors of many, in service to a common goal. However, it is important to differentiate the doing with the thinking. Who directs the motions? Who set the goal? What is the meaning behind the extensive and continuous service that most workers tolerate in exchange for a paycheck? Where does it all
start?

Behind it all is the visionary. It is the accomplishment of this vision that drives the creation of ideas, art, architecture, music, literature, science, and eventually, finished products. A particularly myopic worker may see no vision beyond a paycheck, but he is being driven towards fulfillment of his employer’s vision as surely as if he had envisioned it himself. Such a worker has become simply a tool for the fulfillment of the wishes of others. He is the hand; the visionary is the brain!

However easy it is to entice people to serve a vision, a vision is something that is almost never truly shared. Almost all of the corporations and other organizations that have risen to such prominence and accomplish such a great deal of society’s works started with a single vision, generally implemented through the foresight, persistence, and effort of a single visionary individual, or at most a very small group of like-minded individuals. Without such people, progress would cease; they are the foundations upon which all of society rests. This creates an interesting contradiction: the very same society that depends on such vision teaches that it is inappropriate; that considering the individual capable of doing anything but serve others is somehow evil; that the noblest act one can perform is the one that would result in collective stagnation.

If I had nothing else to say on the matter, I would refer you to Atlas Shrugged rather than writing this essay. It isn’t merely enough to state that society is imparting poor values, however. It’s also important to state why. Therefore, it is to the exploration of the nature of arrogance and its role in social change that the rest of this essay will be devoted.

Arrogance is a specific notion referring to a high degree of belief in one’s own ability to accomplish his objectives. It is a special case of the concept known as “self-efficacy”: the general belief that one is capable of accomplishing an objective, however strong or weak this belief may be. It’s important to note that self-efficacy is not actual ability; rather, it is the perception of ability within one’s self. Self-efficacy is particularly important because it ultimately influences our decisions, particularly in the case where decisions are made reactively.

When one’s own values clash with those of others – and they ultimately will at some point in everyone’s life – the first thought through one’s mind is likely “is this disparity caused by a deficiency in my values, or in those of the other?” How this conflict is resolved is determined by one’s self-efficacy. Since those who believe they can succeed believe that their values are appropriate to do so, the primary question that must be answered is, in effect, “How confident are you that your values are correct?” One with low self-efficacy would likely conclude that his values or positions are flawed and would introspectively seek to correct them. However, with increasing self-efficacy (and thus increasing arrogance), one becomes more and more certain that one is correct. Since a clash exists between one’s own values and those of another entity, one is forced to ineluctably conclude that if one is right, the other entity is wrong. This entity can be another person, a community, or society as a whole. The larger the group, the more momentum its values have. However, the more self-efficacy one possesses, the more one ignores this momentum for the sake of one’s own values.

Since an arrogant person perceives his own values to be correct in the face of a societal clash, they are not negotiable. Rather, it is society that is wrong, and society that must be changed. Therefore, arrogance lies at the heart of social advancement. The scope of the change is determined by one’s degree of self-efficacy: those with low self-efficacy will conclude that the problem is with themselves, since their belief in their own ability is very weak. Those with higher self-efficacy will blame the practitioners within the system, believing that they are inaccurately expressing a concept that is fundamentally correct (“if I did this, it would be better”). Those with the highest self-efficacy have such confidence in their own ability that they frame the clash as a problem with the system itself and, being very confident in their ability, set out to change it.

Over a sufficient period of time, the outcomes of such clashes and the ensuing changes will alter one’s own self-efficacy. Such occurrences cause an increase or decrease in a person’s self-efficacy, and it is therefore likely that specific challenges must be undertaken and mastered before one is ready to progress. A successful outcome (defined as one in which the integrity of a person’s values is preserved) increases self-efficacy, while an unsuccessful outcome decreases it. Ultimately, if self-efficacy becomes too low, one becomes prone to feelings of helplessness, depression, and futility and loses all ability to govern even the self, believing that society is better fit for this job (and when one subjugates his own morals, his own reasoning, and his own thoughts to society, he ceases to exist as a free and independent person). Conversely, if self-efficacy becomes too high, one may begin to think one can subvert the laws of reality and logic by performing that which is truly impossible – this is no longer simple arrogance, but megalomania, and is clearly pathological, as it inevitably sets all involved up for failure.

Between these extremes lies the healthy range of self-efficacy, for this is the range in which one has the necessary convictions required to begin reconciling the world with one’s vision.
At the low end of the spectrum, one only shapes oneself, realizing that there is a problem with one’s current ability but retaining enough self-efficacy to believe it can be improved through changes to one’s values or behavior. This crisis is ultimately resolved when self-efficacy is sufficient for a feeling of self-contentedness; completeness in one’s own knowledge that his value system is effective and inline with his goals. Following this crisis, one moves on to the level of other individuals and begins to express his own values in dialogue, subjecting them to scrutiny and debate by others. Positive resolution of a clash at this level would take place through acceptance of others’ views, with a degree of self-efficacy capable of realizing that they present no threat to one’s own. Next, one begins tackling the problems one perceives within a local community. This stage never truly ends until one leaves the community altogether (and could possible continue even then, depending on the nature of the community), as for the first time one is taking up the problems of a system, rather than those of its individual members. As one’s self-efficacy grows through successes within the community, the size of the community one attempts to change grows with it. Finally, one takes up the problems of
society itself near the upper limits of the healthy range of self-efficacy. It is from this group that the visionaries that shape society come. It is this group that has aspired to – and reached – the height known as arrogance.