My colleague and friend Dr. Shane J. Wood wrote a piece recently on Pride that reflects the state of my mind the last few years. I started this piece as a comment on his work and once it eclipsed 1,000 words, well… here we are.
It seems to me part of the problem in our attempt to distinguish pride from pride may be etymology.
When it comes to pride, we’re stuck trying to tease out the dignity of the individual from the distain of others — our collective distain of an individual who has writ themselves large upon society, who has made themselves of more import than any other or even of the symbols they represent or the office they steward. The former comes from a word meaning “worthy” or “grandeur” and has that cognate “deign.” The later literally means “dis-deign” — as in a refusal to condescend to give, even despite an affront to one’s dignity; a refusal to esteem worthy, worth notice. For someone to disdain me, they will don’t give me an inch.
Condescend itself meaning “to come down with us.” Related, philosophically, to incarnation, to beggar kings, all of that. “Tabernacled among us” and whatnot.
So keep that all in mind for a moment as we look at pride.
Because when we get to “pride,” we start with the Latin “prodesse” which is something of value, move to “prode” meaning useful, and into the Old French “prod, prud” which is brave or gallant. That gets us to “prytung” and “pryde” of Old English. Potentially. But the umlaut in “pryte” and “prytian” might mean the word is older indeed. Because by Old English, “prud” and “prut” mean “proud, haughty, arrogant.” We might compare the Old Norse “prýði” for “ornament, gallantry, bravery.”
This juxtaposition of pride and pride, to me, indicates one of two things:
Either…
We have a situation like in my poem where I wrote “Sounds sound out from sound boats sounding sounds.” In this poem’s case, four to five words spelled and pronounced identically in English have four to five radically different meanings from four to five radically different etymological histories. In the instance of pride, there’s pride and then there’s pride, which look like identical twins, but couldn’t be more different because they come from Nordic culture and Latin culture, respectively. The f-word similarly has an identical twin ancestor represented in the name of a modern bird, whose meaning isn’t the f-word — as I’ve rehearsed that in the same ode where the four “sounds” line occurs. That poem’s currently on submission, so I won’t rehearse that difference here, though it is possibly the most extreme example. That f-word twin also would have tickled both Lewis and Tolkien. Tolkien because he delighted in words that looked identical, but had different histories. Lewis because of his article On Four Letter Words in Selected Literary Essays.
Or…
People are responding to “pride” with the symbolism hidden in classic Medieval stories about hypocrisy, masks, and personification (the heart verses the outward appearance): those things that are gallant, brave, valuable contrasted withthose things endowed merely with the ornamentation of office, who have lost their valor, their gallantry, their bravery, their value. Kings in all but crown verses kings in crown alone. Consider for a moment not pride, but beauty in La Belle et la Bête. An “ugly” witch curses a “handsome” prince until he learns courtesy and real beauty, after which he becomes handsome once more and she, the witch, reveals herself as truly fair. A similar move may distinguish pride from pride: the cloak that hubris wears when it pretends to be more than it is compared to the valor and virtue of the true knight who deserves the cloak. Or consider the nine kings of men corrupted in their addiction to power to serve Sauron. Children walking around in their parents’s clothing, in other words. And compare them to Aragorn in black in the corner.
There’s a marked difference between the mythos of the pride of a fallen angel who, as the story goes, wants to be God (though he isn’t) and the pride of God who, as the story goes, is willing to condescend to become man (though he’s qualitatively, infinitely more). A God proud enough of man to become one in the teeth of a fallen angel’s pride: who, as the story goes, meant it when at the dawn of the universe he said, “It is good.” One pride is the external career ladder. The other is the internal reality that needs no brass, no Oscars ceremony, no 40 under 40, no ranking of wealthiest, no position, no follower or mailing list count, who could even take or leave carnal pleasure. The internal reality posits itself for the sake of those lesser than it as opposed to the external mask that posits others lesser than it for the sake of itself.
Those two states of being — arrogance and humility; hubris and deference — could not be more diametrically opposed as definitions of pride. No worries. A similar thing has happened to some words like avocation, literally, lust, etc.
Certainly there are plenty of people who hold high office in matters of state whose very arrogance sullies said office. We dis-deign them. We don’t condescend to give them much of anything. We shame them, publicly, for sullying their oath, their office, their ornamentation, their decor. In same cases, we merely ignore these people or cut them out of our lives. Incorrigibility, after all, is terribly difficult to purge, as any counselor or therapist who has ever diagnosed a b-cluster personality disorder will tell you. These are the kinds of people who either scream “I’m the boss” or who constantly belittle their peers and subordinates, mock everyone, proselytize sarcasm, tear other folks down, even those they perceive to be already beneath them, triangulate, form themselves as the sole arbiters of praise and rebuke without an ounce of encouragement, criticize waiters for petty violations — waiters whom they only interact with once, flaunt their cynicism, give unsolicited advice, found closed family systems based on control rather than forge open family systems based on trust, “divide and conquer,” refuse to see every person as their fellows on some level, talk of “alphas and betas” all the time (which, again, don’t even exist), and who pray the narcissist’s prayer:
That didn’t happen.
— The Narcissist’s Prayer
And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.
And if it was, that’s not a big deal.
And if it is, that’s not my fault.
And if it was, I didn’t mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
But.
There are also those whom we must encourage to not have toxic shame. For we are legion. I use “we” because of how I grew up and went to college around many, many prideful people. I had to learn this kind of shame in my late teens and early twenties because of how at rest I had grown up in my own person. My father instilled this in me. But college taught me shame: shame for my poverty, shame for my convictions, shame for my skillset, shame for the cultures I enjoyed that radically differed from almost everyone else attending. Afterwards I began the long road of unlearning that toxic shame and remembering my confidence. Far too much toxic shame spreads around our society, which is a serious problem, because it keeps us from confronting bad pride. For those who, like me, really struggle with this, I recommend John Bradshaw’s Healing the Shame that Binds You, originally recommended to me by Kyle Welch. Healing the Shame that Binds You is one of maybe ten books I feel confident recommending to literally anyone. We should value what is good, what is brave, what is valiant, but especially within ourselves. To those with toxic shame we say, both to children and adults, “you should be proud of yourself. I respect you. I have confidence in you. There’s no one like you in the world.” This is true. This is the point of Mr. Rogers’s entire career. Dr. Wood should be proud of himself. So should I: in the Latin sense of value, in the old sense of the valor and bravery behind the regalia. The substance behind the costuming. The real circumstance behind whatever pomp the big band plays. We ought to have dignity. We ought to hold our heads high.
The irony of this is that every little boy and girl who becomes a prideful, arrogant, tyrannical mess is someone who hasn’t been very proud of themselves on the inside for a very, very long time. There’s a warning there for each of us when we feel that toxic shame, that shame bomb, that unwanted obtrusive thought. Because those who have gone untreated with the dignity hole in their heart long enough end up worrying about the trappings of dignity. These become folks who are disdained, who are cloaked in their own shame so deeply they export it onto others, often small children, rather than grow into the kind of folks content to be themselves. Those in my lives who have become absolute tyrants and other words I will not use here? Those motivate me towards good pride within myself: I don’t ever want to become like them. And I also hope they heal.
You see the etymology of that Latin word prodesse is pro-esse. Esse as in the present active infinitive of sum: I am. To be.
As Bradshaw would say: you’re not a human doing. You’re a human being.
You have naught to do but to be.
So that kind of valuable pride is to offer your unique service — “You can have my bow.” “And my axe.” But on a much, much deeper level, valuable pride proffers your very self, your very being. To put yourself forward. To put yourself on the frontline. To put yourself in the position of prominence so that others don’t have to risk rotten tomatoes thrown at them. To put yourself in place of or on behalf of someone else who is guilty or struggling. To put yourself prior to any others when the criticism starts rolling in. To bring yourself out into the open clearing to be shot while those you protect hide in the shadows. You make the hard phone call. You agree to the reconciliation terms. You bring what little you have to feed the hungry, fishes and loaves. You bring yourself to bear upon this hurting world, even though insecurities tell you someone else should hold the torch. Like the father and son in The Road: we’re not cannibals who eat other people. We set our hearts on pilgrimage for canned foods and humanity.
We’re the good guys.
We carry the fire.
This is why I think artists make the best leaders: once they get over their toxic shame, they make ten times the leaders that society’s control freaks make. There’s actually something of substance within because they know true power isn’t coercion, manipulation, or playing politics with other people’s lives.
They know that true power is making the possible into the actual. Taking an internal idea and manifesting it into the world as a manual art, an applicable art, a productive art, or a fine art. A work of art released into the world, come what may.
That’s true power.
That kind of pride, actually, is humility and takes an incredible kind of courage. For it is becoming: to bring into being your essence. Come-to-be. Prodesse.
To become you-i-er as Ortberg said.
To stand as tall as you can stand in the teeth of the dragon, but no taller.
Chesterton once said when you go on vacation, don’t enjoy yourself. That’s bad pride. Rather it is your self that enjoys a waterfall, a sabbath, or a song. That’s good pride. Lewis in the great debate with E.M.W. Tilyard said that a poem isn’t about the poet, but rather about what the poet is looking at — this includes metafiction, which is about the nature of fiction making, not the solipsism of the self-inserted author. (I can’t speak for self-insert pornographic fanfic, having neither read nor written any, but I have a hunch that this assumption holds true for them as well: being not about the nature of creativity, it instead grows solipsistic). Even Stephen King’s Dark Tower asserts the selflessness of metafiction, being as confessional as it was. To enjoy as yourself whatever phenomenon you’re encountering is to be pro-self in the good way, not at the expense of others, but to serve others in the place, quality, quantity, position, relation, time, space, condition, actions, and passions that you and you alone can.
After all, we can only offer what we have to offer. In this person’s case, art merged with physics and engineering:
And we proffer our unique selves for the sake of others. We’re pro-esse. Prodesse.
Pride.
In the good way.
As Ethan Hawke, the actor and author, said in his Rules for a Knight:
Never pretend you are not a knight or attempt to diminish yourself because you deem it will make others more comfortable. We show others the most respect by offering the best of ourselves.
Arrogance is born of insecurity. Pride is different. It is born of dignity, self-worth, and self-respect. We all see the world through the prism of our identity. If our self-worth is low, it affect everything we do. The point of life is to contribute to others, but without a certain self-regard, it is sometimes difficult to make breakfast.
A knight takes pride in his handwriting. He keeps careful track of his saddle, his boots, and his weapons. He cleans and cares for his tools, animals, and his person. He carries his own bags. The laces of his boots are strapped tight.
Always prompt, a knight is not casual with the time of others. A knight is the best kind of servant, leaving every space he enters brighter and cleaner than when he arrived. His surroundings reflect his state of mind.
Responsibility, awareness, and self-knowledge are his allies. Forgetfulness is his enemy. His mind is not in the future. He is fully engaged in what he is doing.
Be proud, not arrogant. Back straight, head high, shoulders back. Stand like you deserve to be here.
Shoot for nothing. When an archer shoots for a prize, he gets tight. When you shoot to impress, your eyes divide. You see two targets. Your skill has not changed, but the imagined prize separates you. thinking more of the prize than of his target, a knight is drained of power by the need to win. Thinking of nothing, you can let go.
When you train hard, do your best, and strike the target, pride comes all by itself.
For the communities Dr. Wood spoke negatively of in his original piece are run almost entirely on toxic shame. They’re inverted hierarchies of dis-deign.
My comfort for your loss on that front, Dr. Wood. And for my loss.
And for society’s loss.
Yet there is a poem written for those kinds of communities that contains both kinds of pride. It’s my favorite Christmas poem of all time, so if you’ll forgive my seasonal misstep for the sake of thematic relevance, this is Chesterton’s Gloria in Profundis:
There has fallen on earth for a token
A god too great for the sky.
He has burst out of all things and broken
The bounds of eternity:
Into time and the terminal land
He has strayed like a thief or a lover,
For the wine of the world brims over,
Its splendour is spilt on the sand.
Who is proud when the heavens are humble,
Who mounts if the mountains fall,
If the fixed stars topple and tumble
And a deluge of love drowns all-
Who rears up his head for a crown,
Who holds up his will for a warrant,
Who strives with the starry torrent,
When all that is good goes down?
For in dread of such falling and failing
The fallen angels fell
Inverted in insolence, scaling
The hanging mountain of hell:
But unmeasured of plummet and rod
Too deep for their sight to scan,
Outrushing the fall of man
Is the height of the fall of God.
Glory to God in the Lowest
The spout of the stars in spate-
Where thunderbolt thinks to be slowest
And the lightning fears to be late:
As men dive for sunken gem
Pursuing, we hunt and hound it,
The fallen star has found it
In the cavern of Bethlehem.
Firstfruits of creation indeed:
There’s power. Then there’s power.
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