Quote of the week No. 43 : On pride

Overcast, almost preternaturally still. Warmer, though, thank God!

Satan fallen from Heaven in
 Gustave Doré's illustration for
Paradise Lost.

Pride is the seventh of the Seven Deadly Sins, and while it is closely associated with vanity - the all-consuming passion for one's own appearance - it's much more than this.  When pride is of the Seven Deadly Sins variety, it is so great, so all-encompassing, so mind-altering, that it squeezes out all but the self, even - and this is the Sin bit - God Himself, whatever you conceive Him to be. Satan's sin was the sin of pride, and we all know what that led to...the message of Milton's Paradise Lost is that pride is particularly deadly because it is the sin from which all others arise. And this isn't just a Christian preoccupation either. You just have to take a glance at Oedipus Rex or the Oresteia, to see that the Ancient Greeks, as an example among many, saw hubris - their version of pride - as sowing the seeds of tragedy.

This is not your normal pride. Not the understandable glow one feels at some particular success. Deadly pride is selfishness to the nth degree. My life. My body. My abilities. My status. My possessions. My achievements. My opinions. My experiences. My suffering. My pain. My way. 

Pride eclipses not only the spiritual in the minds of the prideful, but also leaves no space for other people. It finds its outlet in disrespect for others, in the fascistic determination to impose one's own view of the world on others, in an inability or unwillingness to feel empathy or compassion. 

Pride cannot accept fault. Pride twists the truth, always ready to lay the blame at someone else's door. 

Pride believes that it is either loved to distraction or hated to annihilation. There's only one step between pride and paranoia.

As Iris Murdoch wrote: "The sin of pride may be a small or a great thing in someone's life, and hurt vanity a passing pinprick, or a self-destroying or even murderous obsession".

It's up to you.