Published by The Royal Bank of Canada

A Matter of PridePride is a critical element in humanaffairs. Depending on both quantityand quality, it can either be a killor a cure. Here we analyse this mostperplexing emotion. The overridingquestion is whether it is deserved...

[] Pride has a bad reputation. The Bible says thatit is "hateful in the eyes of God and man." TheGood Book also warns, in a much-misquotedphrase, that "pride goeth before destruction, andan haughty spirit before a fall." When St. Gregorythe Great drew up his list of the seven deadlysins in the 6th century A.D., he placed pride at thevery top.

You will look long and hard for a good wordabout pride in the Oxford Dictionary, which givesas its first definition, "Unduly high opinion of one’sown qualities, merits, etc.; arrogant bearing orconduct." Only after it has noted that "pride ofplace" is "exalted position, consciousness of this,arrogance," does the dictionary concede that pridemight have anything going for it. Proper pride, ittells us, is a "sense of what befits one’s position,preventing one from doing [an] unworthy thing."

All of which gets us only so far as to concludethat pride must be one of the most ambiguouswords in the language. If it is such an evil, why, wemay ask, have we been urged from childhood totake pride in ourselves and our associations -- ourfamily, community, nation, etc.?

What is this thing called pride? Or is it reallytwo things, one a poison and one a tonic to thehuman spirit? Let us look at the negative side first,since pride is more often condemned than not inthe accumulated wisdom of mankind.

It is easy to see why pride should be frownedupon in religious circles. If there is one conceptcommon to all creeds, it is that the individual must

humble himself before the eternal and almighty; asthe Book of Eccliasticus put it, "Pride was notmade for men." Hence the overweening pride thatraises the individual above anything and anybodyelse is intrinsically deplorable. One need not bereligious to recognize this. In their family andother close relationships, people who think ofthemselves as supreme beings can cause endlesstrouble and pain.

Egomaniacs are not, of course, the only oneswhose pride can play havoc with their personallives. It can happen to anyone. When pride gainsthe upper hand, it raises near-insurmountablebarriers between otherwise reasonable humanbeings. The psychiatrists and marriage counsellorsof today may have a fancier word for it, but prideis the culprit in many of the problems that arebrought to their doors.

The trouble with pride in our intimate relation-ships is that one person’s pride may clash withanother’s. Attacks on a person’s self-esteem in-variably invite counter-attacks. Anyone who hasever been in a serious lover’s quarrel knows what ahurtful game the tit-for-tat pricking of pride candeteriorate into. In this context, Carl Sandburgstruck a true note when he warned: "Look outwhen you use proud words/When you let proudwords go, it is not easy to call them back./Theywear long boots, hard boots."

Jane Austen understood; she did not name herimmortal novel Pride and Prejudice for nothing.In it, the two principal characters discover that

when they overcome their pride, their troublesomeprejudices are subdued. As with individuals, sowith groups. Pride breeds the prejudices that pitthem senselessly against one another. In the epicfamily feuds of the Scottish Highlands, Sicily andthe American hill country of the Hatfields andMcCoys, two members of the opposing clans mightlay eyes on each other only once -- when they triedto kill each other. Such is the blindness of pride.

More generally, pride is what makes some peoplethink that they are inherently better than others,and to despise those "others" merely because oftheir race, nationality, social class, or religion. It isthe germ of bigotry, one of the worst conditions toafflict the human race. Nations have been tornapart by the hatred bigotry engenders. It has evenled to that ultimate breakdown in civilization,global war.

In her aptly-titled book The Proud Tower,Barbara Tuchman told of how stubborn nationalpride put an end to the benign belle époque of thelate nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Germans at the turn of the century regarded them-selves as superior to any other nationality inculture, science, and military prowess. This did notsit well, to say the least, with the French, who wereconvinced that they were superior in such matters.The French, moreover, were still smarting fromthe humiliation of their defeat at the hands of theGermans in the War of 1870. They tended to seethis as an historical aberration that must beredressed.

"There is such a thing asa man too proud to fight"

Puffed up with the nationalistic vainglory of hisgeneration, the French author Charles P6guywrote in 1910: "When a great war or a greatrevolution breaks out it is because a great people, agreat race, needs to break out, because it has hadenough, particularly enough of peace." Soon agreat war did break out, and poor Péguy, who hadonce written a chauvinistic biography of Joan ofArc, became a victim of his own patriotic ardour.He was killed in the battle of the Marne in 1914.

National pride had filled the powder keg, and itwas national pride that exploded it. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was outraged when a Serbianfanatic shot and killed the heir to its throne. LittleSerbia’s own pride would not permit it to accede toAustria-Hungary’s bullying ultimatum in the after-math of the assassination. And so 10 million peoplewere killed, 20 million were wounded, and thepolitical map of the world was changed for all time.

Amidst the strut and clameur of the early yearsof World War I, a lonely voice of reason was raised."There is such a thing as a man too proud to fight.There is such a thing as a nation being so rightthat it does not need to convince others by forcethat it is right," said United States PresidentWoodrow Wilson. Still, Wilson’s efforts to keep hisnation out of the conflict ended in failure. The chiefreason was that, by insisting on the right totorpedo U.S. ships trading with the allies, theGermans fatally insulted American national pride.

When pride and humility cometogether, the result is dignity

Wilson did, though, succeed in putting his fingeron the paradox of pride, which is that the strongerit is, the less it needs to be exercised. A personendowed with plenty of the right kind of pride canafford a measure of humility. "As if true pride werenot also humble!" exclaimed Robert Browning.Montaigne concurred: "One can be humble out ofpride."

When pride and humility merge, the result isdignity. Dignified people are able to turn the othercheek; indeed, their dignity sometimes will permitthem to do nothing else. Dignity is resilient: It canbend without snapping, allowing its possessors todefer effortlessly to others. It stands up wellagainst adversity and misfortune: An experiencethat might be a crushing humiliation to others is,to a dignified person, merely a signal to start over

and do better. When Johannes Brahms’s FirstPiano Concerto was booed at its premiere perfor-mance, the composer was duly disappointed. Buthe wrote to a friend: "I honestly think this is thebest thing that could have happened. It forces meto buckle down, and it builds up courage."

"Though pride is not a virtue, it is the parent ofmany other virtues," wrote M. C. Collins. It fillsthis role by making it gratifying to have othertraits of character that are admirable in them-selves- traits like integrity, courage, diligenceand generosity. To be proud of one’s own goodqualities is both normal and justified. As the wiseand sometimes cynical old courtier the Duc de LaRochefoucauld incisively observed: "It is as properto be proud of ourselves as it is improper toproclaim it to the world."

Give thanks that people areproud enough not to run wild

This inner pride is the enforcer of self-imposedstandards of character. It lessens the need for lawsand conventions to dictate what one should andshould not do. If there were no self-imposed stan-dards, if all human behaviour had to be governedby legal or social strictures, society would be in ashambles. We should be thankful that most peoplehave sufficient pride in themselves to preventthem from running wild.

Standards of character and honesty go together.Fair and trustworthy conduct comes naturally topeople who are too proud of their reputation to putthemselves in a bad light. Truly proud people donot break promises; they cannot. Their pride willnot permit them to go back on their word.

Similarly, people with high standards of char-acter are loath to do less than their best in theirpersonal and working lives. This is most readilyapparent in what is known as pride of craftsman-ship. It prevents men and women from doinginferior work if they can help it. It too is related tohonesty -- to the concept of a good day’s work for agood day’s pay.

Craftsmanship is a word that evokes visions ofviolin makers, silversmiths, jewellers and the like,but it need not be confined to exquisite handiwork.It can flourish in homes, in offices, in factories, inschools. It has less to do with the nature of a jobthan with the care and effort that go into it. Ahousewife who keeps her home immaculate maytake as much pride in her work as the most highly-skilled artisan -- and so she should.

Unlike the craftsmen of old, however, modernworkers rarely have the opportunity to make aproduct from start to finish. Their efforts areusually directed towards providing the bits andpieces that go into a product or putting themtogether in the end. Still, pride in work can survivein any atmosphere provided the individual workerhas a craftsmanlike attitude. "I never felt as if Ihad to back out the door with my paycheck," afoundry worker recently said when he retired.

"Be a cobbler, but be the best in London," a manis said to have advised his son. The reason forstriving for excellence in your work, whatever itmay be, is a harmlessly selfish one. It is that to do ajob surpassingly well generates a pleasurable glowof pride -- what young people would call a "high"nowadays. On the other hand, it is an emotionallet-down to turn out work that you know is not asgood as it could be.

In the world of organizations, however, it issometimes difficult to summon up pride in one’sown work if there is no collective pride in theorganization. It is a key task of good managementto conduct the organization’s affairs in a way ofwhich its people can be proud. People seem to havea collective need to identify with something biggerthan themselves; even rebels will band together inmovements. And they want to be able to point tothat identification with pride.

Collective pride resembles pride of craftsman-ship in that it arises from doing something well,but it takes the form of doing something welltogether with others rather than individually. It ispride in one’s colleagues as much as in oneself.Another difference is that it is anything but quietpride -- it is indeed proclaimed to the world.

It is at its most spectacular in military units, inwhich its presence or absence may mean life ordeath. "We had a good soldierly conceit of our-selves," Field Marshal Sir William Slim wrote ofthe unit he commanded at the outset of World WarII, the 10th Indian Division. To this thoughtfulgeneral was handed the challenge of restoring themorale of the British and Indian troops who hadtaken a savage mauling from the seemingly invin-cible Japanese Army in Burma. He did so bynurturing their collective pride.

Recognizing its Janus facesand its power of destruction

In his memoirs, Defeat Into Victory, Slim articu-lately told of how his troops’ confidence in them-selves rose to the point where they went out andtore a determined and resourceful enemy to pieces."I do not say that the men of the Fourteenth Armywelcomed difficulties, but they took a fierce pridein overcoming them by determination and inge-nuity," he wrote.

One feature of martial pride is pride in appear-ance, which explains the spit and polish andparades that recruits find so onerous. It is aninteresting point that when people lose their pride,their appearance is usually the next thing to go. Afilm director seeking instant identification of acharacter who has gone to seed would, as a matterof course, dress him shabbily and untidily andmake sure that he was rather dirty. So pride inappearance is more than vanity; it is a necessarypreservative of self-respect.

The Skid Rows and red light districts of thisworld are full of people who have lost their self-respect, which can be defined as personal pridewithin reason. W. Somerset Maugham frequentlywrote about such specimens- drunkards, beach-combers, remittance men, prostitutes. Maughamrecognized the Janus face of pride. In his short

story ’~The Back of Beyond," we find an older manadvising a younger one to try to subordinate hisfeelings and go on living with the wife who hadbeen unfaithful to him. A chronically unhappyman himself, Maugham nevertheless understoodthat happiness can be destroyed by either too littleor too much personal pride.

It is not only a question of quantity but of qua-lity. The degree of quality depends on whether it isjustified, not in your own eyes, but in those of yourpeers. We are all acquainted with people who havean elevated opinion of themselves which is notdeserved by objective standards. Self-delusion isone of pride’s most noxious side-effects. To avoid itwe should ask ourselves: What have I done to beso proud?

A hazardous substanceto be carefully watched

Material success alone does not provide a validanswer. On the contrary, if success is achievedthrough the kind of single-minded drive thatprecludes the feelings of others, it may be nothingto be proud of at all. When it is too self-centred,pride is at best ridiculous and at worst disastrous.It is at its best when it takes in a much broaderpicture than one’s own head.

But collective pride is not necessarily a goodthing either. It too must be deserved. Being borninto a certain family in a certain community of acertain religion or race is not in itself anything tobe proud of. Belonging to a family, a community, acountry, a religion and race -- and playing a usefulrole in furthering its best interests--is a realreason to be proud.

Pride should be treated, then, as a sort ofhazardous substance, dangerous in excess or if it isnot of the best quality. It has to be weighed andanalysed from time to time. The acid test ofwhether it is a force for good or ill in your life iswhether you have earned it. If you can honestly saythat you have, then you are entitled to all the prideyou can hold.