Are you proud of what you have achieved in life? Are you a proud man? Is there a difference? Is pride good or bad? What is pride anyway?
Confusion
These questions have been confusing mankind for centuries. One reason might be that research has been limited because pride is not usually included in the category of basic emotions.
Basic emotions
These emotions are not limited by culture or nationality, but are felt to be truly universal.
Anger, fear, happiness, surprise, disgust, and sadness are commonly accepted as the basic emotions.
Another characteristic of these emotions is that they are accompanied by non-verbal expressions, which can be understood by almost anybody living anywhere in the world. For example, the facial changes which occur when a person is angry are usually not subtle, or limited by nationality.
Secondary or complex emotions
These develop later in the life of an infant, and depend on an ability to evaluate aspects of society, culture, and a sense of “self.”
Some of these emotions are combinations of the basic emotions.
Examples of these are envy, jealousy, and resentment.
This issue has been dealt with in a previous article here … http://goo.gl/hZ5Qlk.
Self-conscious emotions
This is an interesting, and at times confusing, set of emotions, which require a complex interplay between a person and society or culture.
The person develops a sense of individuality or “self.” He or she then looks around to see what society expects. This leads to goal-setting, and finally an evaluation whether those goals have been met. A sense of success or failure is the common result of such an evaluation.
This complex process is felt to be responsible for our “self-conscious” emotions of pride, hubris, guilt, and shame.
Why do we have emotions?
Emotions are clearly evolutionary in nature. They help us to survive, reproduce, and move up in the food chain.
Emotion and reason
We have the capacity for both. And they serve different functions.
Take a basic emotion like fear. In the good old days, when we heard a roar in the wild, it alerted us to danger to life and limb. We did not sit around, form a committee, and debate rationally the probabilities of a tiger attack. Instead, we were immediately gripped by a mortal fear, our fight-or-flight response took over automatically, adrenaline poured into our bloodstream, and we ran like crazy. And lived to fight and reproduce another day.
Aggression
In addition to just living, we also wanted to adapt and thrive. Here our rational being came into play. It helped us to venture out, capture animals, avoid danger ahead of time, develop agriculture, and enhance our welfare by forming tribes and societies.
Social good
Group living helped us, but also led to the development of more emotions. Individual survival now competed with group survival. An aggressive individual was of value, but could lead to trouble within the group.
Thus social and cultural norms and hierarchies were born. You could kill invaders, but not your neighbors in your tribe.
The tribes also needed leaders, and followers. The leaders enjoyed unique privileges. There was often competition to become a leader. Certain traits were valuable in a leader, and others were frowned upon.
Thus arose pride and shame.
Desire
There is another theory of emotions.
Human beings have desires. Some of these are basic, while others are conditioned by society or culture.
All of us have a desire to live. We also want to be successful, to be liked, to move up in society, to be accepted and admired.
Events in our daily lives either lead to the satisfaction of these desires, or their frustration. These events produce mental and physical changes in us, which we recognize as emotions.
For example, the presence of a tiger threatens our desire to live, so we experience fear.
Buying a flashy new car satisfies our desire to move up in society, and so we feel joy.
Denial of a promotion frustrates our desire to be recognized and admired, and we feel anger.
Where does pride fit in?
Pride is confusing.
The Greeks both admired it, and detested it. They valued pride in their warriors, but also recognized the problems with excessive pride, or hubris.
Most of the characters in Homer’s “Iliad” were led to their ruin by pride.
Christianity
Since ancient times, Christian teaching has talked of the seven deadly sins, of which pride is one.
Dante
He was not bashful about his opinions. He considered pride to be the deadliest of the seven deadly sins.
Pride and the Gita
Dambho darpo abhimanashcha krodhah parushyamevacha
Ajnanam cha abhijatasya Partha sampadam asurim (Gita 16:4)
This epic of ancient Indian philosophy and religion narrates how Lord Krishna, a Hindu god, described to his pupil Arjuna the specific traits of people born with a demonical nature: hypocrisy, arrogance, pride, anger, harshness, and ignorance.
Emotions and happiness
So what can we take away from this?
Do emotions help us?
In the modern setting, can they hurt us?
Is pride always good, or always bad?
Complexity can be reduced
By studying emotions in greater detail, we can understand their evolutionary benefits.
Similarly, we can also understand their potential to derail our pursuit for happiness and satisfaction in the modern world.
We will discuss this further in subsequent post.
Stay tuned!
Want to read more?
The pursuit of happiness and satisfaction is discussed in more detail in my book available here … http://goo.gl/4tp2t9.