On Arrogance

Many people regard to be arrogance all sorts of things that aren’t.

They claim thinking bold to be arrogance. They claim standing one’s ground to be arrogance. They claim having original thoughts to be arrogance.

By that standard, we owe to arrogant people most of what we have.

In many American schools, the students who take school seriously are thought to “think they’re better than everyone else.” What gives these people the right to speak for everyone else – 7 billion people, most of them nothing like themselves? Of whatever arrogance the serious student is guilty, theirs is far greater, and it is a far more destructive form of arrogance. The innocent pride of the achiever actualizes in all sorts of accomplishments that benefit the world in all sorts of ways. Whereas very little of any kind of good is owed to attitudes such as this.

So we have idiots riding around in trucks with signs “My son beat up your honor student.” These people destroy their best minds, and in so doing they undermine their own competitiveness. So the Chinese, the Hindus and others who don’t do such a thing to their youth get ahead. For this they blame – the Jews, the liberals, “the New World Order.” They should be blaming themselves.

Or we have people claiming that the problems of the world are owed to “narcissists” and “sociopaths.” No they are not. Most of the wrong things done there are done by people who are perfectly normal. Most kids who pick on other kids are perfectly normal. Most men who beat their wives are perfectly normal. Most people who join gangs are perfectly normal. These people do not have a problem of neurology or psychology. They have a problem of values and beliefs. If you believe that the world is separated into “winners and losers,” or that only the strong survive, or that it is insanity to think or act differently from people around you, then you will do wrong things as a function of these attitudes. And you will be more cruel than any “narcissist” or any “sociopath.”

With narcissistic disorder in particular, a lot is owed to narcissists. If it is narcissistic to seek great success, have original ideas or dislike social authority, then most people who’ve made significant contributions to the world in general – and America in particular – were narcissists. Do not claim that you are serving your society when you are destroying what made it great or even possible at all.

I once heard a professor saying that there is good arrogance, which he defined as belief you can figure things out, and bad arrogance, which he defined as oppression. Once again, according to many people’s definition of arrogance, we owe most of what we have to arrogant people. These are people who went to the length to figure things out. To take risks. To do significant things. The claim that such things are arrogance or “narcissism” pathologizes most of what we have in the world. And that is in no way a viable standpoint.

So it is time that things be called by their proper name. Much of what is regarded as arrogance is no such thing. Much is owed to people who people who think in this way regard to be arrogant. And without these people, the average person would have very little of what he has.