Pride / Proud – a feeling of pleasure obtained with the inordinate (unreasonable) or excessive proclamation of one owns importance or special significance of one’s own group.
“Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Yes, that’s a verse from the book of Proverbs. I’m not saying I trust the interpretation of every syllable, nor am I advocating the christian bible in its entirety. There are a few gems in there and that is one of them.
Gay pride, black pride, white pride, american pride, islamic pride, team pride, automotive pride, state pride, school pride, political pride, class pride, national pride, religious pride, any variation of any prideful proclamation is an indication of fanaticism, the scariest form of a dogmatic determination.
We justify and attempt to reduce our prideful position to an innocent fondness. But pride is not fondness. Pride is the reinforcement of one’s own sense of certainty, a hardened or calloused self-identification. Which, when we truly understand the illusion of thought and its mortal futility, we can see pride for what it is, a form of insanity, a mental illness. But, like Tolle says, it’s so common that it seems normal. It isn’t. It’s an illness that perpetuates the fallible human condition, the separation perception, and the competitive drive. Pride does not, and never will, liberate our spirit; it condemns us to suffer and facilitates our perverted addiction to pain. Hell on earth.
Hurry, look to your left, look to your right, you’ll find a collective agreement in no time. Humans refuse to own their insanity, so we look to one another for agreement. It makes us feel safe and sure amidst the chaos of this unpredictable existential, and unfathomable life experience.
We LOVE our groups, more than we love ourselves. They provide us with a false sense of security and perceived superiority. My god, we are full of ourselves.
Think about just how good it feels to experience the feeling of pride. Strange, isn’t it? “Yes, that is me! Yes, that is us! We belong!” We love, love, love our groups. But not everyone can be part of the group, we must have those who exist and are not of the group in order for the group to be of any significance. What is the group without contrast? INSIGNIFICANT, that’s what. And oh, how we loathe insignificance. We must be special, we must be important, we must be observed as existing. For the opposite of not existing is what? DEATH, that’s what it is. See the pattern? Every ounce of pride that flows through your veins is the vain attempt to denounce the dismal fate of your oblivion.
We are so obsessed with our strong beliefs and opinions, aka our pride – that we inculcate our offspring with our own personal convictions. We actually believe we are doing our young and innocent children a favor by dressing them in Yankees attire or having them recite their allegiance to a colorful piece of cloth before getting indoctrinated with false history, or by “baptizing” them with the illusion of choice. We aren’t doing them ANY favors with this behavior. All we are doing is perpetuating the human automaton. A mindless acceptance of dogmatic initiations, that once unconsciously agreed to, become the platform we capitalize the rest of our life’s beliefs upon. How horrible, undignified, and rude. As much as we try to convince ourselves otherwise, we do these things for one reason, and one reason only, a highly selfish motive to fortify and validate our own personal belief structures through our children, and our children’s children – due to our fear of uncertainty; aka death.
We even, ever so slightly and deceivingly heroic, yet cleverly – attempt to denounce death by proclaiming pride in our honor roll student, or college attendee, or enhancing our identity with the perceived honor of our children in military service. We have deluded ourselves in lieu of reality by living vicariously through the actions of our descendants. How pompous and self-serving can we be? Is that sticker on your bumper or that insta-perfect photo for them or for your perceived self-enhancement through their actions? We are not proud of them, we are grateful for their actions augmentation of our perceived self-worth through the eyes of others. Don’t fool yourself, keeping in mind, you are the easiest one to fool. Own your bullshit human, because it stinks, and it’s thick, and we are all full of it. Self-gratifying, self-inflating grandiose narcissists, that’s what we are. If we didn’t realize it before, just look at your Instagram feed.. need I say more? The apex of falsified flattery digitized, glorified, and publish for our greedy little eyes.
Go ahead, look to your left and right again. This is scary shit and it’s not easy to swallow. Especially if you find yourself currently caught in the tangled web of multi-generational thought forms. We are masters of write-offs, shoulder shrugs, and denunciation – especially when it comes to such personal and sensitive topics such as this. It’s much safer, easier, and more comfortable to patronize than to truly perceive of your lunacy in its raw, un-pacified psychosis.
The conventional religions do it best by blaming it on “the devil”. What insanity is this conceptual devil? God forbid we accept any responsibility. (pun intended) No fucking way will we accept that kind of responsibility.. leave it to humans – when all else fails, we make some mythological bullshit up and blame it! As long as we can look left and get a head nod from a fellow human in the same group, we must be right! Whew, that was close, we almost destroyed our entire life’s belief structure of superstitious entities fighting for our souls! So sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. Well, actually, fuck yes I did. And yes, that was my very own sarcastic blurb, contrary to yesterday’s post. But damn, this is fun reading though, isn’t it?
Gays, we don’t own the rainbow. Blacks, we don’t own oppression. Whites, we don’t own privilege. Religions, we don’t own righteousness. Politicians, we don’t own the law. Humans, we don’t own entitlement.
We are one cohesive living organism that has an absolute and very real dependence on cooperation and unification. If we continue to divide, conquer, and capitalize on our differences, we will emulate the ignorance of the cancer cell and destroy our very own host. Then, my friends, we won’t even own the possibility of life experience for the unborn future of humanity. We will be gone, we will be extinct, we will be dead. Then, none of our banterings will have any significance whatsoever.
Observe your pride and do your best to free yourself from the prison in your mind. By setting yourself free, you liberate everyone around you. You will find there is no longer a need for hate, and love, like water, will flow through extinguishing all animosities.
May peace find itself within each and every one of us.
