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History goes on—and on.  How and why, when it began and when it will end are deep questions that we have puzzled over since anything began, and we have come up with many—incomplete— answers, but it is pretty clear that, among other things,  there are two main forces that help shape human life.

One is self-interest, that drive which,  I suppose, is within all animals, to protect and improve our bodies. We automatically avoid injury, seek comfort and safety, watch  for danger, measure, calculate, etc. In myriad ways, some consciously, some unconsciously. We act and react mentally and physically to our circumstances in order to survive. Natural enough. 

But there is a second force that also shapes our lives, a force that we do not understand very well, a force that seems to be just as natural and omnipresent as self-interest. That force is self-display, or self-regard, self-flattery, or, as we used to say, ‘pride’. One way or another we like to think we are better than we are. This force deserves a closer look. 

The Greeks thought a lot about the matter. Their word for pride or self-flattery was hubris and for the Greeks it led to some kind of downfall. The story of Oedipus is the premier example, and any number of sayings echo the idea: “Pride goeth before a fall,” “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” “Pride is blinding.” It is our way of life, but an important but too frequently neglected point is not just that hubris is bad but that hubris is false; it is not true. It is a moral flaw, but at the same time it is as an intellectual error,  and  there is a price. There always is. Sooner or later.  

We go about our business comparing ourselves to others near and far and we credit ourselves a little or a lot too much of whatever we’re measuring: strength, brains, wit, money, status, taste, authority, influence, looks; whatever. It might be that we exaggerate for our benefit; maybe minimize in the case of the other for the same reason. Either way we are inaccurate, and the victim is truth. Pride therefore might be as usefully understood as false than as bad.

The opposite of pride is humility.  Again, the aim is truth, not intentionally distorting the truth in order to appear less than is the case. Humility is not belittling one’s self. True humility is simply telling it the way it is. It is the opposite of pride which is telling it the way it is not. 

Pride  is so easy. it is natural, but it is not good. It should be resisted as much as possible, and one way to resist, to weaken pride is to practice the counsels and the imperatives found  in what we call the  “Sermon on The Mount.” There we find ways to think less of ourselves and more of others, less of what we want and more of what others need, less of the kingdom of man and more of the kingdom of God.