[Teri mentioned this old post (from June 2007) to me on Friday, and I’m revisiting the third act because it’s pertinent to some new business I want to take up tomorrow or Monday. –GSS]
Extracted from BloodhoundBlog post #1590:
This came in as a comment last night.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to be[Teri mentioned this old post (from June 2007) to me on Friday, and I’m revisiting the third act because it’s pertinent to some new business I want to take up tomorrow or Monday. –GSS]
Extracted from BloodhoundBlog post #1590:This came in as a comment last night.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to be competitive and wanting to win, but, reading your posts the last few weeks, you ego is a little bit too big at times. Yes, you are a heck of a writer and you have one heck of a blog and you have assembled a heck of a team of contributors, but your ego is getting a bit cocky.
This is ad hominem, so it violates our comments policy, but I’m not averse to discussing the issue it raises in a general way.
[….]
A Bloodhound’s virtues are genetic accidents, but that doesn’t make them less than perfectly admirable, whether evidenced in the dog or anthropomorphized and expressed in thoroughly conscious human behavior. Brought up right, a Bloodhound is a natural alpha, regal and indomitable. The dog will move with a lanky, un-self-conscious arrogance that is simply heart-breakingly beautiful to look upon: This what a thriving organism looks like.
I am steadfastly, philosophically opposed to the idea of humility. I think it is one of many evil ideas foisted off on us by malefactors who love us best at our absolute worst. To say to me, “You’re arrogant,” or, “you have a big ego,” is no reproach. On the one hand, it is a statement of obvious fact. But on the other, it puts me on my guard against you. A healthy, normal human being moves and acts and thinks and speaks with the lanky arrogance of a healthy, normal Bloodhound. When people don’t behave that way, I want to know why. When they affect to preach against healthy, normal human behavior, I go on defense — and not by half-measures.
The comment quoted above is nothing, just so much word salad. People repeat what they’ve been told their whole lives — monkey-see, monkey-do — for no reason they can name. They have habituated emotional reactions to behaviors they have been told since childhood are wrong without ever puzzling out what is right, what is wrong, and what their habituated emotional reactions have to do with either. None of this means anything to me. Either you can defend your position in cogent reason, or I am occupied elsewhere. I know why my lanky arrogance is better for me, in the context of my own one irreplaceable life, and there is nothing anyone can say to persuade me to hate my life in other people’s behalf.
Even so, this makes for a good lesson in weblogging. Art is social, and a secondary objective of any work of art — even a work of art as banal as a weblog post — is to elicit a response. Not simply a comment, mind you, not the enblogged equivalent of a high-five, but an authentic, heart-felt response: “Thank you so much for saying that!” “Oh, what crap!!” “I thought I was the only person who felt this way!” “Your unwillingness to kneel to the vicious trolls I affect to worship as gods leads me to unpleasant doubts about their divinity, which I am obliged to blame on you.” Oh, wait, that last was a translation of email I get all the time…
In fact, other people’s responses to your work should never be a primary consideration to you. The writing is either good or it isn’t. But if you are not eliciting emotion-laden responses from your readers, what you are doing is brochure-production, not weblogging.
But, in any case, if you feel a strong urge to tell me that I am as arrogant as a normal, healthy Bloodhound, regal and indomitable — what can I say in reply except, “Thanks!” competitive and wanting to win, but, reading your posts the last few weeks, you ego is a little bit too big at times. Yes, you are a heck of a writer and you have one heck of a blog and you have assembled a heck of a team of contributors, but your ego is getting a bit cocky.
This is ad hominem, so it violates our comments policy, but I’m not averse to discussing the issue it raises in a general way.
[….]
A Bloodhound’s virtues are genetic accidents, but that doesn’t make them less than perfectly admirable, whether evidenced in the dog or anthropomorphized and expressed in thoroughly conscious human behavior. Brought up right, a Bloodhound is a natural alpha, regal and indomitable. The dog will move with a lanky, un-self-conscious arrogance that is simply heart-breakingly beautiful to look upon: This what a thriving organism looks like.
I am steadfastly, philosophically opposed to the idea of humility. I think it is one of many evil ideas foisted off on us by malefactors who love us best at our absolute worst. To say to me, “You’re arrogant,” or, “you have a big ego,” is no reproach. On the one hand, it is a statement of obvious fact. But on the other, it puts me on my guard against you. A healthy, normal human being moves and acts and thinks and speaks with the lanky arrogance of a healthy, normal Bloodhound. When people don’t behave that way, I want to know why. When they affect to preach against healthy, normal human behavior, I go on defense — and not by half-measures.
The comment quoted above is nothing, just so much word salad. People repeat what they’ve been told their whole lives — monkey-see, monkey-do — for no reason they can name. They have habituated emotional reactions to behaviors they have been told since childhood are wrong without ever puzzling out what is right, what is wrong, and what their habituated emotional reactions have to do with either. None of this means anything to me. Either you can defend your position in cogent reason, or I am occupied elsewhere. I know why my lanky arrogance is better for me, in the context of my own one irreplaceable life, and there is nothing anyone can say to persuade me to hate my life in other people’s behalf.
Even so, this makes for a good lesson in weblogging. Art is social, and a secondary objective of any work of art — even a work of art as banal as a weblog post — is to elicit a response. Not simply a comment, mind you, not the enblogged equivalent of a high-five, but an authentic, heart-felt response: “Thank you so much for saying that!” “Oh, what crap!!” “I thought I was the only person who felt this way!” “Your unwillingness to kneel to the vicious trolls I affect to worship as gods leads me to unpleasant doubts about their divinity, which I am obliged to blame on you.” Oh, wait, that last was a translation of email I get all the time…
In fact, other people’s responses to your work should never be a primary consideration to you. The writing is either good or it isn’t. But if you are not eliciting emotion-laden responses from your readers, what you are doing is brochure-production, not weblogging.
But, in any case, if you feel a strong urge to tell me that I am as arrogant as a normal, healthy Bloodhound, regal and indomitable — what can I say in reply except, “Thanks!”
Brian says:
Wow! It’s good to know there’s someone out there so much wiser than all the great thinkers of history who espouse the virtue of humility. Sure, we can work hard and accept the praise that comes with achievement but there is far too much outside our control that helps shape who we are to not have some measure of humility. Humility is attractive because it shows people understand who they really are relative to other human beings. Arrogance on the other hand is never attractive.
March 7, 2010 — 8:46 am
Greg Swann says:
> Arrogance on the other hand is never attractive.
Wow. Then I guess it’s a good thing you don’t troll the web looking for opportunities to preen and strut!
Good grief…
March 7, 2010 — 9:07 am
Don Reedy says:
As I am a humble man by nature, please don’t take this rather arrogant comment wrong.
Brian, you miss the point of The Bloodhound. Stated another way, since I just came from church, was Jesus humble, or was he arrogant?
And if he was (at times) arrogant, was it “attractive?”
These are rhetorical. Arrogance and humility can clearly coexist, and I say with certainty that arrogance was a trait Jesus had; perhaps by some folks’ standards, the most arrogant man of all time. He DID in fact claim to be God….about as arrogant as you can get.
This post talks about how a Bloodhound, anthropomorphesized, exhibits the better attributes of arrogance. It’s not a post about Jesus, of course. It’s just a post about what some of us like in ourselves, and in our dogs, and in a trait the plastic dull faces of the masses abhor.
Not an attractive trait for you? Go humbly into that good night, kind sir.
March 7, 2010 — 11:30 am
Jim Klein says:
>Wow! It’s good to know there’s someone out there so much wiser >than all the great thinkers of history who espouse the virtue >of humility.
Very well said, Brian. I agree completely!
>Sure, we can work hard and accept the praise that comes with >achievement
Did you ever bother to ask, “Why?”
Did you ever bother to ask, “What for?”
Or do you just take it like urinating…something we just do?
>but there is far too much outside our control that helps shape >who we are
Now /that/ would be a neat trick! Or are you just speaking of genetic influences, like the shape of a chin or the color of our skin? If that’s who you think you are, then you’re sadly mistaken.
>to not have some measure of humility. Humility is attractive >because it shows people understand who they really are relative >to other human beings.
You mean that we’re all so lousy? Hopefully you’ll forgive that some of us view us all as so great. Splendid, one might say.
But hey, you can make yourself whoever you wish to be. But please understand that if you choose “lousy” for yourself, then I won’t consider us the same.
>Arrogance on the other hand is never attractive.
Greg is far too sweet for this. In my corner of the netverse, I’m known as a “smug, arrogant, pr**k.” If I ever decide that I wanna go out on a date with you, I’ll be sure and change. Till then, not a chance!
March 7, 2010 — 12:20 pm
Sean Purcell says:
It’s sadly funny, being currently engaged in the precept shattering posts of the past week on voluntaryism and anarchy, to stop and read comments about “arrogance.” Arrogance, by definition, is to consider oneself superior to others – the very antithesis of what’s been discussed at such depth in those previous posts.
If you have a problem with another’s lack of humility, I’m going to guess it’s just one of many problems from which you suffer. Humility is affected and your desire to see it in others only belies your own lack of self-worth.
Logically, I suppose if someone espouses a philosophy declaring their superiority to others, we might call them arrogant. But it’s much more common to call someone arrogant because they exhibit the mannerisms of a person who is (or thinks themselves) superior to others. There’s quite a difference. The former is a fallacy, but the latter – the “mannerisms” in question – are merely a reflection of the perfection each and every one of us possess. It just looks like superiority to those who do not yet see it in themselves.
In any case, to call Greg “arrogant” is funny…
March 7, 2010 — 1:50 pm
Greg Swann says:
> Arrogance, by definition, is to consider oneself superior to others
I am loving the comments in this thread, but, for what it’s worth, I don’t even think of arrogance that way. As a matter of ontology, we are alike and equal as things. But as a matter of praxeology — just to throw everything into one basket — each human being is unique. Not one of us can be compared, as a self, to any other. I admire the quality I call arrogance in adult human beings for the same reasons I admire it in dogs and horses and children. And, for those same reasons, I despair when I see evidence of humility — past humiliations — in dogs, horses, children or adults. To be arrogant, for me, is simply to be alive — vibrantly, consciously, willfully alive. I love it when I see it, mourn when I see its contraries — and run the other way when I hear someone preaching humility as a virtue.
March 7, 2010 — 9:14 pm
Teri Lussier says:
>I know why my lanky arrogance is better for me, in the context of my own one irreplaceable life, and there is nothing anyone can say to persuade me to hate my life in other people’s behalf.
This must be the bits that have finally made it through the grey matter. This is what I’m seeing as an ego, and what I told you I suddenly see my ego as:
“I see it as an egg. It can easily be protected, but if not protected it can easily be cracked…
An uncracked ego is a beautiful thing. A perfect thing of beauty.”
That beauty is everywhere. The potential for beauty is in each person. To understand that, to hold that as a precious thing might be arrogant, but it’s certainly not unattractive.
March 7, 2010 — 6:27 pm
Teri Lussier says:
Oh, and thanks for digging this post out. I don’t know if I would have been able to find it myself.
March 7, 2010 — 6:29 pm
Teri Lussier says:
>> Arrogance, by definition, is to consider oneself superior to others
>… but, for what it’s worth, I don’t even think of arrogance that way.
That’s sinking in as well. If I think of an ego as a thing, which I kinda have to do, and it’s a perfect thing of beauty, like an egg, or seed, or any other thing that is and grows, and blossoms, then that ego is worth protecting, or as Greg told me, defending; then I’m thinking that arrogance might simply be an ability to see that ego in each person, and to see it as something worth defending. Liberty and freedom and ego and arrogance all there, lovely and glorious.
March 8, 2010 — 11:30 am