Elena- On Pride

Ton,

I realize this post is long so if you have objections about that, please don’t read it, it is not meant for you.

In relation to your actual thoughts about pride, we differ in various points. If we’re talking about false and true pride we can talk about false ego and true I.

Ton: True pride has to do with acknowledging and respecting who you are and what you can do, without any outside confirmation or approval.

Elena: Pride is a quality of the I. It belongs to the realm of the I in each individual human being as much as in communities of individuals. Respect and dignity in relationships “boost” the pride with which individuals and communities “present” themselves. Pride is at the root of the sense of “well being”, joy and love.

Children who are mistreated by their parents cannot experience self-pride or family pride. Teenagers who are mistreated by teachers cannot experience self-pride or pride for their school-community. Depressed people in society cannot experience pride.

The false ego of an individual as much as the false egos of groups of people in “mass behavior” tends to look for scapegoats that can carry the burden of their behavior and serves them to justify their actions. In Western history, we’ve been witnessing this phenomenon since Socrates. In terms of laws, it is the lower consuming the higher but interestingly enough, it is “power” consuming “dignity” “pride”. In Jesus’ story, we are presented with the idea that he “sacrifices” his self to redeem humanity, so he “consciously” surrenders to crucifixion “triggering” a “civilizing” process. 


In all forms of rape and exploitation of the “stronger” against the “weaker”,  the willingly naïve mostly young people, are submitted. “Power” consumes “dignity” and enslaves the people who, having accepted the status quo too young to defend themselves from it, continue to support it and represent it. This happens on a big scale in International and national relationships and in the social, political and economic organizations of all kinds. It is the lack of dignity in human relationships today what is at the root of the cult phenomenon in which people are looking for “religion” to bring them back to a sense of dignity but in continuing to recreate the power authoritarian structures they are trying to escape, they inevitably end up trapped much more powerfully than in society because while the economic status quo enslaves mainly their instinctive self, the cult enslaves their “spiritual” self. In society people are sacrificing their bodies but have not totally surrendered their will while in cults, people surrender their will and become perfect automatons acting against their own well being for the guru’s "divine" life.

In an individual the false ego is ALWAYS looking to put other people down so that IT can remain “afloat” if not “above”. An interesting exploration of the false ego understanding that it is a “reactive” “defensive” mechanism of the human being that develops in the first twenty years of life to protect themselves before the individual has the capacity to develop a full sense of his self or I, is that it is the “mirror” of society as they, men and women, have experienced it. It is strongly imitative of family and social behaviors that have predetermined their attitudes without having put them through the sieve of self-exploration. From that "collective" culture, the individual must flourish independently.

In the authoritarian patriarchal system of our times, the I of the individual is shunned from early childhood for the abnormal relationship between men and women, men, women and the uncreative-productive processes, family’s disconnectedness with communities and communities disconnected from the nation’s leaders is in itself an organic process of corruption. The parts have lost contact with the whole. The hierarchic organization of societies based on human inequality at all levels is in itself the source of a consistent shunning of individuals' pride or sense of them selves.

The fact that suicide is rampant in the world today shows that “pride-less” individuals in both the economic privileged as much as the middle and lower classes is the norm. It would be very interesting to study the suicide phenomenon in detail because I would guess that suicide rates today are higher amongst the middle and upper classes than amongst the lower classes because it is in these middle and upper class in which the “sense of identity” is most challenged by the tremendously absurd neoliberal status quo. It is that lack of identity or identification with class, nationality, race or academic status, where the false ego is rampant and people too innocent to adapt to the competitive trend, adopt to cop out and self destroy. The thirteen suicides in the Foxconn company of China in just this year and the twenty three suicides in the Telecom of France in the past two years, strongly suggest that it is in these middle classes where the greatest pressure is being exercised and what is so dangerous about it is that people are no longer trying to fight the status quo and change the norms acting against their well being, they are reacting to it destroying them selves, like in cults.

It is clearly a process of social cancer in which instead of responding to harm by looking for external solutions, the “essence” of the people is too weak to respond with mature action and turns against itself, self-destroying, and the status quo doesn’t have the aim or mechanisms to avoid the tragedy. A weak essence is one in which pride has not been able to develop. An aspect of the development of pride is the capacity to respond with the necessary strength against abuse. Being able to say NO to abuse is the expression of a mature I filled with pride and with pride, enough courage to question and fight back.

The mechanism that you Ton present in your post in which an individual’s level of pride is independent from society is an aspect of the current neo-liberal ideology that tries to instill in the masses of individuals that they alone are responsible for their state of misery just like cults do. If you read the posts related to Foucault in these blogs, you can understand how the whole emphasis of “work on one’s self” and the individual being responsible for everything without connection to others is an aspect of the individualistic neoliberal status quo and that the outlet of “cults” is in itself a great valve in which individuals, far from questioning society and its conditions, question themselves and enter into an individualistic race to overcome their misery without ever addressing the real causes of their "disconnectedness". This is precisely why religion has been called the opium of the masses because it has traditionally worked against the people to support power. It clearly defined that route when it separated the human being from direct access to "God" and put the Pope in between. These processes have of course crystallized in masses of people before us and in each generation the attitudes tend to strengthen themselves as matters of fact that cannot be questioned, just like in cults.

Individualism is the main characteristic of cult life in which people pretend to become conscious without ever considering other human beings. It is the most egotistical pursuit that mankind has witnessed. It is also the aborted child of patriarchal authoritarian societies in which the male in power has proved unable to protect the Earth or the human being that inhabits it too busy protecting his personal interests at the cost of those that he does not respond for but submits. 


With the number of mass suicide around the world today, we could say that the tragedy is exploiting in the eyes of power, but people still don’t want to look at it for what it is. It is basically an order in which what matters is not love between people but the utilitarian transactions between people. It is not just women who have become paid whores or reproductive whores, it is that anyone, including men who have to submit, are equally treated as whores in the economic productive process for the benefit of the few in power. The great problem is that those in power, like cult gurus, equally succumb to the decadence with hardly anyone to survive with dignity. That is why these period in history should be called the Age of Desolation.

Many people like you and those in the fofblog might want to pretend that everything is alright as long as you don’t allow the shit to sprinkle in your faces but that shit that you’re avoiding to confront today will be twice as powerful in your children’s lives and your children twice as weak to confront it because that will be what they learnt from you. Seriously standing up against cults and every institution that is exploiting the human being including the corrupted laws and governments that have taken the reigns of power against human dignity is the task of any person with enough pride and courage. Should we die for dignity we would not be the first or the last in having stood up for life.