Pride: The Last Thing We Need More

Pop singers and actors can be reliably counted on to engage in voluminous virtue signaling around Pride Month. One can almost imagine directives going out telling celebrities to promote the LGBTQ ideology.

No surprise then that, for example, Taylor Swift did what she did at a concert recently: Her concerts, she proclaimed, are “a celebratory space” for those “living authentically and beautifully.” She of course also included a straightforward partisan attack on those who are concerned with the moral meltdown of our public institutions. She advised the mostly young girls and women in her audience that they should consider making the following questions central to their decisions about voting: “Are they advocates? Are they allies? Are they protectors of equality? Do I want to vote for them?”

But is Pride Month about “protecting equality”? And what exactly does one advocate in championing pride?

For a very large number of people on the planet, pride isn’t something to celebrate. For those of serious religious belief around the world in many different faith traditions, pride is a part of the human condition that must be effectively combatted and mastered in order to make spiritual advance. Pride means exaggerated self-esteem and satisfaction with oneself, the belief that one is an object of unique importance and perfection that should be recognized and celebrated by others.

Of course, many critics of Christianity caricature Christians and their concern with pride as morally out of step with the world or as being too consumed with something that healthy people do not feel.

These critics show in this that they do not know much about religious history since the critiques of pride extend well beyond Christianity.

The ancient Greeks understood hubris in a comparable way. It was the excessive, arrogant pride that would lead one to devalue traditional authority and rules of conduct set forth by higher powers. The Greeks understood that hubris typically would lead to catastrophe for the sufferer.

A month celebrating pride is thus directly contrary to much of the world’s religious tradition, both historic and modern. Is it any wonder that there might be questions raised about it by the religious—and especially about its endless celebration and promotion by those in our elite strata?

These people might do well to reflect on what these religious traditions teach about pride and humility. They might also look around American society and culture and honestly ask themselves: Do Americans, of whatever identity, really need more pride than they already have?

In a culture filled to the brim with individuals who ceaselessly and narcissistically promote themselves, particularly given omnipresent social media, is more pride really the needed thing? The evidence of ever-growing rates of mental health problems in younger generations, Americans on medication, unhappiness with the direction of the country, substance abuse, and suicide would seem to indicate that all the pride is not serving us well.

Perhaps what we need is a Humility Month.

https://intellectualtakeout.org/2023/06/pride-last-thing-we-need-more-of/