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Thoughts About Arrogance

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I’ve been thinking about the concept of arrogance lately, and I think that when we talk about arrogance, we sometimes only see half of the issue.

We all know that arrogant people have high self-esteem and think they’re better/smarter/more attractive than everyone else, and therefore are entitled to special treatment, like more money or praise or whatever. And they’re pretty much always wrong.

But there’s another kind of arrogance. Kind of a mirrored arrogance. Those are the people who have such low self-esteem that they think that they’re worse/uglier/stupider than everyone else, and because of that, they think they’re entitled to special treatment: that they should suffer or be miserable all the time. I would argue that they are just as wrong as the other kind of arrogance.

On both ends of the spectrum, we have immature people basically saying, “I’m special and different! Pay attention to me!”

Real maturity and humility is realizing that you are not special. You are the same bag of potential good and potential evil as all of the other 7 billion people on this planet. You are unique. There is no one exactly like you on earth. But that doesn’t mean that you are ever better or worse than the other 7 billion of us. You will never win the “I’m better than everyone else” game, and you will never win the “I’m worse than everyone else” game. Because life is not about either of those games. Life is not a competition. It is a cooperative endeavor, in which we join together to make the best of what each of us can offer.

People like to call arrogance (both kinds) “special snowflake syndrome” but I don’t think that’s quite right. Humans are a lot like snowflakes. We are all unique and different. The problem with the arrogant is not that they think that they are “more unique” than all of the other snowflakes. They think that they are something better or worse than “just a snowflake.” They want to be held out separate from the rest of the snow, and praised or punished.

I say, go ahead and be a special snowflake. Realize that there is only one of you on earth. But please stop trying to put a value judgement on every difference between you and the “other” snowflakes. Like snowflakes, we are also all the same. Each snowflake is unique, but when you look at a snowman or a field blanketed in snow, you can’t even see the differences. You see billions of snowflakes coming together to make something beautiful.

(republished from my Tumblr.)


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