The Paradox of Pride

Sometimes Fate/Karma/Destiny – call it what you will – seems to juxtapose things just to make a point. Or perhaps the human mind, always desperate for coherence, imposes its own structure on the messy reality of random chance.

Thus, a couple of days after Artemis II returned to Earth, the BBC decided to screen a documentary about the reconstruction of Notre Dame. Both could, I think, be seen as their respective continent’s greatest achievement of the century to date. But they seem different – one creating the future, the other preserving the past. Fuel, then, for the narrative that while America is still trying to make history, Europe is happy to become a Disneyland for sophisticated tourists. That the moon mission, save for a slight increase in distance, did not do anything that had not been done before I was born should, but in many cases didn’t, complicate the story.

The documentary featured many of those involved in the physical work of the restoration – lumberjacks who had cut down the trees for the beams, masons who had carved the statues, even the barge captain who had shipped the stones up the Seine. There was also the team who had produced the lead used to cover the roof. The English team who had made the lead, in what must have been a slight blow to French pride.

Of which there was plenty to go around. Every interviewee proclaimed themselves proud to have worked on the project. And why not? It was an important job. It required skill possessed by few. The finished article will, acts of God aside, last for centuries. Not many of us get to do something which is so visible and which we can be reasonably confident will be seen by descendants so distant we will get bored of using the word “great” to describe them.

But Pride has not, historically, had a good rap. It is, after all, one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Outside the Christian tradition, the Romans rather went off superbia when they expelled their last king, Tarquin the Proud. To the Greeks, nemesis was always hobbling after hubris.

Be that as it may, we do expect people to have some degree of pride. Someone who declares themselves not proud of their nationality is a bit odd. And probably trying to make a political point. Parents and grandparents are expected, in most cases, to be proud of their offspring. Grandma’s Boasting Book is a sufficiently accepted social phenomenon that many stationers explicitly cater to it.

But pride, in these circumstances, has an almost colonial aspect. It is extractive, taking the efforts of others as one’s own. With the exception of immigrants who have chosen to be naturalised, no-one chooses their nationality. It is an accident of fate that I am British, not Bhutanese. The reasons people cite for pride in this country are nothing to do with me. I did not invent the rule of law, found the Empire, win the World Cup, or decide that everyone was going to queue.

Similarly, you may have paid for the lessons, but you were not in the room hitting the keys when your little darling passed her Grade 8 Piano. Like Elgin Marbles in the British Museum, pride often takes the achievements of others to flatter the self.

The artisans in the programme are different though. They had cut down the trees, carved the sculptures, and transported the stone. They were taking pride in their own achievements. Nothing wrong with that.

Or is there?

For time passes. We all change. We continually stop being what we were and start becoming what we are. And the link between these successive selves is unclear. The person who writes these words is not the person who won a high school debate tournament – he has a bit less hair and some of it (not much!) is a slightly lighter shade. Would my taking pride in that achievement not have a similarity to my taking pride in the Battle of Waterloo? I wasn’t there closing the gates at Hougoumont, but little if any of the stuff that makes me today was there in that school auditorium.

And did “I” win the debate tournament anyway? Something that looked like me stood up and spoke. I didn’t, however, consciously choose every word I spoke. They just came out. Something was doing something, but it was not something I controlled. Did the lumberjacks consciously choose each swing of the axe, aiming it at a precise, carefully calibrated spot or did they just do what they did, muscle memory taking charge? Was the sculptor deliberating before each move of the chisel or did he effectively outsource the task to something unseen and unknowable? If so, would taking pride not be similar to being chuffed when you sneezed particularly well?

Are there sour grapes here? Possibly. I have never been involved in the reconstruction of a Mediaeval cathedral and if my CDT teacher has any say in the matter, I never will. But pride requires an “I” to do and an “I” to feel and the former is less “us” than we think, often beyond our control, always receding into the past. Were we to wish to feel pride, it would be more reasonable to focus less on the outcome and more on the process. The choice to learn the skill, and the persistence to develop it. But that still wouldn’t get around the fact that we change.

When we loosen the “I” which does, we start to loosen the “I” which feels. If our actions are just a series of processes, many of which are beyond our control, so too are our feelings, just passing emotions generated by something we can never quite grasp which is never quite the same.

Pride might arise, but pride can never stay – there is nothing stable for it to latch on to, nothing for it to grasp. A mind which sees itself as an ever-changing flux of process is not a mind which can easily feel pride. Nor is it one which feels much need to.

In its place can come satisfaction and appreciation. A recognition of quality work for its own sake, not as fuel for an ego or a laundry list of achievements mistaken for a person. And that can be enough. A lack of pride need not mean a lack of doing, if anything it can mean a freer type of doing where the work stands alone, not in reference to the worker. That is enough.

Just do what is there to be done. When it is there to be done.

The original builders of Notre Dame, after all, did not erect their cathedral for themselves. They did it for God. And, you’ve got to say, they did a pretty good job. As did the engineers who built a rocket to take humanity back to the moon.

“The less there was of me, the happier I got.” Leonard Cohen.

Stewart Slater works in Finance. He is now also on Substack, where you are welcome to follow him.

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