Pride is a tangled sin. The word can refer to
a virtue, for example, a man can take pride
in his work. Nothing wrong with that, but this
is no use to us here.
There
are other forms of pride
that do count as real, juicy
sin.
From now on, when I talk about pride, I'm talking
about the word in the sense of vanity and self-conceit,
hauteur and hubris.
Sinful pride!
The concept behind pride is the gratuitous gratification
of the ego. For example those uncounted rich
who are not content with the creature comforts
of their lucre, wear their wealth like a strutting
peacock its gaudy feathers. Such ostentatious
displays are there for two reasons. The first
is that, like the peacock, wealth is displayed
to seduce a female (or lad, though I doubt rich
women are as prone to this motivation as men.
Crudely speaking, blokes are besotted by beauty,
women are wooed with wealth). The Second reason
behind the ostentatious show of opulence is
to excite the
envy of the subordinate
masses. I call this malaise
gold-pride
and it is the first sign of the sure-fire malodorous
corruption that bountiful cash procures you.
The wages of the sin of gold-pride are the corrosion
of humanity; the oxidisation of humour; the
"
what an asshole"-style contempt
of the broke classes. Now that I think about
it, gold-pride sounds like jolly good fun.
As those with gold-pride cannot be seen to mix
with the vulgar elements of society they imprison
themselves from valuable experiences. Money
has exiled the gold-proud from rich pleasures
in life. They find refuge in the company of
other victims of gold-pride. Inevitably they
then have to endure the pain of being less proud
than the wealthier cronies of their sterile,
gold-proud company.
Next there are those who are proud of their
looks: the beauty-proud. Usually lacking brains,
the beauty-proud depend upon their looks for
their morale. And the harvest of beauty is wondrously
fabulous indeed. Beautiful people are habitually
liked more than the ugly. During first impressions
they are subconsciously rated as more intelligent
(ironically) and more trustworthy than their
plain kin. And beautiful people have better
sex, they are more experimental and less inhibited
under the satin sheets.
There is an evolutionary explanation for all
this. Beauty is intimately linked to symmetry.
Beautiful faces are actually quite ordinary:
when the features are measured they are found
to be close to the human median. We find them
beautiful because the two halves of the face
exhibit a higher symmetry. This is a sign of
healthy genes and upbringing. It takes energy
to achieve symmetry, and energy in nature is
a valuable commodity, spent primarily on trolling
for food and reproduction.
But there is a whopping snag! A searing sting
in the tale!! Time. The beauty-proud become
scraped by the age's rutty claws; sagged by
age's sloth; and withered by age's deadly breath.
The pain of the beauty-proud is thrice that
of the rest of us, for their life's gamble is
not hedged in other interests or charms. The
wages of the sin of beauty-pride are death when
youth dies, an age of ebbing shrieks, of falling
off Mount Olympus' measureless precipice, into
Hades far far below.
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doggy style | Subject: | 2003-04-29 17:06:09 |
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