Pride Research

The Sin of Pride

Preoccupation of oneself

“The sin of pride is the sin of sins.” It was this sin that transformed Lucifer into Satan, the devil and it was also this that first led Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit. 

Pride is all about me myself and I. It’s sinful because if one values oneself above all else, including God, one is completely contradicting God’s purpose for us, which includes serving each other in love (in a non-prideful way). Pride is often seen as the “first of all sins” as many of the other sins derive from pride. In complete admiration and love of oneself, one will ignore the well being of other and lust for what one believes one rightfully deserves. It makes one unresponsive of criticism. One will resist help and assume that one knows everything already. This leads up to lust, greed, gluttony etc. It’s also one of the earliest sins we learn about in the bible (through the story of how Lucifer, the very “seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty” was turned into the devil, “the father of lies” (http://www.allaboutgod.com/sin-of-pride.htm)

“In general, pride is at the bottom of all mistakes” 

(Said by John Ruskin - http://thinkexist.com/quotation/in_general-pride_is_at_the_bottom_of_all_great/146361.html). 

To me, pride is extreme overconfidence. It’s a state at which the love of oneself, destroys all the other possibilities for love and salvation. I also connect pride with divas. A diva does indeed love oneself (especially ones appearance) and being confident and gorgeous is a big part of a diva’s life. I believe divas are a milder more modern version of pride. Divas are not necessarily regarded as sinful, but they are often secretly looked down upon in society (or in some cases admired for their never ending belief in oneself and beautiful appearance). This idea of divas and pride is something I might develop in my scene.

Below are some quotes that I think describe Pride well: 

"When pride comes, then comes shame; but with the humble is wisdom." (Proverbs 11:2) 
"By pride comes nothing but strife, but with the well-advised is wisdom." (Proverbs 13:10) 
"Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." (Proverbs 16:18) 

I find the part the describes pride as a extreme love for oneself especially interesting and I plan to focus on this during my scene. I want to audience to see the performers falling in love with themselves on stage. I want them to feel the desire and lust for themselves. I want them to feel uncomfortable and like the performance intrudes their private space. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e2CLfq0UnU This link shows a documentary on pride from the History Channel that I found very useful. It explains what Pride is and the history behind it. It states that pride made one feel like they didn’t need God, which I think describes very well why it might be on of the most sinful sins. If one doesn’t need God, one certainly doesn’t need anyone on Earth either. One believes they are perfect and are immune to any critique. It’s from this arrogance and ignorance that I think the other sins are partly developed from. Ignoring God, and believing oneself as being equal to God (like Lucifer did and therefore became Satan) is obviously extremely disrespectful and sinful.

Narcissism

When thinking about pride as a love of oneself, one can see the connection between pride and the greek myth of Narcissism. The story behind narcissism is a story about an extremely beautiful and handsome young male, named Narcissist who falls in love with his own reflection. Throughout his youth all the people he encounters, including male and females falls in love with him- but he denies all of them. Until one day, the God Nemesis, who is the Greek goddess of retributive justice (also known as the goddess of justice), cursed Narcissist, and doomed him to fall in love with his own reflection. Soon he walks by a pool of water, and falls in love with his reflection. Some myths claims he drowned while trying to reach his reflection, other states he died of starvation for not wanting to leave his reflection. No matter the ending, the moral is always the same. He died from his arrogance and love of himself. This idea is something I wish to develop further, and probably use in the final scene. The image above shows my first stimulus. It is a picture which I believes shows narcissism well. From this picture, I will ask the performers to draw a symbol. Previously, we’ve written down words that a stimulus evoked, but I want to try if it’s possible to do this in a more visual way. I want to see if this will give more abstract results, as the performers have to simplify the concept of narcissism to a symbol before processing and working with it.