"In Defense of Arrogance"

Arrogant is what people call you when they're not as good as you and both of you know it. I get called arrogant a lot, usually by inferior and bitter writers, writers who are jealous of what I can do with a poem or a story or an essay. The writers who are better than me or equal to me don't care that I'm arrogant. They're far too busy with their own writing and far too arrogant themselves to bother me about my writing or my arrogance. It's safe to say that any person can be called arrogant over anything he does. A painter, an accountant, an actor, a musician, a beauty queen are all potential card carrying arrogant members. The better they are, the more people will think them arrogant. But is it just being good that's the problem? No. The problem isn't that the person is good or, for that matter, poor at something, the problem is that he believes he's good. That's the rub. That's what drives people bananas. The refusal to pretend to be anything but average or even less than that. You see, if you're pretty, you're not supposed to know you're pretty. If you're smart, you're not supposed to know you're smart. If you're tough, you're not supposed to know you're tough. If you know it, you're supposed to pretend you don't. That's humility. Humility therefore takes its genesis in one of two things: self-deception or the deception of others. Humility, in short, is a lie. Now, I don't much care if people want to lie to themselves about themselves or lie to others about themselves, my problem comes when others want me to lie to myself or to others about myself. I don't like having to pretend I am less good than I really am for people to like me. I've worked too hard to become as good as I am to have others who haven't had the decency to work half as hard tell me that I should claim I am no better than they are. I am better than they are. At least, I'm a better writer. Is it arrogance to point out the truth? Apparently, it is. I don't have any problem with arrogant people. I haven't any doubt that many people are better doctors than I am. I haven't any doubt that many people are better lawyers. In fact, I refuse to go to a doctor or lawyer who isn't supremely confident in his abilities to the point of being downright chesty about it. I don't find them arrogant because they say they are good. Why should I? They're right. If they weren't right, they wouldn't be successful. It is important to point this out. I am not prideful about everything-at least to the point of cockiness I'm not. Many are more handsome, more forgiving, more honest, more brave than Jim Valvis. I have but one real pride. I am a damn fine writer. I know it and I don't pretend I don't. I'm a damn fine writer, and the handsome, forgiving, honest, brave doctor or lawyer is not. Or he is. My belief in my ability is not a negation of anyone else's ability. Must there be, like in a fairy tale, only one fairest in the land? Can there not be many who are good, who believe they are good, and who are free to say they are good? Can we stop with the nonsense of false humility, which, as I already stated, is something of a redundancy since modesty is false? It was Benjamin Franklin, perhaps one of the greatest and one of the least proud men who ever lived, who proclaimed, in his bold and arduous experiment, "Even if I became the most humble man in the world, I would still be proud of my humility." 2. Why humility? Why should it so often be thrust down our throats? Why the seemingly almost universal need to bring others down to a level that is beneath them? Is it not bitterness? Is it not jealousy? Is it not an attempt to get others to conform to our own lack of ability and our insecurities and our despair? Is it not an attempt by the lesser to destroy the greater? It is. Nietzsche thought so too. I can think of no great man who did not start out arrogant and stay that way most of his life. How arrogant was Socrates to question the wisest men of his time and find them lacking? How arrogant was Jesus to believe, with every fiber of his being, that he-and possibly he alone-had a direct pipeline to the one and only God of the universe? How arrogant was Gandhi to believe by starving himself he could bring about a peaceful revolution for his beloved India? How arrogant was Mother Teresa to believe that one frail nun alone could help the poorest people of our world? And yet Socrates and Jesus and Gandhi and Mother Teresa are considered by most to be, not only great people, but four of the most humble souls who ever walked the planet. How arrogant was Mandela, who would not accept the long established belief of white supremacy in South Africa? How arrogant was Leonardo da Vinci to say that it is better to be deaf than blind because a deaf man at least could see his paintings? How arrogant was Leo Tolstoy, writing the first line of "War and Peace," believing that he, a mere mortal man, could bring it off? How arrogant was Mozart to believe he could compose music the world would treasure for centuries? How arrogant were the American founding fathers to believe that they could invent a government that would have no tyrant at its head? How arrogant was Lincoln to believe he could rally the nation and save a union that seemed to be falling apart at the seams? How arrogant was Albert Einstein when he proclaimed he knew the formula that makes the universe go? How arrogant was Thomas Edison, a man who demanded perfection, to believe that a day without a new invention was a wasted day? How arrogant were the Wright brothers to believe they could make a machine fly after centuries of others had failed in the same quest? How arrogant was Rosa Parks to refuse to give up her seat? How arrogant was Roger Bannister to believe he could break the four minute mile when no one in history had ever done so and it was believed to be a physical impossibility? All of them, before and even after becoming successful, were called arrogant fools-often by those who were closest to them. Yet they carried the day. Their belief in themselves, and in the rightness of their causes, carried the day. They would not budge. They made the world budge. Sheer arrogance has been responsible for every advancement mankind has ever made. But, in hindsight, we don't call it arrogance. Do we? We call it vision. Or worse, we call it luck. We say they carried the day, not because of the arrogance of any one individual, but because it was merely the right time. We take all the credit from the individual and hand it over to upbringing or education or lucky chance. We say it was an accident whose time had come. When someone becomes enormously successful, people do not credit his arrogance, but his inborn talent, whatever the hell that is. Never mind that talent would be utterly useless without arrogance, his belief in himself and his cocksure dismissal of all who oppose them. The masses strip from the victorious man his beautiful human arrogance; and they throw him on a pedestal where he has no business being. They negate his example by turning him into a God. Why? Is it not because that, when we admit arrogance carried the day, we have no one to blame for our failures but ourselves? No luck helped the great man, no chance brought him henceforth, but his indomitable will alone made him great. And, if his will alone made him great, then our wills must be lacking and hence our failure. We have bought into the lies of distraction and idleness. We have allowed ourselves to wallow in the mediocrity of the many. We have covered our eyes from the truth that could have made us great. 3. But, you say, isn't pride one of the seven deadly sins? It is. However, it is important to remember that the seven deadly sins are of importance only if your goal is to have a happy and mundane life. If a long and uneventful life is your only goal, you should avoid arrogance at all costs. You should avoid any extreme or gamble at all costs. If, however, you aim to accomplish things that the average person cannot or refuses to accomplish, all the deadly sins could be beneficial. None more so than pride. Will it bring about your downfall? It may. History and literature is rife with unfortunate souls who got too big for their britches. Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Macbeth. Socrates, remember, was poisoned. Aristotle was run out of Athens. Jesus was crucified. Galileo was publicly humiliated. Napolean was sent into exile. Mandela was imprisoned for decades. Lincoln was shot. Not many of them can be said to have led very happy lives-or to have come to happy ends-but where would we be as people had they not taken the greatest of gambles; had they not the arrogance to believe they could get away with their audacity; had they spared themselves the grief of living to the beat of the drum of their arrogant designs; had they joined the majority in a constant and dead agreement they had no belief in? They might have saved themselves a dire end, but they would have lived with a grief even greater than death. They would have lived with the shame of not having tried. And today we would still be dragging our knuckles like apes. 4. If you dream big be prepared for big setbacks, big disappointments, and possibly even big failure. If you aim high, if you speak boldly, if you usurp norms, if you cry or shout or otherwise draw attention to yourself, be prepared to be run out of town, kicked in the balls, and crucified. But if you have a plan, a little light inside you that refuses to dim, a belief in yourself that cannot be undermined by the mediocre middle, hold fast, dear saint. Don't let them take from you what struggle you possess. Don't let them knock you out of the game because they are afraid of your power. Don't let them corrupt your beauty with their slashing razors. Don't let them break your legs before the race is run. Don't let them water down your ideas or convictions to protect their timid sensibilities. Don't let them tell you not to be proud when pride is the only thing that will carry you through the trials. Don't ever believe-or even say in jest-you are less than you are because once you admit that, once you allow yourself to be one of the many instead of one of a kind, you will disappear forever into the bowels of the eternal second-rate. Stand firm and stay proud. That's my humble advice. - Jim Valvis

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