A couple of reasons for writing today’s entry about pride vs. humility:
1) On the surface level, the endorsement of pride and rejection of humility seem like an obvious front on which LaVeyan Satanism may appear to be strongly at odds with traditional religious values, and/or dysfunctional in the values it espouses.
I like to think the negative impression is weaker than in the past as far as the pride part goes, inasmuch as there are positive social movements with “pride” in the name these days - i.e. I get the impression that most people understand pride as a thing that is bad in excess rather than bad-as-such, which is then what LaVeyan Satanism itself says anyhow. The humility part is worth addressing though, as while there are aspects of humility that I think LaVey does make valid points against, I would ultimately contend that the resulting anti-humility stance does not amount to anti-questioning-yourself, anti-admitting-you-are-fallible or etc.
2) Pride and humility are actually both more complex concepts than one may initially think. I would thus argue that often when there is an apparent clash of values between two different religions on this front - e.g. between LaVeyan Satanism and Christianity - it is possible to at least partially reconcile this clash by recognizing that in fact the two parties mean different things via some of the words they are using, and thereby end up talking past one another.
My contention then would be that beneath the way each religion talks about pride and humility, whether as good or bad, there is fundamental agreement about what makes for a good human life, vs. the surface argument merely reflects different views about what is the most worrisome way to go astray from this vision of the good.
This entry is divided into three sections:
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