PRISONER EXPRESS

Some folks perceive me as having low self-esteem and for some reason they find it offensive and in need of immediate correction. The word "pride" is the centerpiece of their favorite incantations: "You should take pride in yourself" and "You should take pride in what you do." These magic formulae are invoked in order for me to feel better about myself, so I might feel as if I have importance, as if I have worth. I am supposed to have pride.

Yet if I were to take pride in who I am and what I do, I would be a proud thief who burglarizes houses. Burglarizing is evil. I am driven to evil actions because I am an evil person, and it would be insanity to be proud of a character rooted in evil. Allowing pride in my heart, no matter for what, would be heaping fuel onto the fire, as any amount of pride would make me and anyone else better. I believe pride is evil.

Somehow, though, folks see pride as a good thing even when its result is not. And they take pride in their ambitions. What, by any measure, should be considered vile is a matter of conceit.

I have seen pride make men purchase new prison uniforms, pressed and starched. I wonder if there were slaves who cleaned and polished their chains and who wore their chains with as much pride.

I have seen pride gloat over a locker full of commissary and sneer at a less fortunate neighbor. I have seen pride in ignorance.
I have seen pride in the appearance of ignorance.
I have seen pride drive men to keep talking when silence was sensible. I have seen pride get in the way of admitting error or guilt.
I have seen pride prevent an apology.
I have seen pride goad men into disrupting the peace.
I have seen pride disdain mercy and clamor for blood.
I have seen pride become the shortest distance between antagonists.
I have seen pride in the ability to draw blood, to break bones, to maim.
I have seen pride-driven genocidal insanity in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Germany.
Pride. It is a poison that causes us to swell and become puffed up. We become certain of our unexamined and unquestioned belief in our superiority, our rightness, our righteousness.
Pride. I do not even like the sound of the word, or the way it looks written on paper, or the way it looks written upon a soul. It is a vile inscription that transmogrifies into a graffito of death camps and flaming tires, of mass graves and machetes, outlined and filled in with flesh and blood of the humble.
In his essay "My religion of No Religion," Daniel H. Harris asserts "More evil has been done in the name of religion than any other."
I disagree.
Pride, after all, was the original sin.