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ARROGANCE
Arrogance is a serious destructive human emotion like anger, deception, jealousy, and greed. It is also a means of communications and dialogue through body language. Encarta dictionary defines it as contemptuous pride a strong feeling of self-importance that is expressed by treating others with contempt or disregard. Other equivalent words for arrogance are: conceit, egotism, superiority, false pride, overconfidence, superciliousness, selfimportance, and condescension. Many world religions such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Taoism have described arrogance as a sin and condemned it in no uncertain terms.
Anop R. Vora
Rochester, NY vora5000@yahoo.com
If we study the history of mankind, we will find that it is replete with stories of people who fell from grace or were destroyed or were bruised badly by arrogance. These stories support the common knowledge that the people who are affected with arrogance usually become 'blind' and stubborn, live in a dream world, and cannot see what others see. Nor do they realize that they have a serious mental disease. Usually they walk around with a large ego, surround themselves with like-minded selfish friends and they tend to see - with jaundiced eyes - arrogance in others, not in themselves! They are out to prove to the world how smart and superior they are compared to others.
Anop R. Vora is the Past President of JAINA,
founder President of
the International Alumni Associations of North America, and a speaker in interfaith programs. He has published
similar articles in the past on: anger, forgiveness, What religion should
mean to us, Jain model of learning process, theory of karma, and
liberation through meditation.
Arrogance is very difficult to get rid of because the person who has this vice usually is close minded, tends to be vindictive and possesses a large dose of anger as well. Further more, very few people would be willing to bring this problem to his or her attention because of unpredictable response and even hostile reaction to any honest feedback offered. Clearly, the risk/ reward ratio is very unfavorable for them. Likewise, well wishers like parents or a spouse may try a few times but they also keep quiet after a while out of frustration. So in the absence of genuine feedback and guidance, it becomes a lonely journey; making it very difficult to take any corrective actions. To make matters worse, many people tend to pamper the ego of the arrogant person, allowing the vice to take even a stronger hold on the person.
Although anger and arrogance - both are bad vices, which one is worse compared to the other? In my opinion, arrogance is far worse than anger because anger at least needs a catalyst from outside while arrogance does not. We can hide anger but arrogance is apparent to all around us. Anger in many cases is transient in nature and it may subside in due course and may be easy to forget and forgive but arrogance is an ongoing phenomenon fueling fire on a continual basis. An arrogant person is constantly occupied in boosting his own ego and does not hesitate to employ devious means to earn undue respect, prestige or salutations.
Anger may exist without arrogance but arrogance is almost invariably accompanied with anger. Arrogance and anger form an explosive combination that can easily turn a person violent and make him lose his
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