What does it mean to be proud of something?

A combination of satisfaction for your achievements and pleasure rolled up with gratification. For me, pride should not come out as selfishness but as dignity.

@ZEPHYRA: “A combination of satisfaction for your achievements and pleasure rolled up with gratification.”

So, if I’m satisfied that I have completed a task at work, and feel some pleasure, this is “pride”?

Is another person or group required in the equation? In other words, is the satisfaction and pleasure on display or in relation to others?

Could you give me an example?

The silence in this thread is comforting. At least I am not alone in my confusion.

Yet we forget Pride is one of the seven sins.

I don’t fully understand being “proud” of being a Southerner. I wouldn’t use the word proud or pride that way. I can be proud of my own accomplishments, but that’s something different to me. I guess being proud is a way of saying you like many of the things that you relate to being southern. Being polite, charitable, neighborly, whatever it is.

@JLeslie: “I guess being proud is a way of saying you like many of the things that you relate to being southern. Being polite, charitable, neighborly, whatever it is.”

Pride means that you like something? I think it must mean more than that. Thesaurus has “humility” as pride’s antonym.

@DoNotKnow I’m not talking about the real definition, I’m talking about how they use the word. I’m not southern, so I’m just hypothesizing about what they mean. I have lived in the south. It’s also a way of stating they are not Yankees/Northerners, which carries a negative connotation for them. For those southerners who think that way, not all southerners.

Pride is:
– Teaching your kid how to tie his shoe and finding him teach his brother
– Completing a project that took a lot of effort… putting in that very last piece
– Honoring or being loyal to an organization that fights for a cause you believe in

On the other hand.. pride is:
– Refusing to admit you are wrong
– Avoiding an appropriate action because it would make you “look bad”

Well there is the biblical pride @JLeslie that usually brings unhappiness pushes people away and causes misunderstandings. I call it being prideful because it often separates us from others, calling attention to oneself for varied but self serving reasons.

There is also a pride that means caring and pouring your heart into something. Seeing a project to completion. It is about achievement and or serving a larger cause but not to the exclusion of others.

Southern pride for example is an example of solidarity. It binds diverse people together based on locale. But that doesn’t excuse any one with a genuine claim of southern pride to look down on treat someone else badly because they don’t have the same back ground.

@Unbroken GA.

@Apparently_Im_The_Grumpy_One: “Pride is:”
”– Teaching your kid how to tie his shoe and finding him teach his brother”

What if you weren’t the one to teach your kid how to tie his shoe, but you did find him teaching his brother? What I guess I’m asking is if pride is an emotion that can be described as the feeling we get when our concept of self is strengthened by perceiving our actions as consequential?

”– Completing a project that took a lot of effort… putting in that very last piece”

This seems to be a different thing altogether, and it sounds synonymous with commitment.

”– Honoring or being loyal to an organization that fights for a cause you believe in”

Is this an expression of pride or the result of it?

@Unbroken: “Well there is the biblical pride”

This seems to be actions involved in building a sense of self?

“There is also a pride that means caring and pouring your heart into something. Seeing a project to completion. It is about achievement and or serving a larger cause but not to the exclusion of others”

This echoes the “commitment” type from @Apparently_Im_The_Grumpy_One‘s answer. “Taking pride in one’s work”?

“Southern pride for example is an example of solidarity. It binds diverse people together based on locale.”

This is one of the more mysterious ones to comprehend. Are we talking about the self-growing exercise – but in a social context?

Thanks. Still trying to work out what this term means and why its synonyms don’t seem to accomplish the same thing.

@DoNotKnow Are you American?

^ yes :)

^^Ok, just checking you understood that the south here has it’s own schtick sort of regarding etiquette, history, and even present day.

Haven’t you ever heard of a parent being proud of their child’s accomplishments? Or, a person even being proud of their own accomplishments? I actually don’t think in terms of pride much. My family doesn’t use the word much.

@JLeslie: “Haven’t you ever heard of a parent being proud of their child’s accomplishments? Or, a person even being proud of their own accomplishments?”

Yes. This is the context that I am most familiar with the term. But when all of the talk about “southern pride” came up, I couldn’t make sense of it. Then it got me thinking about the pride in children concept and realized that I didn’t really understand what it is.

Take a child’s accomplishments – when people say that they’re “proud”, what are they saying exactly? What is that emotion and how does it differ from happiness that their child is happy?

Regarding being proud of our own accomplishments, are we then merely expressing that we’re happy that we have done something to be happy? Or is it in relation to others? Is pride the feeling we get when our sense of self grows in the act of claiming responsibility for our actions. In other words, is pride an ego-building exercise?

I’m not intentionally being obtuse here. I’m trying to figure out why a word that is so common as “pride” is so difficult to nail down.

The way I understand it, I relate it mostly to accomplishments. Working hard and achieving. My family doesn’t use it I think because we use words like love, successful, accomplished, integrity, or talk about the very specific thing the person did. We just don’t use the word pride much.

I wonder how many southerners relate to, or use the term, southern pride? I think they are more likely to specifically talk about what they like about the south, or what they don’t like up north. I wonder if the people who use the term southern pride feel better than others? It’s a way of elevating themselves while looking down in others? I really don’t know.

Possibly, the word pride is similar to not telling a child they are beautiful. In my family we were told we were beautiful, while some other families don’t do it either out of habit, or because they think it’s bad to inflate the ego of the child, or because they have a problem with focus on external beauty.

I think Southern pride is more like gay pride in some ways. It’s basically, “not shame.” I think Southerners get a lot of ridicule outside the South. I think there’s some rebelliousness in it—no I will not try to hide my accent. No I won’t be ashamed of the past. No I won’t apologize for my culture. I’m proud.

Nobody seems to question gay pride. But really, what is there to be proud about? So you like sex with some people and not others? Hooray. Who doesn’t? It’s more about being proud instead of apologizing and having shame for who you are.

Thanks, @kebooks. The “gay pride” thing makes some sense I guess. They are expressing that not only do they not feel ashamed, they want to celebrate it.
But isn’t there something else? I’m not ashamed of anything – but that doesn’t mean that I am proud of everything (does it?).

I’m not ashamed of being a software engineer. But am I proud of being a software engineer? What could that even mean? I’m not ashamed of being a parent – but am I proud of it? I don’t think so, right? But maybe I am and just don’t understand what pride means.?

To shift to the “southern pride”. Ok, so let’s say I live in the south. I can’t figure out why or how I would be ashamed to be living in the south. But proud? Is shame the opposite of pride or is humility?

It’s not that you must be proud of everything that you’re not ashamed of, but if you’re constantly getting ridiculed or shamed for something, people might develop a sense of pride to counter those feelings of imposed shame.

No one ridicules a software engineer. @keobooks makes a great analogy.

Thanks. This helps. So, one definition of pride is to actively embrace an identity in the face of persecution.

I’m not sure how this necessarily applies to the other uses of “pride”. Maybe it doesn’t.

I’m wondering if “southern pride” is the result of this? Does the south feel persecuted? If so, for what – that their slaves were taken away from them?

You’ve never heard anyone make fun of a southern accent? You’ve never heard all the jokes about people marrying their siblings? You’ve never heard people making redneck jokes?

^ I guess so.

Thanks @JLeslie. Though it seems I conveyed the wrong message. I like wiki’s description, though long it is thorough and accurate.

Pride is an inwardly directed emotion that carries two common meanings. With a negative connotation pride refers to an inflated sense of one’s personal status or accomplishments, often used synonymously with hubris. With a positive connotation, pride refers to a satisfied sense of attachment toward one’s own or another’s choices and actions, or toward a whole group of people, and is a product of praise, independent self-reflection, or a fulfilled feeling of belonging. Philosophers and social psychologists have noted that pride is a complex secondary emotion which requires the development of a sense of self and the mastery of relevant conceptual distinctions (e.g., that pride is distinct from happiness and joy) through language-based interaction with others.[1] Some social psychologists identify it as linked to a signal of high social status.[2] In contrast pride could also be defined as a disagreement with the truth. One definition of pride in the first sense comes from St. Augustine: “the love of one’s own excellence”.[3] A similar definition comes from Meher Baba: “Pride is the specific feeling through which egoism manifests.”[4] In this sense, the opposite of pride is either humility or guilt; the latter in particular being a sense of one’s own failure in contrast to Augustine’s notion of excellence.

Pride is sometimes viewed as excessive or as a vice, sometimes as proper or as a virtue. While some philosophers such as Aristotle (and George Bernard Shaw) consider pride a profound virtue, some world religions consider it a sin, such as is expressed in Proverbs 11:2 of the Old Testament. In Christianity, pride is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

When viewed as a virtue, pride in one’s appearance and abilities is known as virtuous pride, greatness of soul or magnanimity, but when viewed as a vice it is often termed vanity or vainglory. Pride can also manifest itself as a high opinion of one’s nation (national pride) and ethnicity (ethnic pride).

@DoNotKnow
You are overthinking it.

Way overthinking.

In some ways it’s just an expression; a saying. Southern Pride. It’s become a commonly used term. Like any expression that catches on, people within the group use it to feel connected.

I also am reminded of something a friend once told me. I was telling her how I find it off that in the south there is an absence of conversation about where people and families are from. In the northeast it’s very common to ask people what they are, when their famines came to the US, where the family is from. A lot if people I knew in the south barely identified or knew where their families were from. I also was commenting on the lack of a good Italian restaurant, impossible to find a good bakery, no really good bagel
place, selection in the grocery store is lacking, but the best fried chicken ever is in the Memphis area, Gus’s fried chicken has been written up by very serious foodies. She said, “I think a lot of people in the South identify with being Southern. Not Italian, Irish, Polish, German, Southern.

One woman I met was telling me she had started to research her family and her husband’s family. She asked her FIL what he knew about where his family was from (we all lived in TN at the time) he responded, “my family is from North Carolina.” She said back, “no, I mean where did they come from before coming to America.” He said angrily, “what you mean, we’re American!” She tried for another minute and then gave up. Most Southerners aren’t that extreme, but they often do strongly identify as Southerners and they do feel they are the butt if a lot of criticism and jokes and many if them don’t have a sense of humor about it, although many of them do. Look at Jeff Foxworthy and some of the other Southern comedians.

I still think @keobooks really hit the answer though.

Where do you live @Unbroken?

I live in Alaska @JLeslie the home of the last frontier. Though I lived in Alabama and good ole Mississippi and my fathers family were true southerners with names like abernathy and matheny and lily and ester and so forth… So I have seen and occasionally been the sucked into the southern pride argument

@Unbroken Interesting. So, what does your family say concerning the question? What do they mean by Southern pride?

I’ve only spent a week in AK, but I can see how living there can be fairly removed from the lower 48. I don’t mean that in a negative way at all, I only mean that I can see Alaskans being outside of the whole north and south schtick. Honestly, I wasn’t extremely aware of it myself until I moved to the south. Southerners refer to people from Michigan (I went to school in Michigan) as northerners. I had never heard that before, I was about 30 at the time I first heard it. In the northeast we divide the country up a lot more; more regions. I do admit that now and then while growing up something was said about a southerner. Usually, it was noticing their accent or dialect. I never heard anyone talk about anything else really, unless it was taught in a history class. For me, the civil war, slavery, segregation, were all American history. The separation of the north and south during the civil war was a thing of the past, the southern states to me were simply a part of my country. The divide and the history lives more in the south than in the north in my opinion. That’s my experience anyway. I think partly because a reasonable portion of people who live in the south still don’t like that the northerners made them and make them change things.

@JLeslie as a child being a southerner was derogatory. Red necks and such. Also their dialect like you mentioned came into question a lot. The other thing was their food. But in general the lower 48 was “outside” and we didnt care all that much until someone came up here and was disliked or not immediately accepted.
When i moved down there it was a cultural shock i never realized how overtly racist and segregated people still were. I remember occasionally walking into a strip mall and having everyone staring at me with apparent malice. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize i was the only white person there and wasn’t welcome. I mean there was racism in alaska. It was directed toward Caucasians and other minorities people not family or not native to Alaska where i lived. So i had experienced racism first hand but this felt different more powerful somehow. And where i was living in both AL and MS the towns were old and ill kept the economy was bleak. They were both poor regions. Even Mobile seemed to be struggling.

@Unbroken I had a bit of a cultural shock moving to the south also. I was unaware at how separate whites and blacks still were.

Well hopefully that has changed inn the last ten years

I just moved out of the South 2.5 years ago. I lived there for 8 years.

Don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying the majority of people down there are racist or want to secede from the US. I still maintain the vast majority of Americans are not racist.

^ I agree.

People do ignore that the South is in many ways more integrated than many parts of the North. Chicago and New York are two of the most racially segregated cities in the US. While there were no official Jim Crow laws up North, there were plenty of unofficial laws. Until at least the 1980’s, Indiana and Illinois had “Sundown Towns” where the unofficial law was that no black people could be in the town after sundown. If they were found, they were usually beaten up and the police would forget to show up.

Also, Chicago had some of the most racist police brutality in history. I remember people talking about being sodomized with broomsticks and electrocuted with homemade torture machines. Northerners like to pretend that kind of stuff doesn’t happen, but it does.