Do you consider it a bad thing? For pride is easily mistaken for arrogance. I cannot abstain from a claim that I am arrogant, but I do not see it as arrogance until I look in hindsight. I see it as pride when I am in the moment.
But is it a good thing, to be prideful?
I sometimes find that I come off too arrogant, where often I am attempting to either be witty or informative. I try to offer perspective but I think instead it seems as though I am instead fostering testosterone levels in my peers.
But the thing is, I've engineered myself to be full of pride. In my early years I was a wreck and completely destroyed by lenience and submissiveness. Over the years, after I dropped out of school, I forced myself into a state of mind that I can do anything and become anything. This, of course, is not true. But I have to think that way. It's a manner of combating my depression.
To take all things in stride - criticism, personal attacks, doubt, trolling - and to laugh it off is a tough business for one such as I. I am confrontational and have an extreme temper. My anxiety attacks further add to the level of stress in times of emotional turmoil. I use pride as a means to shrug it off, to try to dry burn through the moment. But other people look to me through their glowing windows and say to themselves, "this guy's full of shit".
As a modder I look at my work as largely failures because I did not reach my dream's goals. I am exceptionally hard on myself for success, more than any troll or doubter. If you say to me, "You haven't finished a project", I'd say, "Yeah, no, I finished AO and ZAPOC. Everything else was a stepping stone to a greater understanding". But I don't think that way inside.
AO had the potential for more but I reached the absolute pinnacle of Starcraft's limits. I had two available flingy.dat entries free before I had to start cannibalizing Protoss or Terran units which was not an option. But yet I had more graphics I could have used. The Great Destroyer was not wholly finished, I couldn't find him a portrait nor implement his other graphics.
The limit expander, the massive exe hack that makes AO's weapon counts possible (far exceeding those of sc's default; think valyrie rockets not appearing, the hack gets past this limit), is also unstable. But the programmer who made it, as experienced as he is, is not even sure how it works at all.
What I call a failure in AO is that I could not learn C++ and pick up where he left off, learn how it worked, and fixed it. In technicality, I could do that. I have the time. But my psyche prevents learning difficult subjects like this. My disabilities make functioning under stress, and focusing, actually learning, very difficult.
Outside, I don't often allow this turmoil to show. I smile and laugh, I cuss and cheer. In my commentaries you wouldn't think me passive-aggressive suicidal and completely wrecked inside, because I put on a face.
Every time I read an article, like my SC2 blog, I think to myself, "Is this pride in my writing or arrogance?"
I do not deny that I am arrogant, merely that I cannot see it. I see it. But I don't know how to correct it.
I have great pride in myself, for over ten years I have worked on this subject. Nay, I have not released something wildly successful out of a 20k download melee map in wc3's release days, but I have had some degrees of success. Armageddon Onslaught is my flagship into the unknown, and it has garnered its own little cult. AO serves as a tech demo and a proof of concept, both of which it accomplished perfectly. I accomplished what I set out to do with this project.
But the fact remains - I have not yet created a grand-scale project to my title that has reached a level of completion admirable. It's not that I seek fame or glory, but rather pride. I mod for myself and only myself, I seek to bring my worlds to life. But every failure has weighed heavily on me, and it hurts me more when people choose to attack that.
That is why I choose the route of aggression. Because aggression allows me to bear the brunt of these attacks and my own doubts and charge ahead without question.
But this question is, is it wrong to do so? Is having pride like this a weakness, not a strength? What would I do to better myself in such an instance where I must, yet again, incite great personal change?
Pride isn't a bad thing. For instance, are you proud of your country? You probably should be, in which case it's perfectly fine. But with every country, there are things to be less proud of, and it would probably be better to temper your pride in those regards with a more objective understanding.
So in the case of your modding, perhaps you should try to help others understand why you mod, and then build up your pride not in relation to how your projects have failed to accomplish completion, but in relation to how far you have gone with them and what you managed to do.
It's not really your problem what other people think or say about you unless you make it your problem. A healthy dose of pride is good for accomplishing things, I'm learning.
Perfectionism can be a good and bad thing as well - while it's good to continually seek improvement and recognize the flaws of past work, don't diminish the value of the lessons and experience gained from your failures. You only need to succeed once to have "reached" a goal; anything before that is just progress.
On June 04 2010 11:01 d3_crescentia wrote: It's not really your problem what other people think or say about you unless you make it your problem.
This is pretty much it. People who jump on the chance to cast doubt and criticize others are just doing so because they're not happy with themselves. People that are happy with themselves are too busy doing what they love that they don't have time to go spend time intentionally pissing people off.
If someone compliments your work, simply accept it graciously. If someone provides constructive criticism, reflect it onto your work. Anything apart from that, just shrug it off and do what you're doing.
It's eye-opening to see a post like this from you. For a long time, I've read your writing and viewed your work as something to aspire to, something so very far above what I'm capable of now. Even having worked with you for as short a time as I did, it's clear that you speak with the full experience of the field, and that can be rather forceful. When you talk about modding, I don't feel arrogance, only competence.
It's hard to mod without a degree of arrogance. The mechanisms for close collaboration simply fail too often, and large group projects are simply impractical. Additionally, speaking as from a niche within a niche, discussions are more likely to end with butting heads than cooperative development. I can't say that what you're describing is right, but I don't really see a better, practical alternative. Maybe I just haven't been as active recently, but there is not enough support from within the SC modding community anymore to warrant humility or modesty in the work. It's too often a one-man show that demands this kind of perspective.
I'm impressed that you would recognize this as a problem, but it's amusing that this is how you would present it, as a blog here on TL. My respect for you only continues to grow, Mesk. Good luck with whatever path of action you decide; I'm sure I will see you well at the end of it.
Sometimes I look at the content within the mods and think, "What has this contributed to my overall image?"
In Homeworld 2, I learned how unit-based hardpointed weaponry works. This could potentially be used in Starcraft 2. In Warcraft 3, I learned a lot about triggers and terraining. I started learning basic programming concepts and could probably jump right into intermediate sc2 triggering if I wanted.
But at the same time it's hard for me to shrug off the fact that I spent a great deal of time on certain projects that had the potential for greatness but couldn't reach it. It is to say, what good is knowledge if it is not used? Maybe it's just that I haven't had the opportunity to exercise this knowledge yet, or maybe it's that I never will because I can't. To that effect I've written articles and such to try to present this knowledge in a tangible manner that others may benefit from, but even this can be skewed by pride.
But I cannot show weakness, because chinks in the armor bring out greater cracks when you met heavy seas and all may fall to ruin at but a breath.
I don't just have mental issues, I have extreme personality disorders. I don't know which to blame it on, but dealing with people in large is difficult. Often I have played the part of ambassador and used diplomacy to great effect, but I find that when addressing a crowd I sometimes have a habit of drawing ire from individuals.
Haters gonna hate and all that, but there is always a reason why.
It easy for me to sit back and say, "I could have presented this in a better way", but always so hard to actually change.
Pride isn't a bad thing. For instance, are you proud of your country? You probably should be, in which case it's perfectly fine.
WTF? No you shouldn´t be proud of youre country.There is absolutly EVERything wrong with beeing proud of youre country.Beeing proud of youre country is such an 20thcentury idea and so stupid. Why would you be proud of a place where you happened to be born?!?! I mean are you proude of the color of your skin?Are you proud of you´re planet? are you proud of you´re Galaxie? There is nothing wrong with beeing confident in yourself because of facts.Because you know what you are capable of. For example is it Arrogant if Day told some C- player:"you should improve on multitasking and macro" No because he´s probably 10 times better than that guy
Pride isn't a bad thing. For instance, are you proud of your country? You probably should be, in which case it's perfectly fine.
WTF? No you shouldn´t be proud of youre country.There is absolutly EVERything wrong with beeing proud of youre country.Beeing proud of youre country is such an 20thcentury idea and so stupid. Why would you be proud of a place where you happened to be born?!?! I mean are you proude of the color of your skin?Are you proud of you´re planet? are you proud of you´re Galaxie? There is nothing wrong with beeing confident in yourself because of facts.Because you know what you are capable of. For example is it Arrogant if Day told some C- player:"you should improve on multitasking and macro" No because he´s probably 10 times better than that guy
What the German said. He's more qualified than anyone here on this topic.
That being said, I share many of your thoughts and feelings. I very much appreciate introspective posts like this. I think the majority of us here in the community are introverted, so I'm sure that we can relate to this kind of thing rather easily.
I've always prevented myself from taking pride in anything. When people tell me "be proud", I just nod along, but I always prevent myself from feeling that way about anything... no matter how hard I work. Kind of like G Hardy, the British Mathematician. He never took pride in anything he ever did, and was always embarrassed when people gave him awards or complimented him on something... especially in public. An old rumor about him was that he was so shy that he put towels over the mirrors in every hotel or bedroom/bathroom he lived in because he didn't care to see his own reflection.
Pride isn't a bad thing. For instance, are you proud of your country? You probably should be, in which case it's perfectly fine.
WTF? No you shouldn´t be proud of youre country.There is absolutly EVERything wrong with beeing proud of youre country.Beeing proud of youre country is such an 20thcentury idea and so stupid. Why would you be proud of a place where you happened to be born?!?! I mean are you proude of the color of your skin?Are you proud of you´re planet? are you proud of you´re Galaxie? There is nothing wrong with beeing confident in yourself because of facts.Because you know what you are capable of. For example is it Arrogant if Day told some C- player:"you should improve on multitasking and macro" No because he´s probably 10 times better than that guy
Yes, I am proud of my country, place of birth, skin color, planet, and galaxy. I don't see anything wrong with being proud of such things.
Pride isn't a bad thing. For instance, are you proud of your country? You probably should be, in which case it's perfectly fine.
WTF? No you shouldn´t be proud of youre country.There is absolutly EVERything wrong with beeing proud of youre country.Beeing proud of youre country is such an 20thcentury idea and so stupid. Why would you be proud of a place where you happened to be born?!?! I mean are you proude of the color of your skin?Are you proud of you´re planet? are you proud of you´re Galaxie? There is nothing wrong with beeing confident in yourself because of facts.Because you know what you are capable of. For example is it Arrogant if Day told some C- player:"you should improve on multitasking and macro" No because he´s probably 10 times better than that guy
I don't see anything wrong with being proud of such things.
Listen to the German.
GERMAN PEOPLE PLEASE DO NOT LOOK IN THIS SPOILER + Show Spoiler +
Here's what's wrong with being proud of such things:
Pride leads to vanity. Vanity leads to conceit. Conceit leads to ignorance. Ignorance leads to...
To sum up my feelings though, I don't think it's wrong to be proud of something you've accomplished, but in general pride being labelled as "right or wrong" seems silly.
On June 04 2010 13:09 GGTeMpLaR wrote: To sum up my feelings though, I don't think it's wrong to be proud of something you've accomplished, but in general pride being labelled as "right or wrong" seems silly.
Rather the question is when does one go too far when he displays his pride? At what point does pride cross over in arrogance in display? It's something I've had a long, difficult time trying to consider and trying to correct. I much rather be mellow and all but it's too easy to come off the wrong way.
Unless it's a bad troll, then I've just gotta turn them inside out for the fun of it.
For example a pride for your parents and ancestry, especially if you come from the quality ones, if your parents spent generations upon generations working on self-improvement, were important, had success, had strong personalities. It would be very fucked up not to be proud of it and not to be thankful for the qualities inherited. Even if you came from the terrible parents and bloodline, natural selection worked for quite a long time already, there is a strong reason why you happen to be alive.
Your situation interests me, as modding seemingly lacks the massive frame of reference certain fields have to contain excess pride or arrogance.
As a saxophone player, I am extremely proud of my own accomplishments, and my own talent. However, I cannot be arrogant about my situation, as a comparison of my abilities to those of Johnny Hodges, Charlie Parker, or even some musicians I deal with on a daily basis would make me feel stupid and childish for being arrogant. For you, however, you seem to be at the very top of your chosen field, taking the position of the inspirer as opposed to the inspiree. From what I've read of your posts, your pride does not cross over into arrogance, and merely serves to push others to strive to accomplish what you have. In terms of whether your pride is merited due to incomplete projects and the like, those doubts are what keeps you in check, and keeps you from becoming arrogant. They also serve to keep you striving to accomplish something, in the same way that a Bird solo pushes me, or your mods push a beginning modder.
I'm not sure if any of that made sense, It's late and I had a few drinks earlier, but those are my 2 cents
I consider myself fairly arrogant (in most regards), and the people that I enjoy associating with (i.e. my friends) tend to be quite arrogant too.
I don't really consider this a bad thing. Confidence is an incredibly positive characterstic, and most people that are extremely confident tend to come off as somewhat arrogant. I am generally not a rude person at all and I've been accused of arrogance.
EPT
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