#vainglory

Primadaimon

Aka "The Diva"

She was the third vocalist of the band, a classically trained opera singer. Her powerful operatic alto was a counterpoint to the rapid-fire baritone rap of Prophet and the sweet pop soprano of Arora. She wasn't a main singer in most of their songs but was always there to provide backup even if she wasn't center stage.

Despite considering them all good friends, she felt like her voice was less and less prominent as the group found its groove. She left the band right before their biggest performance, feeling like she might end up stuck if she stayed.

When Charlie Disco died, she wallowed in survivor's guilt, feeling like maybe if she had been there, she could have done something. Harmony offered her a contract, and with that contract, a devil's deal.

Vanity

To relive the glory that could have been while the reality that is crumbles around you.

She now performs to an empty, decaying theater with automata replicating her former bandmates. An illusion makes it appear as if it's a packed opera house, stadium, night club, or whatever else she needs to relive her happier days.

Hence the marks of a prideful and vainglorious man are an unwillingness to submit himself to any higher authority (which would include prevailing laws and norms); habitual braggadocio and bombastic speech; exaggeration and lying about his achievements; being obnoxiously quarrelsome; stubborn attachment to his own opinions in the face of all evidence and superior counterarguments; and a taste for doing things that are shocking and unexpected.

It stands to reason that a prideful and vainglorious man is bound to be polarizing. On the one hand, his fundamental motivations are to attain pre-eminence, and to do so by drawing attention to his imagined excellence. If he is good at this, then naturally, he is going to gain a following of some kind. On the other hand, pride and vainglory are objectively ugly character traits, as the daughters of vainglory make evident and as one would expect from the fact that pride is the worst of sins. Hence, people who see through a proud and vainglorious man’s charade are naturally going to be repulsed by him, especially if they have decent instincts.

The Christian tradition has, after all, held that pride is the characteristic sin of the devil and of antichrist. It is also the characteristic sin of the tyrant, who on Plato’s analysis is a consummate narcissist, and who in the political philosophy of Aristotle and Aquinas is defined as the ruler who governs a polity for the sake of his own good rather than for the common good. There are no villains more repulsive than the devil, the antichrist, and tyrants. And yet in all three cases we have figures who draw many to them. “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). It is no wonder that lesser malign figures – prideful and vainglorious politicians, business leaders, sports stars, entertainers, public intellectuals, and so on – attract many people even as they repulse others.

Aquinas also teaches in De Malo that “pride extinguishes all the virtues and weakens all the powers of the soul.” It is not hard to see how this would be so. If a prideful man is by nature insubordinate, he is not likely to subordinate himself to moral restraints. He may exhibit counterfeits of certain virtues, if that would aid in leading others to perceive him as having excellence. He also may have a certain cleverness or cunning in achieving his ends. But it will not be true wisdom, because that requires seeing things as they really are, and his narcissism prevents that. He will have allies and sycophants, but is unlikely to have true friends, because he will ultimately sacrifice the good of others for the sake of his own good. He may have a certain boldness, but he will not have true courage, because his boldness does not serve the true and the good, but only himself. And so on.

Scripture famously teaches that “pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). But even apart from scripture, everyone knows this from experience. Or almost everyone, because the prideful man himself does not see it. Nor do those in thrall to him, since they labor under the same delusion about his supposed excellence as he does. It goes without saying that the greater the following a prideful man has, or the larger the community over which he has authority, the greater will be his fall, and theirs.’