Pride should stem from good personal decisions or accomplishments given one’s situation and life circumstances. Being born somewhere isn’t a decision nor an accomplishment.
I think the problem is that people conflate being proud of others with themselves. They take on the achievements of others as their own.
This dude was from my place and was great so therefore I’m great.
This is what nationalists, fascists, racial supremacists and other extremists do on the regular. They have no achievements of their own to be proud of so they have to steal somebody else’s.
There are two sides to it.
If a childhood friend of yours grows up to be a skilled athlete, you can be proud that someone with a shared downtrodden background as yourself has excelled: it’s a shining example to the world that it can’t oppress all of us, and there is a sense of genuine communal solidarity in it.
That being said, if you come from a pretty majority background with plenty of opportunities, and you take communal pride in your friends achievements, then there is nothing really won. The world was never trying to keep your community down, your friend just did well and you should be happy for him and that’s about it.
Needs to be narrower. Nobody should be proud of being from where they are from because they are from there. It’s not inherently good to be from any particular place.
But you’re allowed to be proud of your local community because of things they have done regardless of whether you were born there or not.
It’s less about accomplishment and more about being proud of the city or town itself. Proud of the people you called neighbors and their struggles and lives. Proud of the community banding together and supporting each other.
Thats at least how I always saw it
Pride is defined by Merriam-Webster as “reasonable self-esteem” or “confidence and satisfaction in oneself”. Oxford defines it as “the quality of having an excessively high opinion of oneself or one’s own importance.” Pride may be related to one’s own abilities or achievements, positive characteristics of friends or family, or one’s country.
But it is about accomplishment, pride is directly related to self-esteem, self-confidence, self-satisfaction. In America there are way too many people who are “proud to be American” without really thinking much beyond that.
I think it’s okay to be proud of one’s own community if they’ve taken part in shaping that community and made it better in some way.
“Proud to be an American” is a manufactured, measured out, and heavily marketed slogan, not actual pride. Hell, every nation does this. It’s only one method of control among many, though.
Secondly, it’s wiser to not cite dictionary sources unless your argument is syntactical; socioeconomic strata are very unlikely to be accounted for in whatever abridged morsel those references offer — to say nothing of the psychological variance inherent in such a topic. Furthermore, vernacular morphology is real.
Keep looking for answers, though. (This is less an “Unpopular Opinion”, and simply a seedling of a thought needing some attentive guidance.
You can’t go with that narrow of a definition. What about a parent being proud of their kid? That’s also pride.
Nationalism can easily become a bad thing, I agree. But I can also see why people would feel a certain pride to be a part of a community that accomplished something positive, and while they may have not been around to participate, the pride may be what inspires them to contribute in the future.
Ignorance, and an unwillingness to reflect on your countries recent history while spouting propaganda (i. e. “X is the best country in the world”), yes - that’s bullshit.
Came prepared to downvote this for being common sense, but judging by the comments it actually is surprisingly unpopular! Well played.
I don’t know if it was intentional on OP’s part, but our April Fool’s Day rules are in effect at the moment, so posts are expected to be “Popular Opinions” .
Are comments in April fool’s mode too? Seems like all the communists took a day off and all the nationalists showed up. The comments here are very unexpected.
Tribalism is mainly emotional rather than rational and, further, humans feel a need to belong, so choosing the logical take on things like national pride (or pride in one’s sport’s team, political party and so on) is very unusual and when voiced generally receives an intenselly negativelly response from most others as they are heavilly emotionally invested into their love of, and pride in, things like nation, sports team, religion, etnicity, politics and so on.
I think society would benefit if we all felt a sense of pride in our communities and people in a positive aspect
Can we do that on a global scale instead of being restricted to within the borders?
I can see that. I’m willing to bet the lived experiences of individuals from different communities/tribes/nations/continents/etc. aren’t all that different from one another. Typically one of the arguments for tribalism comes from finding community with people who have the same experiences as you.
It starts with finding things that make us the same, not different.
I’m not really advocating for tribalism, more patriotism with a respect for other people’s patriotism. So not social nationalism, basically
sense of pride
- Sense of community? Yes
- Sense of respect? Yes
- Sense of responsibility? Yes
- Sense of accomplishments? Yes
- Sense of pride? Errrr… Not really.
When people write “a sense of pride in” I think they (and you) are saying “be responsible for X so you can feel good about it”. Nothing wrong with that, and I think you’re right.
However I don’t like the phrase. Pride is the wrong emotional target. It brings with it a sense of superiority in some. There’s a reason it’s one of the deadly sins.
