What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

[stargroup100]

I can't tell if you're serious but because this is Critical Thinking I'll assume so.

Originally Posted by FoJaR

high opinion period. michael jordan in his prime, best player in the game. anyone can say it but him. everyone should have said it. if he says it, it's arrogance.

I have a personal objection to defining arrogance as simply the "high opinion of oneself". Not only is this not what the dictionary definition says, I have yet to ever come across in real life a situation where the word was used in this context. There is already a pretty universal negative connotation to this word, so what would be the point of defining arrogance in such a way?

Originally Posted by FoJaR

well first i'd like to see a map of where it's taboo vs where it's acceptable, and then i'll start conjecturing.

The question is about what fundamentally accepted ideas for different groups of people or cultures could cause a different perspective on the quality of arrogance. The quote does use the word "place" but it is not referring to a literal place.

Even if it did, it really doesn't hold much significance. The only roots you can draw from are explanations from large-scale cultural values, which don't necessarily lead any opinion of arrogance, and you don't need a map for these either.

Originally Posted by FoJaR

only if you are actually being dishonest. if you're really good at something, chances are that it's either really easy to be really good at that thing, which means that you're not special, or that you probably dont know enough or arent self aware enough to know where your shortcomings are.

This. I'm willing to bet you didn't spend much time thinking through this one.

The point of your statement is to explain why someone can be good at something and still be truthfully humble. What you're saying here is that if something isn't easy, then most likely the reason for being skilled and humble is that they're not good enough to know how skilled they are. Does this mean that in order to be honest, someone that is only somewhat skilled can be humble, and someone that is extremely skilled and self-aware can't?

On top of that, this implies the extremely skilled person is now left in a position where they have no choice but to either be dishonest or arrogant. Again, how are these definitions practical?

Originally Posted by FoJaR

spending time comparing yourself to the people around you is pointless anyways.

In the context of comparing skill levels of other people, of course this is not pointless. By comparing your own skill with others, you can assess what other people are doing that's better than you or worse than you, and as a result improve yourself by emulating the better. In most situations, you can even learn something from people worse than you, because you become aware of the possible choices and outcomes you didn't consider before, and you can utilize that.

Comparing who is generally better or worse is probably only useful in setting approximate benchmarks for yourself to track your goal progress, and this is still far from useless.