Quote:
Originally Posted by Arch0wl
For the purposes of this thread I am chiefly concerned with whether this constitutes arrogance even if it's true, or if arrogance can be defined in some other way, and whether it's still wrong to believe you're superior if you have external evidence of this.
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The belief of being superior in and of itself is a necessary part of arrogance, but the part of arrogance that is notable and what makes it arrogance is how the person acts with that self-belief. Whether it's factual or not is irrelevant. Again, it's a psychological, perceptual thing, not a factual thing. It seems that it should be possible to believe that you are superior, actually be superior, and not be/act arrogant/ly.
Someone who is provably better than someone else at something who still acts arrogant is someone who I feel is likely to be closed-minded, because arrogance is a behaviour that seems to strongly relate to that matter.
As to the matter of humility, I think others have addressed it better than I have. It's not really about the amount you believe something, but the seeming necessity for other people to acknowledge your superiority.
The idea that I was getting at is that if you're not actively thinking you're superior to anyone, there is a much lower chance that you are going to be acting arrogantly at any given moment in time. Humility, just like arrogance, is a perception of how others see you, and how you act is a summation of individual encounters you have such that the more you act one way, the more that that is representative of who you are.
Of course, I was assuming that how someone acts is representative of what they're actually thinking and how they think they're coming off, which itself is a pretty risky assumption. People can come off differently than they think they do, for some people this happens a lot more often than others.