Is arrogance a result of having morals?

[Zion]

I've been thinking about this, & I'd love to hear some different takes on this question. Do you think having morals is what causes arrogance?

[At awe]

Or is it the arrogance that causes morals?

[Zion]

Never thought of it like that. That can also make a lot of sense.

[goldpower123]

Definitely feel more moral when I have that double down mentality on my spiritual ego

[Zion]

Perhaps morals come from arrogance, which in turn, comes from ego... 

Yet seemingly, someone can also be arrogant, because they're moral. Another potential paradox.

Or simply neither one comes before the other, they're intertwined & can't live without the one another. 

[Leo Gura]

No

It's a function of ego.

[Loving Radiance]

@Zion  Arrogance is covering up low self-esteem. It's overcompensation.

Imagine someone getting bullied in school. Years later they excel in university and develop arrogance to be better than other students.

This can also be an arrogance in terms of spirituality, that you are more spiritual yadda yadda.

You can have morals without being arrogant, vice versa.

The key is true humility. Comparing oneself to other people can be done without arrogance. It's simply saying that blue is apparently different from red. No color is inherently better.

[Hulia]

I never understood this issue of arrogance (initially I tipped errorgance  ). This is a character trait which never bothered or offended me. If somebody thinks that he/ she is better than me, than there are 2 possibilities: he/she is better than me, and that is really a great news! or (what is more often the case) he/she isn´t. And then what? Nothing. Both of us try not to cross our paths out of the same reason  And it´s ok

[meow_meow]

12 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

No

It's a function of ego.

What if you're aware of this function?
I assume then you have choice to have morals or not. from that point you can have morals without arrogance.

IMO going meta on having morals is the key here,

Edited March 6, 2021 by meow_meow

[Loving Radiance]

1 hour ago, Hulia said:

I never understood this issue of arrogance (initially I tipped errorgance  ). This is a character trait which never bothered or offended me. If somebody thinks that he/ she is better than me, than there are 2 possibilities: he/she is better than me, and that is really a great news! or (what is more often the case) he/she isn´t. And then what? Nothing. Both of us try not to cross our paths out of the same reason  And it´s ok

The thing is that you build your self-image on being better, even when it's in your imagination and not on a metric. It's like claiming to be intelligent or to have great intuitive insights when in fact it is not you but the divine. You claim as the iphone to be the wifi when in fact the wifi "is" the router.

[Hulia]

4 minutes ago, Loving Radiance said:

The thing is that you build your self-image on being better, even when it's in your imagination and not on a metric. It's like claiming to be intelligent or to have great intuitive insights when in fact it is not you but the divine. You claim as the iphone to be the wifi when in fact the wifi "is" the router.

So what? It doesn´t change anything. If some iphone claims to be wifi, it doesn´t bother me, as long as I have access to internet. 

[Megan Alecia]

No. It's basically insecurity. 

[Origins]

@Zion it’s nuanced. Intersectional to say the least. Firstly we’d need to discriminate between consistent versus irregular disposition versus situational. To the former we can expect the simultaneous appearance of other traits:

• lower than average agreeableness (HEXACO)
• higher than average scores on the dark triad
• higher than average scores on narcissism (not on all indicators)
• has probably not progressed too much further than the Conscientious stage of Loevinger’s stage of ego development 
• higher than average testosterone levels, though testosterone would not be a sole contributor rather a facilitator 
• lower than average empathy, both cognitive and affective, however this manifests in different ways here 

In the case of it being an irregular disposition it could actually be a useful compensatory survival strategy in times of either social integration to psychological integration. Happy to elaborate further. 

Lastly, I would connect arrogance to morals as the outcome of needing to be right just as much as someone would feel that need in areas where morals mattered less, such in the case of a football match. Moreover, righteous indignation needs to be discriminated from arrogance just as anger, confidence, pride and passion also need to be discriminated from arrogance. So it’s important not to confuse cause and effect here, morals doesn’t follow arrogance just as arrogance doesn’t follow morals, however arrogance can create the overly overt sense that one can determine all morality for him or her self and then implement on other people irrespective of their understandings of their morality: arrogance in this sense is simply “I am right and you are wrong”. Instead there’s likely a few other variables present that create the arrogance in the context of morals, like disagreeableness combined with disgust sensitivity. Disgust sensitivity is merely an outgrowth that leads to a kind of morality though rather than to or from arrogance.

Further, in all matters of competition, things that look like arrogance tend to be higher than average compared to those aspects of the psyche which do not. Who do we usually associate more with being arrogant, male or females? Males, but is this because males are usually more overt about it than females because of their higher dominance to submissiveness ratio? I would say that this is likely while still men having higher than average levels simply because they have more of the traits above that are more often than not correlated with arrogance. 

Lastly there are different qualities of arrogance, we have arrogance to do with personality disposition, ego development (as I mentioned above) and biological markers that contribute to such. Children tend to be far more arrogant than adults for example but an adult as noted may need to be “arrogant” as a part of certain psychological integration phases as a necessary and even positive compensatory strategy. 

In the case of it being related to a psychological integration phase I would advise that someone combine it with prudence at least sometimes. Humility, it’s opposite, isn’t necessarily more virtuous, it is merely down to the adaptability of said arrogance. Even if it is advantageous in one context it may not be in another; the long term view is what we’re looking at here rather than a black and white determination as to what is happening. 

In short morals can create humility just as they can create arrogance (what matters more is the kind of morals along with other personality, cognitive and biological variables). But what is more virtuous? Look at the long term and the other situational variables, not just the immediate context.

Edited March 6, 2021 by Origins

[Origins]

@Zion But for me, at the core level Zion just to simplify my answer in a nutshell.

I’d put arrogance down to a lack of openness. 

This means that arrogance is a biological then and only then a psychological compensatory state.

Thats my rule of thumb outside the above picture, in this sense you’ll be able to more easily empathise with people exhibiting it rather than generate a defensive also compensatory state in response.

In the way that I’ve described in this comment rather than the one above, extreme openness is the antidote to both arrogance and responding to perceived arrogance combined with a perception towards adaptation and extension of the development of being.

[Loving Radiance]

16 hours ago, Hulia said:

So what? It doesn´t change anything.

It can be a challenge to live or work with someone arrogant.

[Zion]

@Origins Is this is to say we have inherent morals without ever having had arrogance? Morals are not a result of ego? And if they are not, how does that work? Where to the morals stem from? Are they simply a feeling or some form of direct experience that can't explained through words?

[hyruga]

I think having a lack of morals is what caused arrogance.

Humans or animals should be born with at least a bit of morals. It should be automatic and is called the collective unconscious. I don't have any proof though. So do and think whatever you want. Bye.

Edited March 26, 2021 by hyruga

[Zion]

@hyruga Thats paradoxical reasoning there. You're using "shoulds" as means to explain what "shoulds" are. Not to say it's not true, but it still leaves a lot of plot holes within the explanation of where morals reside & how they intertwine with arrogance.

[Ponder]

Yes, in a sense this is the case. 

Due to the fact that having a moral system means there is a "right" and a "wrong", anyone that does an action that is perceived as "wrong" by the person in question, this can easily lead to judgement. However, this isn't always the case. My sisters, for example, are both hardcore Christians and, even though their moral system is quite strong indeed, they don't judge nearly as much as you would expect from someone with such a mindset.