Feeling Proud

FEELING PROUD

Beliefs also become part of your identity when they come to represent some virtue you take pride in. For example, for many women, the belief that breastfeeding is important signals their connection to their baby and their willingness to sacrifice for motherhood. Breastfeeding is the “ultimate representation of mother, connection and love,” as one poster put it at a pro-breastfeeding conference.11 Conversely, for many women who reject the imperative to breastfeed, that’s a refusal to be shackled to the constraints of biology, constraints that tend to impose much more harshly on a new mother’s freedom than a father’s. “On a more ideological level, we’re eschewing the nipple because of how breastfeeding stymies the progress of feminism,” one journalist wrote of her and her partner’s choice not to breastfeed.12

Or consider cryptocurrency. For many true believers, the appeal was never just about getting rich. It was about changing the world. To believe in the potential of crypto was to be a rebel, to fight for humanity’s freedom from the tyranny of powerful centralized institutions. As one early Bitcoin enthusiast put it: “You’re helping usher in a whole new financial era! You’re depriving the big banks of their unearned power over the masses by helping build a currency controlled by everyone!”

Both self-identified optimists and pessimists take pride in their way of seeing the world. Optimists often talk as if holding positive beliefs is a sign of virtue: “Despite how easy it would be to choose cynicism, I choose to believe in humanity’s inherent goodness,” one optimist declared.13 Meanwhile, pessimists see themselves as savvy and sophisticated, unlike those insipid optimists: “In investing, a bull sounds like a reckless cheerleader, while a bear sounds like a sharp mind who has dug past the headlines,” one investor observed.14

Feeling proud and feeling embattled often feed into each other. For example, polyamorous people can sound smug or superior about their lifestyle choice, acknowledged one polyamorous blogger named Eli Heina Dadabhoy. But that’s an understandable reaction to the hostility that polyamorous people are constantly barraged with. “When the world around you is constantly shouting about how wrong you are, declaring your superiority can feel like a legitimate response, the only way to oppose such strong negative messaging,” Dadabhoy said.15