on pride

Some time ago, there was the FIFA World Cup, featuring the national team of Poland. Their performance went according to the plan. Well, not so much: it went according to the pattern.

In the group stage, each team plays three games. And so, the pattern is:

the opening game [mecz otwarcia]

the all-in game [mecz o wszystko]

the honor game [mecz o honor]

A quick clarification: the opening game is simply so-called due to being the first that is played. This game is subsequently lost, hence it all comes down to the result of the second game: one about everything (namely, whether the team advances out of the group stage). Finally, that game also turns out to be a disgrace, so what is left is honor, basic dignity, perhaps we can win when it does not matter anymore. And we do. Last World Cup we deviated from this pattern (L-L-W) was in 1986 (well, we've only qualified for three of them ever since).

However, this year I've come across some of the international media commenting on the Polish team. They did not, however, utilize the terminology I proposed above, but a slightly different one. Namely, the last game was described by many as "playing for pride".

And with that, I disagree. Pride stands for the feeling of superiority to others. That it is a sin may not be a convincing moral evaluation, nevertheless, it seems negative in its nature.

The Polish team couldn't convince anyone of their superiority, even by winning. What they played for was basic dignity, or salvaging whatever remains were of it. They did not play for pride.

And I just fail to see the context in which pride of a mob (Polish supporters, in that instance) is a positive phenomenon. Which, of course, leads us to the most basic connotation with the word 'pride'.

It's OK to be gay (that one rhymes). But it is no valid reason for pride. You are not superior to others by the virtue of your sexuality - whether you are straight or not.

Does it take balls (pun intended) to come out? Yes, it does. But in this instance, one could feel superiority merely to those, who have been to afraid to do that. I don't think that's really the point. The pride experienced is the pride resulting from a brave act, not your sexuality`per se.

Feel free to demonstrate your sexuality, feel free to advocate for equality. Feel free to be proud of your actions, if you believe in free will. But I cannot sympathize with pride with something both abstract and independent of the agent (obvious symmetry potential, diy).

time heals wounds

In the Appendix to his book, "Meanings of Life", Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist, referred to the following study. The parents of children of various age were asked if at any point of their lives they had regretted having children. The following correlation has emerged: the older the child, the less share of parents who had experienced regret. Clearly, it is not merely counter-intuitive: it is statistically impossible. A parent who has experienced regret by the time their offspring was 2, cannot have been freed of having experienced it any amount of time later. Unless, of course, some revolution has taken place in the last few years in the department of upbringing children that made parents of each next year have exponentially more regrets, but I believe we can abandon that hypothesis. So, how do we explain this?

It is universally known that "time heals wounds". While I agree with this sentiment, I believe the exact mechanism is worth being inspected. It is not any intrinsic property of time, an object ultimately abstract. Rather it is the fact about our memory. It overwrites itself.

If it hadn't, we probably would've all caught the bus by now, due to the unbearable suffering. Luckily, we subconsciously trick ourselves into forgetting. That's the reason why you may have regretted having a child when they were 3, but by now it's not just you don't regret anymore. The mechanism is far more powerful: you are convinced you have never regretted it in the first place.

What are the general implications? You're making a fool of yourself when you claim "I know what it's like to have depression, but I'm not in that place anymore". The fact you're over it implies that while your experience at the time is undeniable, your current memory of it is at the very least distorted,

The moment you stop experiencing "what it's like", you start departing from knowing "what it's like".

So, when presented with an account of a person who has been off-and-on suicidal for the last twenty years, but at the moment is glad they haven't killed themselves, the problem becomes the most visible. Sure, we can claim that their suicide would've been a tragedy. But what I find to be really tragic is that they have suffered for twenty years, and will continue to do so for God-knows-how-long. And what is ironic, is that they are at the time happy about it.