Grand Strategy Annex

18th February 2012

Post with 1 note

Confidence, Calling, and Cockiness

I will admit without hesitation that I enjoy the company of people who are extremely self-confident, and even those who are proud to the point of arrogance. Perhaps I am like that too, but that is unimportant.

I find that many people who have nothing of their own to offer put on an act of cockiness that is merely faux-confidence, and “faux” because it corresponds to nothing of substance. Those with only a show of cockiness are often profoundly lacking in confidence in any real sense, and will respond with anger (or bullshit) if called to account and questioned on their cocksure attitude.

With individuals who are extremely confident of themselves as themselves, the cockiness is almost entirely absent, and they attach little or no stigma to openly asking questions of others, admitting without hesitation what they do not know, and questioning themselves with a Socratic rigor.

It should be recalled that Socrates was sentenced to death because he called into question the claims to knowledge of those whom, upon examination, were shown to lack the knowledge they claimed to have. But in Plato’s dialogues Socrates does not inevitably or exclusive make others uncomfortable. The Eleatic Stranger in Plato’s Sophist and Statesman dialogues turns the tables on Socrates and begins questioning him, making Socrates give an account of his own position.

Some people question themselves continuously precisely because they lack self-confidence, while others are able to question themselves radically precisely because they have the self-confidence to do so. As Nietzsche wrote, “A very popular error: having the courage of one’s convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one’s convictions!” This is closely related to my recent discussion of the intellectual equivalent of “Mojo,” in which I discussed “self-confidence” and “self-assuredness” in relation to maintaining one’s vital energies and animal spirits. If you have the Mojo, you will have the courage for an attack on your own convictions.

And not only is it a popular error to conflate the courage of one’s convictions with the courage for an attack on one’s convictions, it is an equal or more popular error to confuse that self-questioning that stems from lack of confidence with that self-questioning that stems from confidence. In fact, most never see through the error and routinely take the one for the other.

It is surprisingly difficult to describe, much less explain, the precise difference between those who possess authentic self-confidence and who question themselves as ruthlessly as they question others, and those who lack self-confidence and who question themselves because of their uncertainty of whether the world approves of them or not — a questioning that arises from a need for approval, reassurance, and validation by others.

Although it is difficult to describe to explain this difference, there is an idea that can help us to make the distinction, that that is the idea of having a calling. Someone who has a calling, or who knows what a calling is, and feels the demand of conscience to aspire to a certain standard that has nothing whatsoever to do with the judgment of peers (or of society generally speaking) but rather everything to do with doing justice to the calling, to the thing which one feels called to do, questions themselves, questions others, questions the world entire, but they do not question that inner prompting that makes them question. This is what Plato called “following the argument where it leads,” but it is more than a passive following; it is the active pursuit of a calling for its own sake.

The idea of having a calling has become largely lost in the contemporary world, since callings are best known in relation to religious callings to monasticism or the priesthood. With the decline of these institutions, the idea has all but disappeared, while the human experience behind the idea — the experience that the idea emerged in order to describe — is as valid as it ever was, and continues to describe an aspect of the human condition, however neglected today.

Tagged: arrogancecallingcockinesscocksureconfidencemoral psychologyprideSocratesNietzsche