A B C D E F G H I J L M N O P R S T U V W

Arrogance

Critics of Neuro-Linguistic Programming often find their practitioners to be arrogant.

The spiritual arrogance and disgust of anyone who has suffered deeply (order of rank is almost determined by just how deeply people can suffer), the trembling certainty that saturates and colors him entirely, a certainty that his sufferings have given him a greater knowledge than the cleverest and wisest can have, that he knows his way around and was once “at home” in many distant and terrifying worlds that “you don’t know anything about!” … this spiritual, silent arrogance of the sufferer, this pride of knowledge’s chosen one, its “initiate,” almost its martyr, needs all kinds of disguises to protect itself from the touch of intrusive and pitying hands, and in general from everyone who is not its equal in pain. Profound suffering makes you noble; it separates. One of the most refined forms of disguise is Epicureanism, and a certain showy courage of taste that accepts suffering without a second thought and resists everything sad and profound. There are “cheerful people” who use cheerfulness because it lets them be misunderstood: – they want to be misunderstood. There are “scientific people” who use science because it gives a cheerful appearance, and because being scientific implies that a person is superficial: – they want to encourage this false inference. There are free, impudent spirits who would like to hide and deny that they are shattered, proud, incurable hearts; and sometimes even stupidity is the mask for an ill-fated, all-too-certain knowing. – From which it follows that a more refined humanity will have great respect for “masks,” and will not indulge in psychology and curiosity in the wrong place.

Beyond Good & Evil paragraph 270