The Different Shades Of Pride

Confucius said, "The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions". Just how modest should a person be? And what is the spectrum of pride?

On modesty, while I think a person should largely be modest, there are situations when he should introduce himself to opportunities by stating or showing his abilities upfront. There is a Chinese idiom, 毛遂自荐, that exemplifies this. The skills lie in knowing when to be modest and when not. However, when so, there would still be others with different or conflicting perceptions, who would render one pompous or haughty. There is probably no out-right solution to this. Furthermore, modesty could be complicated by our Asian "save face" culture in front of our elders, the higher-ranking, the longer-employed etc.

However, on pride, I believe in four broad categories. First being the innately modest. These are people who are very humble and would not exhibit their achievements, or simply, they don't think what they had attained is anything worth publicising at all. Second being the self-respected. They had achieved something and they wanted others to know it for the purpose(s) of sharing their joys and/or to indirectly tell others that they can achieve what he had too. Third being the pompous or haughty. They are boastful, like to show-off and are exhibitionists. They enjoy letting others know their achievements to fill their superior complex. The last category is the worst; they are the ones who pretend to be modest, but want others to know their engineered modesty behind certain deeds. Anyway, Confucius was the one who mooted this fourth category. While one behaves in different pride modes at different time to different people, there is a dominant category in everyone. Which is yours?