Confidence vs. Arrogance

Arrogance is masked insecurity; a bluff of flamboyant pomposity, a staged overcompensation for a lack of confidence in oneself. Arrogant people are insecure, and they know they are insecure; otherwise they wouldn’t desperately need an arrogant demeanour of bravado to blind them to their flaws.

Confidence is assuredness in your ability to excel in a specific field, after experiencing objective empirical evidence of your subjective aptitude. You accept that, “how good” you are in a specific field is subjective, and reliant upon viable comparisons. But overall, you can maintain a generic qualitative sense of your confidence in a certain ability of yours, at different times and in varying environments.

To be confident, you must first be humble enough to accept that your worth depends on how well you do in the world - you aren’t great by default. To be humble, you must first maintain self-regard, even after you accept your flaws. If anything, acknowledging your flaws is a good reason to respect yourself, because this takes courage, logic and detachment from petty sentimentalities.

Confidence is humble because, for you to have it, you require a history of consistent evidence of your abilities. Conversely, arrogance is audaciously narcissistic and insecure because it childishly refuses the need for an objective track record in one’s abilities. Arrogant people assume they don’t need evidence of their greatness. They presume that they are great solely on the merit of believing it. They have a pretentious high regard of their abilities simply because they are who they are, not because they have proven anything to themselves. Sometimes even, they deludedly believe they are great in everything just because they are objectively good in one thing, and one thing alone.

This is insecurity; the inability or refusal to admit that there are limits to our nature, and that we all need consistent proof of our aptitudes as compared to others.

Insecure people insist on an unrealistic “fake it ‘till you make it” attitude, which admittedly sometimes works as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Other times, insecure people punish themselves in self-loathing just because they can’t be perfect. Arrogance and self-hatred are two sides of the same coin of insecurity. Both sides cannot accept flaws and limitations without compromising self-esteem.

Not that self-esteem is not the same as self-love. Self-love is somewhat narcissistic. Love is reserved for others, not yourself. You don’t need love yourself. You do want to regard yourself, though.

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Confidence is having the proof of your excellence in something quite specific. For example, you are confident in your opinion on a specific issue because you have steel-manned it: you have educated yourself on the subject, examined with an open mind all viewpoints, gave every argument the benefit of the doubt, challenged your cherished beliefs with humility and the possibility that you might be wrong, and valued truth more than being right. This is humility.

Humility is strength, because it is the acceptance of your flaws and limitations without compromising your self-esteem. Arrogance, on the other hand, is weakness. Weak people cannot be humble because they are too scared to acknowledge their flaws and limitations. So they burry their tiny heads in the sand, telling themselves they are perfect, flamboyantly behaving as if they’re gods, in the hopes of believing it.

Arrogance is a distraction from your stare-you-in-the-face flaws. Arrogant people are so weak they cannot accept their weaknesses without losing their fragile self-esteem. This is why arrogant people tend to be aggressive and mean; they need to impose themselves on others. They need to belittle others because they can’t elevate themselves. They need to dominate others in their desperate thirst for proof of a greatness they feel but know they haven’t earned. Their impostor syndrome kicks in as they suffer knowing they need analogous proof for their wild delusions of grandeur. They need to keep the act of arrogance going, otherwise they might have to face their flaws and limitations.

Arrogance is having unfounded conviction in yourself. When you are arrogant, you believe in yourself, not on the merit of proof, but just on the merit of being you. It’s circular reasoning: you have the right opinion because you are great, and you are great because you have the right opinion. “I’m great because I do what is right. I do what is right because I am great.”

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Arrogant people tend not to listen to you; they just hear you, as they anticipate their turn to speak. They have no interest in anyone, no curiosity to learn anything about you. You ask them questions about what they value, but they don’t bother reciprocating. All they do is talk about what they value. This is because their self-esteem is so low that they need to keep it on life support; it needs constant CPR. Arrogance is self-centered, like the psyche of an infant: small and scared to venture into the world.

Confident people, on the other hand, are so secure in their self-esteem that they don’t mind genuinely showing interest is someone other than themselves. They rest assured that their self-esteem will remain intact if they neglect it for a while. It’ll be OK. They are confident in their ability to respect whom they are, even if they show interest in someone else, even if they empower someone else.

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This is the fundamental difference between confidence and arrogance: confidence is not afraid to empower others. Arrogance is terrified to empower others. Arrogance fears competition. Confidence welcomes it. Arrogance wants a world full of weak people. Confidence wants a world full of strong people. Arrogance is restless. Confidence is at peace.

Arrogance is the opposite of confidence.