*puts on a mask*
To define the two, let me tell my life stories:
As obligated by law, Indonesian students had to pass the government-issued national exams if they want to obtain middle and high school diplomas. Fail just one test and you would enjoy the privilege of graduating a year later. It did not matter if you pass the other government-issued tests or the ones made by your school (which were also compulsory). Fail one and you repeat.
Unsurprisingly, my classmates in middle and high school planned to cheat, encouraged by their teachers and possibly parents. I was academically poor and I was also one of those who chose the honest path. As a result, I was accused of being sanctimonious and arrogant. I successfully passed them without cheating. While the insults stopped, there were no praises for me.
Because of a glitch in the matrix, I was successfully accepted to one of the top universities in the country. To my disappointment, the seniors seemed insecure about their own intelligence. Instead of actually showcasing it, they chose to boast about how smart they were by irrelevantly invoking the high status of their destined alma mater. I complained about it to my family and they said those seniors were being confident, not arrogant. Eventually, I dropped out and the glitch was fixed.
Initially, I was opposed to such mentality because I thought it mistook confidence and arrogance for each other. Then, years later, I experienced something we call ‘growing up’.
I realised I was indeed arrogant for thinking I could pass the tests honestly. My mistake was using logical probability to determine my chance of succeeding. I should had listened to the populist consensus: no students, especially the low-achieving ones, will never able to pass the exams honestly!
I was also wrong to say those seniors were not confident. If one actually thinks about it, them seeing themselves as high and mighty despite the lack of evidences requires confidence! It is no longer a secret that our intelligence is not defined by the universities we attend. Yet, those seniors had their sense of self-worth easily spiked up by their mere attendance! There is something special about people who take pride in a figment of their imagination!
Arrogance is not defined by how unrealistic one’s expectation of oneself is; it is defined by the shared opinion of the collective one is a part of. One’s actual capability will always be irrelevant in the discourse. The collectively-held dogma is and will always be more important the truths!
Me passing the exams was a major faux pas because I successfully shattered the high standing of a collective conviction and therefore violating the delicate collective ego! Humans are social animals. It is literally our destiny to strip ourselves of individuality, it is literally our destiny to embrace the bandwagon fallacy in our everyday lives! I was arrogant to think I could escape such fate.
Arrogance is also defined by one’s acknowledgement of one’s own strengths. Even the most implicit acknowledgement is of poor taste. It strongly insinuates how one sees oneself as higher than the rest of humanity! It is literally a misguided form of elitism!
Confidence is not about saluting one’s existing strengths; it is all about doing so for the ones that never exist! Besides being arrogant, celebration of the tangibles is also redundant; why would anyone make a big deal out of things we have been surrounded by throughout our entire lives?
The celebration of the imaginary, on the other hand, is goddamn impressive! It cannot be fulfilled without the presence of our own delusions and delusions are hard to obtain! Just imagine the efforts we need in order to sincerely believe things that contradict reality! Reach that state and we are literally on a mental level unachievable by most of mankind! So, my desire to destroy my seniors’ self-worth was mean-spirited.
So, please! Don’t mix up arrogance and confidence with each other! You will cause a lot of harm by doing so!
*takes off the mask*
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The Stammering Dunce 