High Sloth

While riding in the family 4×4 pickup with my daughter today, I spied a bumper sticker; “Moscow High Pride”

“I wonder what that means” I said. “What kind of pride is high pride?”
“It’s Moscow High School pride” she said.
“Ah yes of course. I was thinking that high pride was being preferred over, say medium or low pride. (pause) Isn’t pride one of the seven deadly sins, and so why is it being promoted? We might as well promote some of the others then. How about Moscow High gluttony?”
“Moscow High sloth?”
(Laughter)

Pride is pretty popular among the seven. We’re to appreciate the claim, “Made with pride in the U.S.” or “Proud to be an American” or “The few, the proud, the Marines.” We are expected to be proud of our work and so on. We’re taught pride. Maybe “something you could be very proud of, but aren’t” is a better way of looking at it. Objectivity may allow me to recognize that I’ve done something good, but pride has nothing necessarily to do with accomplishing good things, and it can certainly be a factor in doing bad things.

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4 thoughts on “High Sloth

  1. Moscow Middlin’ Mediocrity: alliterative but perhaps too lofty a goal… I’ll go back to lurking now.

  2. Heh – the pot smoking students have pulled another one over on their administration with this bumper sticker, just like the many High School debate teams that call themselves cunning linguists.

    • You mean “high pride” in the same sense as “gay pride” or etc.? That did occur to me too, especially as the way the sticker was laid out had “Moscow” on top with “High Pride” underneath.

      That reminds me of a journalist’s account of a political campaign train from way back when candidates would charter a train and take it from town to town. The newspaper article ended with, “…and the train pulled away with a jerk.”

    • You mean “high pride” in the same sense as “gay pride” or etc.? That did occur to me too, especially as the way the sticker was laid out had “Moscow” on top with “High Pride” underneath.

      That reminds me of a journalist’s account of a political campaign train whistle stop from way back when candidates would charter a train and take it from town to town. The newspaper article ended with, “…and the train pulled away with a jerk.”

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