Is it always Pride?

[foucalt]

Something Vincent said over in the 19th-century sexuality thread caught my attention, but I didn't feel like it was on-topic enough for me to post there. So, Vincent says:

Pride: Sister Martha feels that her love for Henry is more important than the good to their families if she marries old Brother Bartholomew.

vs

Pride: Brother Johns feels that his desire to have his daughter marry old Brother Bartholomew is more important than her love for Henry.

I realize part of the whole idea is to have the Dogs come in and judge whose Pride is more misplaced, but I can't figure out what this situation would look like if the participants weren't being Prideful. I mean, I guess Sis Martha would just do her daughterly duty and marry Bartholomew, but if her father was also without his Pride he would just allow her to marry Henry. But now you have the same conflict, only there's no Pride - does Martha (independent of her father's wishes) do what she thinks she should to help her family or does she follow her heart? Is Brother Johns failing within his gender role as a father in the family if he put's his daughter's wishes above the family's? Because even if the characters drop their pride, it looks like both characters can still "sin" by neglecting their duty to the family (M by marrying B, J by permitting any other outcome). So, imagining that both characters drop the Pride Vincent describes, we have two main possible outcomes:

- Martha marries Bart even though she doesn't love him; her family reaps some benefit but there is still Injustice in that she is unhappy and possibly still loves Henry; setting the stage for escalation into Sin anyway

-Johns tells Martha to follow her heart and she marries Henry; her family sags into the poverty they were destined for and Martha feels guilty for not helping her family when she could have. The stage is set for sins by the family to deal with their poverty (i.e. stealing) and for Johns to defy his patriarchy by continuing to put his family's emotional desires above their temporal ones.

So, it looks like you can still end up with Injustice and even Sin (and presumably beyond) if people just happen to be in a tricky human situation, whether or not their motivations are really Pride-based.  Or am I all backwards? Is it still Pride that keeps Martha from fully accepting Bart and loving him in the first situation, and Pride in his love for his children that keeps Johns from doing everything he can about the family's situation in the second?

[lumpley]

Oh! Those are two different towns. That, uh, just happen to have people with the same names in them. Yeah. Or how about: those are the same town in two different alternate universes - in the first, the GM decided that it was Martha's fault; in the second, the GM decided that it was Johns'.

Anyway I'd never create a town where both those prides were true. I'd choose one.

...But yeah, no, life sucks sometimes, even when everybody's doing their best. The idea that one person's pride must be to blame for every injustice - that's a religious idea. In fact, it's the only religious idea in the whole escalating what's-wrong system.

For nonreligious versions of Dogs play, I recommend dropping pride altogether, and just starting with injustice.

-Vincent

[foucalt]

Sin escalating to Demonic influence isn't a religious idea?

[foucalt]

And waitasec; those are symbiotic Prides anyway, you can't really have one without the other! Can you?

But you're just saying that as GM you decide which is the real root of the problem. Even though the Dogs might think it's the other one (which is an idea thats been floating around threads a lot lately)

[Vaxalon]

A priest once told me that the "Seven Deadly Sins" were just a handy mnemonic device; all sins ultimately devolve on hubris, which is a form of pride.

"I know God wants me to act THIS way, but I'm going to do something else instead."

That's an essentially prideful thought.

[lumpley]

Well... Maybe "sin causes demonic attacks" is religious.

But "anti-community behavior on the part of even one member of the community makes the community brittle in the face of bad luck" isn't.

-Vincent

[foucalt]

Okay Vaxalon, that's helpful.

In my first scenario, Martha's continuing to feel love for Henry and not Bart, even though Bart is trying to be a good husband, and that constitutes Pride because her father made her pray to the King of Life when she was making the decision and she knew it was right to marry Bart. Right?

In the second scenarion (which I admit is the weaker one), Bro Johns prayed to the King of Life and decided the right thing to do was let her marry Henry, and so the undermining of his patriarchal authority wasn't really a sin because it was the King's will. However, if he resorts to stealing or another sin, that's still Pride because he thought he was better than the King's Word which says not to steal.

Also, Vaxalon, I see from FindPlay that you're in Manassas and I'm in Centreville. PM or email me & we'll play some Dogs!

[foucalt]

Well... Maybe "sin causes demonic attacks" is religious.

But "anti-community behavior on the part of even one member of the community makes the community brittle in the face of bad luck" isn't.

But if Sin is equivalent to 'anti-community behavior'  wouldn't Pride simply be 'regarding yourself as more important than the community'?

Anyway I'd never create a town where both those prides were true. I'd choose one.

I'm not 100% clear why you can't have both sources of Pride in a town. Is it simply because (even from a GM standpoint) there needs to be _A Way Things Oughta Be_ i.e. the will of the King of Life? Because I thought the setup was a good starting place for a town, absolutely. In fact, I can see how a lot of towns could actually depend on that kind of symbiotic Pride.  I just wasn't sure how to think about what constitutes Pride exactly and whether Injustice and Sin can/should arise in a town without it.

[Josh Roby]

I realize part of the whole idea is to have the Dogs come in and judge whose Pride is more misplaced, but I can't figure out what this situation would look like if the participants weren't being Prideful.

The situation looks like this: all the people involved are pious, selfless, safe, and unhappy.  Nowhere does it say that following doctrine makes people happy; it's just that not following doctrine makes people hate and kill.

But if Sin is equivalent to 'anti-community behavior'  wouldn't Pride simply be 'regarding yourself as more important than the community'?

Lemme Raise you: Pride is regarding yourself as more important than the divinely ordained community.

[Neal]

A priest once told me that the "Seven Deadly Sins" were just a handy mnemonic device; all sins ultimately devolve on hubris, which is a form of pride.

This is one of the more useful things I've read in a while.  I think I was getting there myself, but this helps.  Gluttony could be based on the idea that the sinner deserves more than those around him (or that he's going to take it whether he deserves it or not because his fulfillment is more important than anything else), and Envy follows a similar pattern.  Wrath is a refusal to humble oneself for the greater good.  Lust elevates the sinner's fleshly desires above his spiritual responsibilities.  Sloth assumes the sinner needn't do his share of the community's work.  Etc...  Thanks for mentioning "hubris."  I don't know exactly why, but that sorted a lot of things out for me.

Hey, this even helps me to sort out the Puritan-era DitV I was kicking around.  That one takes place around the time of the First Great Awakening, and it pits adherants to the Doctrine of Grace (the Dogs and their fellow Calvinists) against heretical followers of the Doctrine of Works (those folks who seem to think that doing nice things for others creates some kind of obligation on God's part to let you into heaven).  Yeah, now I can represent the Doctrine of Works as just the world's biggest, nastiest bundle of hubris, the "God owes me a mansion" approach to religion.  Cool.

[Vaxalon]

You're welcome, Neal.  It's so rare that anything I have to say is useful to anyone around here.  It's kind of you to recognize it.