Arrogance
Just put up a new song by Sam - Softly Spoken Sister. I normally try not to make comments on reader-submitted art or music, since I prefer to leave you to formulate your own opinions, but I really do like this one :) Not bad at all for a non-multimillion-dollar-making band.
I was suffering from some terrible insomnia last night, and spent two hours playing compliment tennis on MSN with Luke until 4am (if you don't know, don't ask :P). It got me thinking a bit, though, about how often people mistake self-confidence and arrogance for the same thing. It's almost become taboo to say "Yes, I am good enough to do this", because that's construed as arrogance, and social norms have drilled it into our malleable minds that arrogance is a Bad Thing. And people tend to think self-confidence = arrogance. I suppose you can see where people would lose the distinction - both types of people are completely and utterly sure of their inherent worth and are not afraid to say so. The difference, though, I believe, is who is justified in their claim. Self-confident people are justified in being sure of their own worth, because they *have* this worth. In that sense, self-confident people are also arrogant, but justifiably so, and the English language itself has so far failed to produce a word that adequately expresses this difference. Purely arrogant people, on the other hand, have no base for their claims of self-worth. And because it is this latter category that tends to be prevalent, arrogance has become generally a Bad Thing.
I suppose it's a rather difficult distinction to make. Just some random 2AM thoughts I had to put down. I could probably write a lot more, but I won't.