Pride renders in a proud man’s mind the idea that he has more rights than others, since he is deemed to be in a superior position. He, therefore, has the right to amass wealth more than the others. Pride leads to greed and gluttony, two more deadly sins, because pride gives the false impression that it is alright to gain more and merit more.

The feeling of superiority that a proud man has is very dangerous in the general scheme of things. Resources in the world are finite and competitively won. The proud man, in his high regard of himself, thinks that he deserves more than others do. Moreover, he also thinks that he can get more than others can. He thinks that his superior position gives him the right to get more and more, at the expense of others who are bound to lose more and more, in the process.

Pride motivates competition that can range to abnormal levels. A man afflicted with pride is never satisfied with anything and everything that can and will feed his pride. It is a natural and logical characters of his, too, to covet much more because he is in constant jealousy of what others have. Pride, then, also causes envy and lust in a man. Envy and lust are two other deadly sins. Pride, and all the other deadly sins that it encompasses, is a bottomless pit that can never be filled to the brim. It always needs feeding.

An excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth, is what makes pride trigger the other destructive forces of envy and lust. The basic motivator for pride is self-preservation. The proud man always finds some other things in others that he will always be envious about and lustful for. In his mind, these coveted things will help him self-preserve his superior position, be it his brother’s new struggling company or his best friend’s very attractive trophy wife.

Since pride causes or triggers all of the other deadly sins, it is the worst negative trait of all. It is also the most destructive because it ultimately causes discrimination and inequality among people. In this world, the most discriminatory governments are the ones that cause inequalities among nations. These countries think of themselves loftily because they are undeniably superior among the rest. They reached a superior position precisely because of their pride and all the other negative traits that pride spawns.

These are the rich countries of the First World who did not become rich without gaining material wealth at the expense of the poorer nations. Resources on the planet are finite and limited. Therefore, they are competitively won. The richest nations are those that have been winning this competition for material resources. They have succeeded, of course. But the material wealth they have been earning are also the losses of the poorer countries. The pride in these rich countries has caused the great social and economic divide in this world.

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