This is a quote from Mere Christianity, in a chapter on pride. However, I was wondering why these attributes would be attached to pride. Since it seems to be abnormal to enjoy being patronized, ignored, or rejected. And these things are not really good to do in the first place. And showing off, or giving opinions constantly can be a bit gloatish and annoying. Yet, I dont doubt that these are real attributes of pride.
Like most things “context” might help determine given applicable meanings etc; but consider this… pride is but the other side of the self-centred coin of shyness for both say (from differing motivations) but it’s the same coin… “what will others think of me?”.
Yeah, not one of Lewis’ best illustrations; it would have been better had he used everyone’s dislike of such behavior as evidence of the wrongness of that behavior, that behavior (snubbing other people, refusing to notice them, shoving my oar in, patronising other people, showing off) being illustrative of pride.
The start of that quoted sentence (from “The Great Sin”, chapter 8 of Book 4 of Mere Christianity, which is a collection of four smaller books lightly edited to synthesize them into one larger book, Book 4 being on “Christian Behavior”) reads, “In fact, if you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself [etc.]” But Lewis properly notes elsewhere (maybe even in this chapter, I don’t recall offhand), that one seriously advanced form of pride takes no notice of other prides. Oh, there it is toward the end of the chapter, when he’s clarifying that being pleased about praise per se isn’t (necessarily) pride: "The real black, diabolical Pride comes when you look down on others so much, that you do not care what they think of you. … T]he Proud man… says, “Why should I care for the applause of that rabble as if their opinion were worth anything? …] If the mob like [what I’ve done], let them. They’re nothing to me.”
(I had that saying and this chapter specifically in mind when I wrote that early scene in Cry of Justice where Portunista finds herself being hideously jealous of the newly arrived Jian, whom she sees as being competition with her, and so stalks back up to her tent to sulk with an attitude that she’s taking control of the situation by making use of him to cheer up the people, whose opinion she couldn’t give a fig for. But at first her jealousy is a mere reaction that now people might pay attention to Jian rather than to herself; her way of getting past that is to sink deeper into her pride. “In this way,” Lewis wrote, “real thoroughgoing Pride may act as a check on vanity; for as I said a moment ago, the devil loves ‘curing’ a small fault by giving you a great one.”)
The sentence following the quote is better: “The point is that each person’s pride is in competition with every one else’s pride.” Though then he tries to connect it with his chosen illustration, and I don’t think it’s necessarily true that the reason people are annoyed at someone else being the big noise is only because they wanted to be the big noise instead. (The proverb he quotes next, “Two of a trade never agree,” is closer to the point he’s trying to make.)
“What you want to get clear is that Pride is [his emphasis] essentially competitive – is competitive by its very nature – while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident.”
As with a lot of things, Lewis may have had in mind the teaching from George MacDonald that distinguishes amibition from aspiration, though he doesn’t quote it here. (He comes closer to quoting it in “Screwtape Proposes a Toast”, if I recall correctly.) Ambition wants to be higher than anyone else. Aspiration wants to be high – and is perfectly happy with other people being high, too, and even wants to help them get there.