“No man succeeds in everything he undertakes. In that sense we are all failures. The great point is not to fail in ordering and sustaining the effort of our life. In this matter vanity is what leads us astray. It hurries us into situations from which we must come out damaged; whereas pride is our safeguard, by the reserve it imposes on the choice of our endeavour as much by the virtue of its sustaining power.”
— Joseph Conrad, The Duellists
Here’s one thing that’s kept me interested in direct response copywriting for so long:
The best sales letters are not really selling what they seem to be selling on the surface. So they are not really about 100x stock gains… or getting your ex back… or ways to travel free on luxury cruise ships.
Rather, they are about being a man of vision… or being a man with a hole that nothing can fill… or being a man who knows others are always plotting behind his back.
That’s why the seven deadly sins and their offshoots are so powerful to think about when you write copy.
And even though I’ve thought about this quite a bit, I always thought that the two most powerful human failings — vanity and pride — are overlapping or even synonymous.
The passage I quoted above was the first time I heard anyone make a distinction between vanity and pride. The passage even puts them in opposition.
This made me think what the difference between pride and vanity might be. After some thinking, here’s what I’ve come up with:
Pride – the internal belief in your own worth or superiority
Vanity – the desire for others to acknowledge your worth or superiority
So for example:
If, as in the Conrad story above, an old soldier enters a woods with two loaded pistols, with the intent to kill or be killed by his opponent, according to the norms of civilized, honor-bound men…
Then pride is doing it to prove to himself his courage and his greater skill than the opponent. It doesn’t matter at all if nobody else will see it or know it.
But vanity is doing it so others will witness and acknowledge his courage and his greater skill. The audience is the whole point. If nobody sees it, the victory itself means nothing, or is worse than that — a wasted opportunity.
So pride and vanity are really two fundamentally different human drives, and I suspect, motivate different types of people.
At least that’s my interpretation. It might be relevant to you for two reasons:
One are those pesky hidden motives that underlie so many purchasing decisions. Again, it’s not really about the stock returns, the toxin-free pots and pans, or the better golf score.
Instead, it’s about vain status-seeking and wounded self-respect. Understanding these things, and having a good name to attach to them, can help you when it’s time to write breakthrough copy.
The other thing is something I’m personally curious about:
Why we put so much emphasis as a society, at least historically, on the evils of pride. Pride is even supposed to be the head of all the deadly sins, from which all the others spring.
Which brings me to one of my “competitors” I mentioned yesterday.
He might have something to tell you about why our society says pride is so bad.
The man’s name is Jason Leister. He started out as a direct response copywriter. He then wrote daily emails for years about clients and why they suck and how copywriters can cope with that fact.
But gradually, Jason drifted off into new and uncharted waters.
He now lives somewhere off the grid with his wife and ten kids.
And he’s stopped writing about copywriting and clients.
Instead, he writes about… well, check it out at the link below. That’s where you can sign up to get on Jason’s email newsletter and get Jason’s lead magnet, “How the World System Was Constructed to Make You a Slave and What You Can Do About It.”
You might find Jason’s ideas repulsive, conspiratorial, or like me, intriguing and sometimes enlightening. If you want to check them out, here’s the link: