"Pride" is a commonly misused word and a misunderstood concept.

First, there are the people that are excessively "proud" of things that they themselves made no effort to achieve. "Black pride," "Irish pride," "gay pride," for example. There is nothing wrong with being any of those things, but if you were born that way, what makes you so proud? Are you just proud that you were born? You didn't have anything to do with that. Are you just proud that your parents copulated at the precise moment they did so as to permit your father's specific sperm to reach your mother's specific egg? Using "pride" as a term for anything like this is just stupid. I could be proud that I am an atheist or have a high GPA, because I actively used my mind to achieve those things. I could not, however, feel pride about being German or green eyed or bisexual, as I really didn't have anything to do with that; it comes with the genetic package. I can certainly like those things, but am I proud of them? No.

Second, there are people who think pride in any form is bad. That is equally (if not more) retarded. Pride is a pleasurable emotion that people should feel when they achieve something of importance to them. What of all those people who say that pride is "wrong?" They are evil. Why? Because, if you deprive people of the pleasure that they should feel when they accomplish things that are good, what are you promoting? That's right. Evil. What motivation does the person deprived of pride have for accomplishing tasks that he should be proud of? The only motivation left to him is the alleviation of fear. If he is being threatened with punishment for not accomplishing said task, accomplishing said task will simply alleviate this fear. (By the way, this is a mainstay of religion, because pride is far too dangerous a motivation to do good when one wants sole control over the behaviour of a group, but fear is easy.)

Third, there are people who simply resent prideful people. These are really just people who don't do anything themselves that they can feel good about, so they resent the people who do. It's pretty simple really. Hate the achiever because he makes the non-achievers look bad. It's a primitive and disgusting outlook, and one that should be far less accepted. This is where we hit the promotion of self-depreciation to ingratiate oneself with the non-achievers. The thing people need to understand is that non-achievers aren't worth ingratiating oneself with in the first place. The opinions of others are not all equal. If somebody dislikes you because you are smart, too bad. That's their problem, not yours. If somebody dislikes you because you did something bad, that's a whole other matter. You cannot please everyone, especially the non-achievers, without lowering yourself to their level.

So really, everyone, stop misusing the word "pride." It isn't a genetic characteristic, it isn't wrong, and it isn't a dirty little secret. Now go out, do something really great, and fucking ENJOY it already!