Delphic Maxim 99: Struggle with glory
I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each Delphic Maxim for 15 minutes a day.
99. Struggle with glory
Nobody likes an ungracious winner. Arrogance, generally, is a pretty rough quality in a person. It’s even worse in a winner, because they’ve already had the skill and good fortune to succeed — they don’t need to compound that with vulgar self-praise. So once again, we seem to have arrived at a maxim that preaches the virtue of humility, of meekness, even in victory.
Glory has a social dimension to it as well. It’s difficult to imagine ‘glory’ operating without the presence of other people. Sitting on your own after achieving glory, who is there to ‘glorify’ an achievement? Even the trophies you can win in a Playstation game are a social feature — they get shared across a network, and they’re created by another person. The mark of glory comes from the social realm, and it’s celebrated socially.
When describing the virtues, Aristotle didn’t necessarily see pride as a bad thing — certainly not as corrupting as it’s later, Christian connotations made it. But as with all virtues, there is a golden mean, a balanced approach, and too much pride is unbecoming. It’s bad for the character. It probably will cost a person somewhere down the line.
So how do we go about struggling with glory? It’s probably the case that people do this automatically. Australia has a predisposition towards cutting down tall poppies, so people tend to check themselves for this reason. It’s gauche to appear easy with glory — in epic films the great heroes often struggle to deal with their glory.
Take my favourite character in the MCU: Iron Man. The narrative arc of Tony Stark goes from a successful, wealthy, and hugely arrogant playboy, to someone who [spoiler alert] sacrifices his life for his friends and humanity. In the first few films, he doesn’t — at all — struggle with glory. He revels in it. His arrogance is sublime, but it’s part of the charm of the character. The other Avengers at least feel the weight of their responsibility: for Iron Man this is the character building that he undergoes.
That’s why the final film, this year’s Endgame, was so satisfying (and heartbreaking). Stark’s character has increasingly shied away from the spotlight, preferring family and friendship, seeing his role as Iron Man to be a burden and a responsibility, rather than using it for glory. He struggles as the films go on — the shift from the first MCU film, Iron Man, to Endgame is captured in Stark’s last words in both: in Iron Man, he says to the waiting press “I am Iron Man”, and reaps the glory and fame that comes with it. In the final film, he says, alone, to the villain Thanos “I am Iron Man”, and sacrifices his life to save everybody else. He doesn’t revel in the social glory — he struggles, and gives it all away.
It’s a wild handbrake turn to move from Aristotle to Marvel, but I think it illustrates the point. Glory is a challenge, or it should be, not an easy path to fame. Be like Tony Stark (he’s cool).
