Confidence - part one

Confidence. It’s a tricky thing. Too little of it and you find yourself an insecure, sad, pathetic little man who is completely withdrawn from the world for clearly wrong reasons. Too much of it and you look like a lunatic who is completely out of tune with reality.

It is only natural that when a man is well-endowed and consistently skilled in a particular area, he becomes accustomed to the idea that in some ways, he is actually superior to others. This sort of confidence, which we know as conceit, is universally frowned upon by any society. The Catholic Church calls it a deadly sin, and we all see it as a sure path to destruction of one’s social life.

I, however, believe that it is perfectly acceptable for someone who is indeed superior than others to realize the obvious truths than point out to that very fact. The idea that everyone is created equally – none better, none worse – is, after all, completely ignorant of the reality that some humans are born retarded and other, more fortunate ones, are gifted with extraordinary talents. The concept of equality is just icing to the bitterness of the harsh veracity, created to allow the less fortunate ones to feel better about their shortcomings.

There are, however, unfortunate occasions when those undeserving of confidence are mentally-handicapped to the extent that they have remarkable reserves of confidence – far beyond what is appropriate – laid in their minds. The unremarkable ones who act as remarkable ones are not only severely destructive to the well-being of society, but to themselves.

A stroll along memory lane brings me across a particularly interesting case of such tragedy - a girl who believes in herself as a businesswoman and leader so much that the very questioning of her (clearly nonexistent) competence in such things would lead into utter pandemonium. This young lady, who (under nobody’s consent) made herself leader of a school newspaper, against everyone’s better judgments, insisted on using inkjet printers to mass-print a newspaper that I was sure no one would take interest in. Sure enough, my predictions were realized, as we lost ten million rupiah to ink cartridges, while gaining only one million of revenue. After all this, she still had the nerve to go to Unicef, donating the mere one million rupiah of revenue gained from selling the journalistic realization of her idiocies, and in smug confidence, saying, “Through my skills as a leader, and the cooperation of our team, we have raised one million rupiah for the better good of this world.” She now visits our school time to time, often meeting Mr. Eric and bragging about how skilled an economist she is, when it is obviously clear to all of us how ill-fated she is in areas involving money.

Think about it. Imagine if these creatures comprised for the leaders who rule over the world. After all, extreme confidence and charisma are traits of people who gain extravagant power, that we are surely bound for hell if these ridiculous displacements of confidence in the world continue. Like it or not, these things are beginning to happen – we have ourselves a dimwit monkey who thinks he can run the greatest political and economic entity in the world and is apparently attempting to do so. What if this girl, with her admirable confidence, and her legacy of losing nine million rupiah to ink for a damned school magazine, follows the same footsteps of the monkey who now runs America, and ends up being the second female president of Indonesia, or if that's too far, grows to become the minister of finance for this country? Oh hail, death to us all.