I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, and falls on the other...
Macbeth, Act I, Scene VII
...As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater...
Aristotle, Rhetoric
I bear a charmed life, which must not yield...to one of woman born, I will not yield
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet, and to be baited with the rabble's curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane, and thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!"
Macbeth, Act V, Scene VIII
As we saw yesterday with the revelations of Eliot Spitzer's expensive trysts, the powerful too are mortal. No one person, governor, senator, president, blogger, is above it all, immune from the faults and frailties of the human condition. Yet time and again, despite the frequent and telling lessons of history that would serve to warn the wise of the pitfalls of arrogance, we see our leaders, those entrusted with the highest responsibilities of social and political governance, desert their better angels.
Eliot Spitzer believed that he was untouchable, and he was proven wrong. Hillary Clinton believed that she would not be challenged in her run for the White House, and she is proven more and more wrong every day.
Hubris, my friends, is the foe of all who believe that they are above common mistakes, who believe that they have done nothing wrong and will do nothing wrong. Hubris, as Aristotle points out - the ill-treating of others to make their own superiority the greater. The belief that through one's own actions to the negative, in appealing to the fears and anxieties of the many, that they may be exalted in the manner they believe ordained to them; the idea that one individual is more important and far superior than those they would claim to represent, that they are above human flaw, that they are justified in throwing down that shield no matter what the cost to the cause they claim.
For when one believes that they are entitled to something, when one believes that the inherent nature of their words and actions would make them superior to all, when one believes that personal power and personal ambition justifies those words and those actions, they are prone to fall from grace.
To Eliot Spitzer, Hillary Clinton, and all those who would ignore their errors and sail that same sea of hubris:
Do not claim to be the bearer of truth while living an untruthful life.
Do not claim to be the bearer of judgment while living an imprudent life.
Do not claim to be the bearer of change while living an unchanged life.
Do not claim to be the bearer of ethics while living a hypocritical life.
Do not claim to be the bearer of a cause while living an nonsupporting life.
So before committing sins of adultery, sins of prejudice, sins of arrogance; think twice and remember the fates of all those who came before you, carrying the self-regard of hubris - for they fell, just as you will