In visualizing pride, what kinds of criteria be used, and in what manner most effectively - without becoming a leitmotif of selective bias, a form of polemics, of propagandizing pollyannisticness instead of adhering to the requisites of the 'selective re-presentation' which honesty demands?   For one, it can of course emphasize the positive - not that decay is not all around as a particle of life, but that it is, like pain itself, of minor importance to the living, let alone the flourishing...

One way to best see how to spiritually visualize pride is to utilize its opposite - humility, the vice most often claimed as a virtue... bourne out of a worldview which emphasized submission to authority, a worldview which supported human domestication [otherwise known as slavery], it is little wonder humility has been touted as a virtue for millenia - even as in fact it is inimical to the well-being of human flourishing... humility is defined as 'the quality of having a low estimate of one's importance, worthiness, or merits; marked by the absence of self-assertion or self-exaltation'.... it is the willingness to be imperfect, which means the indifference to moral values and to oneself - self-abnegation - the antithesis of morality... it is, as such, a profoundly anti- human mentality, and as such inimical to the achievement of self-esteem and to, as consequence, a commitment to self- improvement [because self-improvement requires self-esteem] - humility is the conviction that one is doomed to deficiency, which is disabling because it undermines a person's motivation to seek to act as should, to create a false break between a 'could' and an 'ought ' to be... as such, then, the results would be to 'why bother', since the end would seem be an assured failure... this is as can be seen, hardly a means of survival as a human, far less than a flourishing - and the opposite of any human spiritual visualizing...

How, then, does a spiritual visualizer show this? in what manner is this exemplified in renderings?

Knowing one's own value is a necessity in order to maintain one's own life... because a person is a being whose life consists of making choices of one's actions, it is an imperative that a fundamental positive view of of the self is there to be accepted in order to be able to take the kinds of actions that would effectively advance the flourishing and well-being of that one's life... in other words, it is that a person is a being of 'self-made soul', that creates the need of making that soul WELL - not haphazardly or piecemeal, but integratively to that well-being... after all, every action that a person takes, beyond whatever effects it may or may not have in the external world, it adds to that person's self image - there is knowing the consequences to having possibly taken another choice, and whether or not the chosing was rational or not... there is also the learning over the course of time that that person's life depends on those actions taken, that there is a responsibility involved in those choices, with potentially enormous impact on successes and failures regarding achieving happiness or frustration... thus developing the sense that one can rely on oneself to make good choices is a necessity to advancing the flourishing - such knowledge is the base on which self-esteem arises... thus this knowing, this pride, is necessary to acquiring this extremely valuable value of self-esteem...

Pride, for most persons, is not considered as a virtue... indeed, it has been demonized to mean as much the same as undue boastfulness, or a narcissistic attitude of oneself... but pride is an actioning of self-esteem, and whatever feeling one gets is a by-product of a person abiding by that virtue... a proud person sets high standards for the self, and as such conscientiously strives to meet them - in this case, the other virtues, especially the prime one of rationality, of acting by principled thought, of being dedicated to not only doing the best, but of striving to make that best ever better, a continual spiral upward to greater flourishing as a human... a recognition that a person is that person's own highest value, that of any achievements open, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of one's own character - which in turn is the product of the premises held, the making in effect of 'the self-made soul'....

How, then, does this pertain to the spiritual visualizer?

While, as mentioned, productiveness does not require that one makes money from productive endeavors, work does, properly, need to be the central purpose... Indeed, considered properly, that work - the renderings by the artist - should be THE principle form that the 'pursuit of happiness' takes... this is especially important to an artist as spiritual visualizer, no less then for others... it is not a case of simply being an element of the good life - IT NEEDS BE THE CENTRAL ELEMENT...

Why?

To begin with, a central purpose is the long-range goal that ought to be the basic or primary claim on a person's time, energy, and resources...properly, all the other goals are not only secondary but they should be integrated to the central purpose - pursued as compliment, not distractions... the issue is the necessity of being an integrated being - something which humans have to learn, and have to choose the specific anchor as it were on which to tie the rest as flying buttresses to help hold and enlarge the purposefulness... without a central purpose, a person would not be able to know how valuable anything is in relationship to that person...

This is something most artists intuit or sense, but unfortunately rarely consciously grasp and understand... there is recognised the 'compulsion' as it were to render, but all too often its placement as the center from which all else radiates is mitigated by a belief other factors need take greater presence... the consequences are often devastating - fewer works, less thought given to the works done or contemplated on, and more emphasis on visceral means to choosing subject material - and this is just the art itself... without a central purpose, actions are more susceptible to being determined by emotions - with the consequence of not seeing compelling reasons to stay with a particular rendering, for instance, when it becomes difficult, tedious, or even just mildly unpleasant... if an artist lacks a clear primary objective, there will seem to be no grounds for evaluating the benefits that might be derived from various other activities - greater insight to the rendering in progress perhaps, or derivative variations from the central themes of the work, and so forth...

However, if the artist, in the role of being a spiritual visualizer, grasps that the doing of art is the central purpose and has embraced that, then by contrast, there is a reason for doing various things and a basis for deciding which things are worth the doing... as such, that central purpose involving being the artist can provide motivation throughout the artist's life, anchoring the lesser purposes on a relative scale, thus enhancing the life being lived... this is so even when the monetary rewards are not such that remuneration is sufficient on its own to allow full-time concentration...

There are two more virtues yet to be dealt with - Purposefulness has one, Productivity... and Self-Esteem has one - Pride... how do these be involved with being a spiritual visualizer?

To begin with, Productivity is the virtue of acting to sustain oneself without being at the expense of others... a life without purpose is not a life, but a depraved existence... purpose is the infrastructure for living, the framework that allows one to take charge of one's life... productiveness is rationality put into practice... it is "the recognition of the fact," according to Rand, "that productive work is the process by which man's mind sustains his life, the process that sets man free of the necessity to adjust himself to his background, as all animals do, and gives him the power to adjust his background to himself"... how does this pertain to being a spiritual visualizer?

Productiveness is the adjustment of nature to man, and as such, to visualize this is the task of a spiritual visualizer - to show the practical consequences of using the mind, of taking the materials of reality and utilizing them to the betterment of humans, adjusting, as said, the background to the being... the spiritualness involved is in the showing of the flourishing consequences of taking those materials...

There is also the fact of the artist - rendering is the productiveness of the artist, the expressing of the artist's spiritual visualizing, the showing of the values held by the artist, and the practicality of the showing... in this regard, the artist is also as an entrepreneur, for the practicality of rendering is more than the mere creating, but the marketing of it, the making a living at it - not as a 'necessary evil [if it is necessary, it cannot be evil, for necessity is life enhancing and evil is life destroying or debilitating] but as a responsibility of the self to survive as a human in the chosen means of profession, being an artist, a successful artist... the marketing involved is the means of showing to others the importance of what is shown - a re-affirmation value to the viewer worth keeping and contemplating on as a means of refueling oneself, of having a concrete example to periodically turn to re-energize the self in whatever other endeavors are undertaken... the marketing, thus, is the practicalizing of the virtue of independence for the artist...

Does this mean monetary remuneration always comes to the productive artist? no, because while the basic reason a person needs be productive is to meet the needs for material values, and normally this is thru trade as means of payment for the work - this is not always the case... money is not the only type of material value, and not all work that creates material value is well compensated in the market... thus a person may need be making the money at a less productive, relatively undemanding job, in order to enable the more rewarding and challenging and productive work - in this case being that of the artist... this is often, perhaps especially so, when the artist as creator has blazed a new direction in creating, showing work which requires more conscious attention to being appreciated, or appeals to a more selective set of viewers... this does not detract from it being productive work, only that the burden of being able to achieve the creating may be harder than otherwise, a situation which, to the creator having the success of the creating, is, relatively speaking, small and unimportant... it is the doing, the creating, the visualizing which is the productive and thus the important - and in that regard, the success of being...