^^^ Hubris is just another word for being a stuck up little know-it-all. It's a fault, not a virtue that anyone should be aspiring to. Nevertheless, I love Ezri on the show and in the books.
You're both off the mark. Hubris means dangerous or fatal overconfidence, the pride that comes before a fall. It's the arrogance that leads one to overreach oneself and bring about one's own defeat or destruction. For instance, Professor Crater's hubris in thinking he could control the Salt Vampire, or Gul Dukat's hubris in thinking he could keep the Dominion in check.
'Hubris' is the Latin word for 'epic jackass-ary'...we say it in Latin because it sounds more polite in a dead language.
Actually it's a Greek word. In Ancient Greek usage, it actually had a different meaning from the modern one -- basically the act of shaming or abusing another person, committing assault or sex crimes upon them, anything that's done to demean or diminish another person in order to feel superior to them or take pleasure from their pain or humiliation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris It could also mean arrogance toward the gods, which often led to the intervention of Nemesis, the goddess of retribution. The classic example of hubris in Greek mythology is Arachne, who boasted she was a superior weaver to Athena herself, and who wove tapestries mocking the gods. She challenged Athena to a weaving content and lost, and was punished by being turned into the first spider. So that led to the modern notion of hubris as arrogance which provokes one's own punishment or downfall.
Well, I was trying to being facetious with my wording. Nevertheless it's still nothing that knowledge needs be combined with.
Yeah, I'm really not clear on what word Mage really meant to use there. Humility, perhaps? Which is kind of the opposite of hubris.
No, I really mean that I feel that novel-Ezri had hubris. She was so confident she knew it all and could fix all because she had all this past experience from all the symbionts. I suppose hubris is the wrong word though, my use was off somewhat. I did mean she was overconfident at times, acting before thinking because she asumed that the knowledge in Dax would be enough to figure things out. But it was never fatal or selfdestructive.
^But what you said was, "Knowledge is nothing without hubris, something TrekLit Ezri was lacking if you ask me." That's the sentence that confuses me.
That's why I just admitted that I used the word wrongly. Again, my apologies. I do feel Ezri has a small amount of hubris at times, but I should have a used a different word.
That'll teach you to make mistakes when you post things on the internet! I'm totally kidding, it's a weird day for me if I don't read or write something incorrectly somewhere, somehow.
He wasn't being pedantic at all. "Hubris" has a negative connotation, and Mage was using it in a seemingly positive way. I was curious about what he meant, too! Anyway, I'm fascinated to see what John Jackson Miller comes up with! I recently read Kenobi (my first Star Wars novel) and I really enjoyed it. I'm really excited for Miller's foray into the Trek universe!
It's hardly pedantic to be genuinely confused because someone used a word in manner that inferred an opposite meaning to its actual one. It would be like saying "pacifism is nothing without violence." Nevertheless, he said he used the wrong word. I would still be interested in the actual point he was trying to convey.
Excited about this. I wish Miller would write a story about the odball statisticians from DS 9's Statistical Probabilities. Odballs are his specialty.
Happy belated welcome then Are you by chance the same Jedi Ben who frequents the Star Wars equivalent of this place over at the Jedi Council Forums? I've been known to pop in there from time to time this last year, though I'm hardly a regular...