There is a saying that “pride goeth before the fall.” Is pride in a sense, the antithesis of love, in that pride always needs an inferior source of comparison? For instance, when one is proud of their athletic achievement, that emotion itself is dependent on a knowing that others failed to acquire that same level of achievement? Is pride a focus on the self, either directly or vicariously, resulting from a “me” or “us” versus “them” mentality?

The extremes of pride you speak of are definitely harmful and non-divine and will darken things considerably for the individual and will set in motion the wheel of karma bringing great misfortune to them in return for their misalignment and everything they do in service to the self at expense of others. It might be more accurate to describe the dichotomy here as "love versus selfish pride." There is nothing wrong with delighting in one’s achievements. That is a healthy utilization of the ego to feel the reward of one’s achievements knowing personally one has striven to improve oneself often against great odds or difficulties and can rightly take satisfaction in the success when finally their goals are reached. That is not a kind of prideful reaction that will cause harm. In a sense it is a personal pride that uses not the elevation of themselves over others to see them as diminished and make them feel lesser in some way, but using one’s own self as the basis of comparison to look at where one has arrived compared to where they started from and seeing the gains made and the accomplishments achieved. So they are not denigrating anyone else, they are simply looking at their own prior lack and enjoying the fact they have changed things for the better in terms of their own betterment, and when coming at their own hands is a justifiable source of pride. If their advancement is as much the work of others in their support, there would need to be an acknowledgment and a sharing in the achievement of the goals to not take sole credit personally, but honor those who have nurtured you and helped you. So if those criteria are met in a sense it is raising up multiple individuals to take pride in what has been achieved. So that is more a kind of self-recognition of worth than an overreaching of ego to glory in one’s superiority. So we think the distinction here is an important one because there has been much denigration of the individual with exhortations to embrace poverty as a lifestyle even and a denial of the self, that it is somehow wrong to seek something more than enjoyed by others as though that creates an unfairness that is undeserved and will, in fact, be a failing when in fact the opposite is the case. Anyone who strives to better themselves and achieves individual betterment is worthy of praise and self-satisfaction for taking initiative and developing the wherewithal to make their life better, provided they did so through their own initiative and not at the expense or denial of things to others that otherwise could have been shared and allowed others to advance along with the self in a cooperative fashion. So we are simply cautioning that there are many nuances here, many personal circumstances that arise and will make your simple categorization of life existing of two choices too simplistic to be very useful.