On Bob Dylan’s Song, “Disease Of Conceit”

Welcome to From Insults to Respect. 

One insult we often hear is someone being called conceited. On Oh Mercy, Bob Dylan’s 1989 album, he has a song titled “Disease of Conceit” that powerfully, poetically, and musically captures the emotions that can come about from this behavior. Emphasizing each of his major visceral reactions related to conceit are crashing piano chords, and as the song drifts into its conclusion, we are treated with a deeply sad, bluesy strain from a guitar.

I present this post to my readers with the hope that by coming to associate conceit with the emotional feel of the song’s lyrics, it just might lead us to modify what we say about ourselves in a more respect promoting manner. It opens with these words:

There’s a whole lot of people suffering tonight
From the disease of conceit
Whole lot of people struggling tonight
From the disease of conceit
Comes right down the highway
Straight down the line
Rips into your senses
Through your body and your mind
Nothing about it that’s sweet
The disease of conceit

Vividly, we see the narrator sees conceit as awfully harmful. In thinking about this, it might help us to contrast it with an example of its opposite–self effacing behavior. Consider the reaction Abraham Lincoln brought forth when Stephen Douglas called him two faced during a debate and he responded, “If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?” By all accounts, the audience loved it.

The next verse goes on to tell us:

There’s a whole lot of hearts breaking tonight
From the disease of conceit
Whole lot of hearts shaking tonight
From the disease of conceit
Steps into your room
Eats your soul
Over your senses
You have no control
Ain’t nothing too discreet
About the disease of conceit

These lines led me to think about what is it about conceit that the song’s narrator finds so emotionally troubling. Perhaps it’s at least partly because conceited people often come across as thinking the world revolves around them, while suggesting as well that they have an underlying insecurity about their own worth. Listeners of a conceited person are typically far more interested in getting credit for what they and others that they care about have contributed to tasks and are of value to their group. There is indeed a place for gentle self-promotion, but it works much better by showing along with it an appreciation for the other listeners. People often experience conceited people as emotionally draining.

The next lines of Dylan’s song go,

There’s a whole lot of people dying tonight
From the disease of conceit
Whole lot of people crying tonight
From the disease of conceit
Comes right out of nowhere
And you’re down for the count
From the outside world
The pressure will mount
Turn you into a piece of meat
The disease of conceit

Hmmm? I found myself, upon hearing the line about people dying from the disease of conceit, wondering if perhaps it might be an overstatement. I personally haven’t directly observed someone dying from such behavior. Perhaps the narrator means emotionally dying. Dylan often employs vivid metaphors to capture issues he feels strongly about. Still, although I don’t see people in my community really physicallyy dying from conceited behavior, perhaps there are indeed situations when it can be that harmful. This led me to think about some societies. Hitler’s Germany during World War II, for example, had a society that had many who believed that they are so superior to other folks that it entitled them to massacre those who are viewed as inferior. In addition to the massacre of people viewed as inferior during that war, military and civilian fatalities are estimated at 50–56 million, with an additional estimated 19–28 million deaths from war-related disease and famine.

The last set of lines of Dylan’s song goes,

Conceit is a disease
That the doctors got no cure
They’ve done a lot of research on it
But what it is, they’re still not sure

There’s a whole lot of people in trouble tonight
From the disease of conceit
Whole lot of people seeing double tonight
From the disease of conceit
Give ya delusions of grandeur
And a evil eye
Give you the idea that
You’re too good to die
Then they bury you from your head to your feet
From the disease of conceit