I’ve been pontificating about it to myself for long enough to form it into that question. When I think of someone virulently MCS, the content is almost always their perception of others as lessers - NPCs, background characters, or fodder. They are the hero and they could cut through a horde of others and they’re frustrated by rules and regulations that say they can’t. But I might be so bold as to say that their problem isn’t that they see themselves as special, but that they see themselves as exceptional.
The problem is that they’re rude to service workers, upset when people step in front of their camera, or judge the choices of others (especially for the effect it has on you e.g. opining during a marriage ceremony). Therefore my thesis of special vs exceptional is that if you are filming yourself on a busy street but you don’t obstruct people nor react to people walking through the shot, you’re not hurting anyone. You can take up space, but you should be polite while doing it to be someone who cohabitates this one world. You can think yourself a person with a hidden demon within them who must prove themselves to be the best and be monstrously disappointed when you finish second all the while being a weird anime person, but cheating, misrepresenting yourself to others, or expecting others to help you is where you cross the line.
So all that being said, perhaps it’s not a problem to think yourself in a unique position to solve a problem no one else has - perchance help people along the way. After all, no one else is you nor has anyone ever been nor will anyone ever be. The world is a collection of individuals. You can think you’re cool, smart, mysterious, kind, forgiving, or hang your hat on some other piece of personal esteem and be a great friend, peer, and comrade. On a tangential note, I like how in prominent MMA promotions, after someone is declared the victor, the camera begins to focus on them and their celebration instead of zooming in on someone who is visibly very frustrated by their loss.
You neednt even wrap your brain around the boundless scale of everyone’s genius in some aspect nor make yourself less by reminding yourself of it when you think highly of yourself - it is a lesson to learn if you’re belittling others.
I’d really like your input and opinions on the matter.
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” ― Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
I exalt myself such that I don’t place limits or confines on my identity. I might become anything i see fit, for the time I need of it. The only regulation of this is my own natural tendencies towards certain action and outlook, and any hard physical limits - I was never going to be a pilot because of a photic sneeze reflex - this is the stuff i permit to limit and confine the possible
So having done that, having no sense of self that is intrinsically limiting, it can come off as Main Character-y. Some would call it deeply unrealistic. But I’m only giving myself the space to grow in any direction I wish, and I do so with the idea that I’m pretty smart, and there aren’t many doors that aren’t open to me at all. I’m pretty practical about this in practice. But I find myself constantly learning and of a mindset to become my best self, and then enrich others with what I learn. Spread the sense of what’s possible, of what can be done, and try to make people’s lives better in a way that has a mind to flattening hierarchy
I feel like it’s a decent place for any human to be, as long as it’s flexible. As long as you can admit there’s someone who might be able to do that task better than you, and that’s ok, you shouldn’t put limits on yourself, not via class, not via training/education, not via specialization. You should strive to be as adaptable as possible so that you can be who and what you need to be at all times.
I feel like this is substantially different from acting like you’re the Dovakhin in Skyrim or something - running around as a bulldozing chaos demon that crashes into people’s lives, disrupts them profoundly, before fucking off to ransack the next town with a growing body count in your wake - metaphorically of course - this is a shit ass way to live. It’s narcissistic, ego-maniacal, and harmful.
Those people need ego death. Like a nice huge dose of acid and just taken to their lowest point, and rebuilt… or something anyway