Time to Park Our Main Character Syndrome

...if you'd like to love, that is

Jan 17, 2025

Those of us raised in America learned — from a very young age — to think about, understand, and approach the world in a very particular way.

Every historical tale framed us as the victors, the heroes.

Our democracy was the pinnacle of good government.

No other country was as evolved — as free — as us.

Everybody wanted to be us, really.

grayscale photo of people sitting on chair — Photo by davide ragusa on Unsplash

I jest.

But only a little.

My jest is not too far-off from the truth.

Many of us Americans walk through the world with some degree of Main Character Syndrome.

We were conditioned to do that, after all.

And that is a problem.

We’re Believing a Lie

Buying into this conditioning is buying into a lie.

Seeing any one person, or group, or country, etc. as the main character in a story will never be the truth.

In the world as it actually is, every human being we encounter is a portal to uncountable amounts of experiences, of whole universes, of many stories.

Believing otherwise is taking their three-dimensional lives and flattening them, as though they are cut-out paper dolls serving as mere decorations in our lives.

Believing that lie, we cannot know the joy of being with them.

We’re Subverting True Community

This lie is antithetical to true community.

When the mental model you move through the world with sees yourself as someone who everyone else is paying attention to, or someone who is making things happen while others just watch, you don’t really engage with them.

You can’t.

When you see other people, you aren’t really seeing them.

You can’t.

You aren’t encountering folks who you can just hang with, or laugh with, or relax and be with. You aren’t seeking out collaborators with whom you can accomplish good and meaningful things.

Rather, you have an audience.

Relationships are pretty one-way.

There can’t really be any mutuality, any give-and-take, any solidarity.

There can only be you saving the day, if the day needs saving.

And beyond the lie… that’s a lot of pressure.

Stress.

Over-activated nervous systems.

That is not very healthy for a person.

We’re Breeding Unwellness

Cutting ourselves off from genuine connection with others is like cutting off a limb. We cannot be healthy or well, if we do that.

If we are relating to others like they’re watching us perform, we’re not talking with them. We’re not asking about their lives. We’re not concerned with their needs. We don’t really want to explore how they see the world. We certainly aren’t that interested in expanding our own world.

We will never be fully human like that.

There is a reason that Ubuntu exists.

Isn’t it interesting that Ubuntu — and other related concepts — arose out of and continues to persist in various African cultures?

This general idea — “I am because we are,” or “I am because you are” — is one that is genuinely foreign to most Americans.

We don’t live that way here.

And the U.S. Surgeon general has had to put out an advisory about our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, where he told us that, according to his review of the scientific literature, one in two adults in America report experiencing loneliness.

And the results of that loneliness?

“Loneliness is… associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity.”

Further, he states, “the harmful consequences of a society that lacks social connection can be felt in our schools, workplaces, and civic organizations, where performance, productivity, and engagement are diminished.”

We’re killing ourselves with our lack of genuine connection to each other.

And we’re not setting ourselves up to find a better way, either.

We Can’t Learn and Grow

If we are convinced that we’ve got it all figured out, that the way we live is peak humanity, that we live in the “greatest country ever known”… we sure don’t have much to learn… do we?

Not only are we unable to learn.

We usually cannot even see what other cultures and countries have to teach us, because we are so caught up not relating to them as equals with their own wisdom, but as supporting characters within our own story.

Take that concept of Ubuntu mentioned earlier. Doesn’t that seem like the kind of thing Americans could use more of?

But we don’t even get the opportunity to benefit from that wisdom.

Because we are far too busy listening to our own voices.

We Can’t Have Empathy

We cannot really have empathy for others in this worldview — not really.

If you are the main character in a story, only your loves, hates, opinions, preferences, feelings, etc. matter to the story.

You’re not really interested in others’ experiences.

And you don’t really think anyone else should be, either.

In fact, sometimes you may even wonder if others even have feelings or preferences. Maybe they’re just unfeeling automatons?

This especially happens when we’re at war, or in any kind of adversarial posture with another person or group of people.

We can easily de-humanize people this way.

We Easily “Other” People

If you are living in a world where you don’t see yourself as one integral part of an interwoven whole, other people genuinely seem like an “other.”

When we see another person as the “other,” it’s much easier to villainize them — especially if we believe (even if it’s an unconscious belief) that their story is not as important as our story.

If they harm us at all, that makes them simply a villain, rather than a complex fellow human being with their own set of feelings, experiences, hurts, and hopes.

They are more like flat supporting characters in our story… than like other humans.

So we can’t even really see their humanity.

We Don’t Respect the Agency of Others

When we are living in this way, we don’t respect or honor the agency of the other humans around us.

If we want something from them, they should give it to us.

If we think they should do something, they need to do it.

If we have an idea that we think is a fantastic idea, of course the only option is for them to get on board with it and get with the program…

… and so on.

At first blush, we might not see how harmful this is.

But we are enacting a form of violence, if we do this.

We Can’t See the True Consequences of Our Behavior

When we are living with this worldview, we are living with a form of blinders on. We can’t see our true selves. And we certainly can’t see others’ true selves.

We have been trained to see violence and harm as things that are only visible to our eyes. If another person tells us about a violence or a harm that we’ve committed and they’ve experienced, we will fight it, get defensive, deny it.

Because of course, if we can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.

And we are good people!

Of course!

So we could never, ever cause the harm you’re talking about.

Even if you’re telling us that you’ve experienced it.

You must be mistaken.

In this worldview, we are relating to everyone around us in over-simplified ways, which means that we will never understand the layered and hidden consequences of anything we say or do.

Even more, we will never understand the gray areas.

We Only Acknowledge Black or White

When we’ve been conditioned to narrate our own lives this way, we will only chase the “sexy” stories — the ones where we fight hard, and/or battle an enemy, and/or “win”... when real life is often much more of a muddled middle way.

Muddled and messy isn’t very heroic.

So we want to minimize those things.

We want to pretend they don’t exist…

…or, at the least, sideline and hide them.

But here’s the problem with that.

Real life is not black and white.

Real life is shades of gray.

So we’re completely missing reality, in this worldview.

We Can’t See Reality

Overly simplified narratives are almost never reality.

Black or white are almost never reality.

Rugged individualism is absolutely not reality.

Pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps is a ridiculous myth.

We Americans tend to love the simplest, flattest stories: hero vs. villain, good guys vs. bad guys, a “self-made” entrepreneur, a captain of industry who has discovered the secrets of life and triumphed over it all.

And none of those stories are reality.

Interdependence is reality.

Gray areas are reality.

Messiness is reality.

Complex-people-with-both-good-and-bad-parts is reality.

Anything-hard-takes-a-collaborative-effort is reality.

There is no way that we can understand the reality of our interdependence with all of our fellow humans…

… without stepping back from the spotlight, sitting down in the relative dark, turning our heads to look around ourselves, and seeing all of the many souls forming a tapestry of knowing and experience and wisdom around us — a tapestry that is actively holding and protecting us in every moment.

We Can’t Truly Love

The word “love” has evolved to not mean much, in our modern culture.

Someone can “love” someone that they assault.

Someone can “love” someone that they disrespect.

Someone can “love” someone that they control.

Someone can “love” someone that they manipulate.

And those things are just in interpersonal relationships!

Even though loving is one of the most basic and essential experiences of being human, we have for some reason completely canceled “love” from the public sphere.

We don’t talk about “love” in government.

We certainly don’t talk about “love” in business.

And, for some odd reason that I don’t yet quite understand, we don’t talk about “love” at all in the field of work we call “philanthropy” — a word whose roots literally mean “love of humanity.”

And certainly, our collective ability to love is completely hamstrung by the Main Character Syndrome that drives our approach to the world.

If we are believing lies and unable or unwilling to see the truth…

…if we can’t experience the joy of being in true community…

…if we’re suffering in a state of unwellness…

…and we have set up our lives so that we are not able to learn or grow…

…if we’re incapable of empathy…

…and we are constantly othering people…

…if we don’t respect the agency of others…

…and we refuse to see the consequences of our behavior…

…if we only acknowledge black and white…

…and we refuse to see the reality of our messy interdependence…

… there is no way we can love.

Not really.

And that is a problem.

We Should’t Do Community Work If We Can’t Love

In community work like nonprofits and philanthropy, being a loving presence is SO important, if we want to be helpful and not harmful.

Walking into situations like we are the main character of that situation is the opposite of being loving. In contrast, sitting down — and looking around us at all of the lovely, experienced, wise humans around us who are holding us up and collaborating with us — is the best way to start something in love.

I have been saying this more and more lately.

And I will repeat it as much as I need to:

NONE of this work is about us.

Not you. Not me.

None of it.

Is.

About.

Us.

If we are going to do community work, we need to understand this truth with every fiber of our being.

That means no power games so you can prevail. No gossiping so you can feel better about yourself. No stepping on someone else so you can get ahead. No ignoring someone because you “just don’t like them.” No taking credit for something you didn’t do. No refusing to collaborate with someone else. No pretending that things are black and white. No oversimplifying something that is layered and messy. No treating any other person as an enemy. No refusing to welcome empathy into your heart fully…