We have all encountered our fair share of narcissists and attention-seekers, criticizing them for upholding the notion that they are the ‘main character’ in everyone’s lives, but this concept is wrong; we are all the main characters of our own lives, it’s called the Protagonist Disease.
Our inclination to act and think as though we are the center of the world is unavoidable, purely because of the natural human desire as social creatures to receive recognition and validation, which is heightened by our ability to self-promote on social media. This is also paired with the simple fact that people generally over-analyze their own actions along with the occasional attempt to justify them.
The phenomenon Protagonist Disease is not very shocking itself, but what is far more interesting are the behaviors it elicits. For instance, awkwardness stems almost entirely from the fact that human beings are incredibly sensitive to the restrictions we have imposed on our own society– restrictions ranging from the law to basic etiquette. When these regulations are breached, the areas of the brain that are activated are the same ones related to sensing physical pain. People are affected by uncomfortable moments to the point where such occurrences activate the fight or flight system, only worsening the situation by causing distressing symptoms such as sweat and shallow breathing. The oversensitivity of humans in embarrassing situations is directly related to the Protagonist Disease, leading us to believe that others are as fixated on our missteps as much as we are. People either forget or refuse to believe that not everyone will scrutinize every detail of an interaction with them, rather, they are too preoccupied with their perspective– had they acted weird?
A second element we tend to forget as a result of the Protagonist Disease, is the fact that everyone around us has as complex a life as we do. This has been coined the ‘fundamental attribution error’. The best way to properly depict this phenomenon is through a typical example we all can relate to: you are crossing the street and someone bumps into you. If you were the one being bumped into, the instant reaction would be to deem this person inherently annoying, without any other purpose or reasoning necessary. They are simply a background character in your story, whose entire identity consists of bumping into you that one time. On the other hand, if you were to bump into someone, there might be a thousand explanations, ranging from the fact that there simply wasn’t enough space to cross properly, to the possibility that you may have tripped because your bag was heavier than usual and you had a bad day.
Of course, there isn’t enough time in the day to justify the behavior of the thousands of people we come into contact with every second. However, we can continue to appreciate the moments of enlightenment when we can acknowledge that the 8 billion people on this planet all go about their lives in just as much detail and emotion as we do. Every person in the street and in cafés has years of life trailing behind them like a story. This concept, is known as sonder.
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