hero in my own story

I don't have many heroes.  It's possible I don't have any heroes.  It may be me avoiding being vulnerable, but I've found that placing people on a pedestal just guarantees that they're going to disappoint in some way later on because no one is perfect.

Even though I don't have heroes, and I don't explicitly think of myself as a hero, I think there's a strong tendency for men at least to think of themselves as the hero of their own life narrative.  I know I want to.  I suspect women are similar.  I know that I want to think that every difficulty I confront is a heroic challenge, and everyone who causes me trouble is a remorseless villain.  This just allows me to feel righteous when I take confrontational steps to do something for my own benefit.

Since I decided a few years ago that most people are living as the heroes of their own personal narratives, this has greatly reduced the animosity I feel for people who are rude, obnoxious, selfish, or otherwise unbearable.  I don't enjoy them, but they are easier to tolerate.  In their narrative they have convinced themselves that they are heroically confronting those who act in some unjust way toward them.

This is important in understanding how to deal with difficult people.  If I want to affect their behavior I have to remove their justifications by reacting in a way that is not unjust in their narrative.  If they're a sociopath or a psychopath I might not be able to do that.  If they're a more typical human, just being genuinely empathetic usually ruins the hero narrative in their mind, because it's hard to think of someone as a villain if they're being empathetic.

One of the things that I have long disliked in stories that I couldn't articulate for the longest time were villains whose primary purpose was being evil for the sake of it.  I am sure that even Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot convinced themselves that their actions were right and just.  Even psychopaths seek to justify their actions, if only by defining the fulfillment of their desires as the primary justification for everything.  To have a character characterized as being evil with no internal justification feels off.

This is also one thing that bugs me about many (not all) conspiracy theories.  The theories are frequently more focused on casting a person or a group of people as a villain than they are at presenting a rational justification for what would really motivate the behavior in question.