no need to apologise, and thanks for pointing out this potential problem.
(random trivia: I misread your comment three times, thinking it said "I know you personally can't tell whether you have True Believe Syndrome")
as for the painful thoughts... It was a relief to finally get them written down, and posted, and sanity-checked. I made a couple attempts before to write this stuff down, but it sounded way too angry, and I didn't dare post it. And it turns out that the problem was mostly my fault after all.
oh, and yeah, I am already well aware that I have dangerously low self-esteem. but if I try to ignore these faraway goals, then I have trouble seeing myself as anything more valuable than "just another person". Actually I often have trouble even recognizing that I qualify as a person...
also, an obvious question: are we sure that True Believer Syndrome is a bad thing? or that a Saviour Complex is a bad thing?
random trivia: now that I've been using the City of Lights technique for so long, I have trouble remembering not to use a plural first-person pronoun when I'm talking about introspective stuff... I caught myself doing that again as I checked over this comment.
also, an obvious question: are we sure that True Believer Syndrome is a bad thing? or that a Saviour Complex is a bad thing?
I'm pretty sure of that. Not because of what it does to your goals, but because of what it does to you.
It has been claimed on this site that the fundamental question of rationality is "What do you believe, and why do you believe it?".
A good question it is, but I claim there is another of equal importance. I ask you, Less Wrong...
What are you doing?
And why are you doing it?