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?
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.
I'm pretty sure of that. Not because of what it does to your goals, but because of what it does to you.