In the year 590, Pope Gregory the Great popularized a list of sins we now call the seven deadly sins,

pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.

But this developed from earlier deadly sin lists, and in the process, one sin was left out

that we need to talk about because it's incredibly common and incredibly dangerous.

Now the deadliest sin is pride,

because when we have an inflated view of ourselves, we're more likely to think, as St. Thomas

Aquinas might summarize, my will be done rather than thy will be done. But Bo Gregory's list

includes not just pride or superbia, but Kenodoxia, which means vanglory.

In the 4th century, Saint Evagrius Ponticus called this sin boasting, and his student, John Cassian called it vannagloria, vanity.

A person engages in the sin of vanglory when he has an excessive desire for other people's praise.

This is often linked with pride, but vanglory is not the same thing as pride.

For example, some people are so full of pride that they think everyone is beneath them,

so they don't care about other people's opinions or seek vanglory from them.

But in many cases, pride and vanglory go hand in hand.

Among younger people, you might call

this in main character syndrome. The term became popular as people who were isolated during the

pandemic developed unhealthy inward perspectives, as can be seen in this 2020 TikTok.

You have to start romanticizing your life. You have to start thinking of yourself as the main character.

Because if you don't, life will continue to pass you by.

People with main character syndrome lack empathy toward others, always talk about themselves

and demand other people praise them, often through attention-seeking social media behavior.

What matters is how their story turns out, not anybody else's, because why would you care

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