[thr0amay]

I'm in my late twenties. Not extremely wealthy, but wealthy enough that I do not work or ever need to worry about money. I think a part of the messiah complex comes from guilt. The guilt and feelings of responsibility that "I'm very fortunate so I need to do more for the world (and only I can do it!)". It starts out innocuous but it can become toxic very quickly, especially when combined with some ideological or political component as you stop viewing people as people and it just becomes about maximizing some metric.

Your point about day-to-day "ordinary people" interactions helping to align behavior is crucial. Besides a few close friends, most of my friends do not know of my financial situation. For work, I just say I do freelance consulting since that explains no employer and flexible hours. This does make me feel dishonest and disconnected from them, though. The only thing keeping me anchored to reality is keeping to a "normal" life as that's the only constraint to me going haywire like Tony did. Having regular friends is the only reference point to reality I have.