At first glance, exceptionalism appears empowering. It says you don’t have to wait for permission to act. You don’t have to belong to the right family or the right class. You can be the change. This message is fed to us repeatedly with superhero movies and wild card action flicks like John wick. One person fighting against the odds to murder enough people to fill a small kentucky town. That's some exceptional shit. Stories are framed, not around the collective effort, but the solo effort.
If you make it, it’s because you earned it. If you fail, it’s because you weren’t good enough. Community, support networks, luck, timing — all footnotes in the personal success story. In that worldview, asking for help becomes a sign of weakness. Needing others looks like failure. This mindset fractures communities. It discourages vulnerability, interdependence, and mutual aid — all things that strong relationships and healthy societies are built on.
Beyond alienating us from the community, exceptionalism also alienates us from ourselves. It trains us to value only the parts of us that can be celebrated, monetized, or admired. Our quiet qualities — patience, humility, consistency — don’t get the same spotlight. So we learn to hide them. We contort ourselves into “remarkable” shapes, hoping to be seen. Life shown through instagram is great example of this. Those fractured images of people's lives only highlight the remarkable. This creates a fragile sense of self, one that's always tied to performance. And when we inevitably fall short of being exceptional, shame sets in. We start to believe that our worth is conditional.
An insidious aspect of exceptionalism is how it erases collective effort. When we highlight the lone genius, we ignore the team. Do you think einstein did everything alone? Mileva Maric (his wife and accomplished physicist) would beg to differ. When we idolize the charismatic founder, we forget the workers. When we glorify the leader, we erase the movement that carried them forward.
This isn’t just about fairness — it’s about reality. No one achieves anything in isolation. Even the most remarkable individuals stand on the shoulders of teachers, caretakers, peers, and communities. By pretending otherwise, we not only dishonor those contributions but also make it harder for others to imagine themselves as agents of change unless they fit a narrow mold of excellence.
So where do we go from here? We start by rejecting the myth that value is individual. We remind ourselves that community is not a backdrop for greatness — it is greatness.
