This is why so many suffer from main character syndrome and have a savior complex while telling themselves their hedonism is their reward for “making the world a better place”.

It's wild. There was a story on SSM where a cheating wife literally told herself this to compensate for the guilt she had for cheating on her husband.

In the confession she wrote out (at the behest of her therapist and as a way to try to win back her husband's trust (spoiler: it did not work)) she explained something very similar to that, only in the inverse: that she did good things for her husband as a reward for feeling guilty about cheating on him.