That's a reasonable theory, but it doesn't explain why this phenomenon is (somewhat) unique to art. The explanation you gave applies equally well to say, Basketball players and business tycoons. And for the most part, there's no social wisdom i'm aware of that says you have to be a drug addicted asshole to be one of those things.

I think that it does apply to sports, it's a common trope that athletes (especially in contact sports) are domestic abusers. Business tycoons are often stereotyped as sociopaths.

Plus there's doping in athletics. People love to criticise Lance Armstrong for doping (among his other flaws), but there's no way, even with doping, that the average person would be able to compete in pro cycling, all the steroids, clenbuterol, EPO, and other PEDs in the world couldn't dope you up enough to be competitive at that level.

People love to justify their mediocre existence (not that there's anything at all wrong with mediocrity). They could be a businessman if they were more sociopathic, they could be an athlete if they used steroids, they could be an artist if they took drugs or were more eccentric.

Then again, there are people who dropped out of sport, because they thought they would have to take doping or were pressured to. There are people I know personally who refused jobs that required them do something they found unethical - despite higher pay and benefits. It is profoundly unfair to label them as mediocre just because they have moral or ethical lines they don't cross. Doing that is nothing but rationalization of bad acts.

Maybe the average mediocre person is not just justifying their mediocre existence.

Maybe you are rationalizing bad acts bad on idea that being socially celebrated matters more then ethics and moral.

Being socially celebrated gets you all the things people teach you mean success as you're growing up: Money, probably a beautiful wife, the admiration of your peers. I agree with you that doesn't have to matter but I don't think you should underestimate how much that flies in the face of what most people have been taught matters most.

Which is why I am objecting against knee jerk labeling of people who resisted the temptation as "mediocre" and knee jerk celebration of those who did not resisted as "the others are mediocre anyway". It is tempting even without that.

The beautiful wife will get old as any other women, unless you exchange her ever few years. Being wife merely as a social status trophy is not the kind of relationship I would find attractive at all. I know that some girls are raised to believe that is what they are supposed to be, but that is another category of things I would rather avoid.

Less on the drugs (minus, say, steroids for athletes and cocaine for business folks in the 80s), but there is a lot of social wisdom that says you have to be an asshole to be best at those things. Nice guys finish last. Backstabbing corporate politics. "Killer instinct" for athletes. Steve Jobs, Michael Jordan, Kobe...

It's unusual to find someone so far ahead of the pack that somebody who gains an edge by acting unethically can't use it to overtake that person. I think it occasionally happens, but people in the top tiny percentage just aren't that far apart.

If you have an obsession to be number 1, then probably you need that extra edge (no matter how slim). But I think the deeper question is why does anyone need to be number 1? I think the reality is that most "nice guys" just don't care. You can be "successful enough" and ethics don't even enter into it.

<insert big jerk who is massively successful here> will never enjoy the simple pleasures I do -- because they are driven to be a big jerk who is massively successful. (Not necessarily implying that I'm not a big jerk anyway ;-) )

The article has a good response to this, artists generally have a more flexible work environment:

>The creative occupations considered in these studies are overwhelmingly in the arts, which frequently provide greater autonomy and less rigid structure than the average nine-to-five job. This makes these jobs more conducive to the success of individuals who struggle with performance consistency as the result of a mood disorder.

People with emotional problems or substance dependence wash out of more structured jobs pretty quickly.

Artists can also often work in isolation, especially someone already regarded as a genius. I suspect plenty of people have a tendency towards eccentric behavior, but suppress it because they need to participate in society in order to survive. A genius engineer for example is less able to be wildly eccentric, because an engineer is inherently dependent on others and depends on others to implement their designs.

Another example is the stereotypical eccentric mathematical genius, of which there are endless examples. Pure math shares something with art here, in that a single gifted person can produce important results independently. I mean, I'm having a hard time coming up with very many examples of famous mathematicians who weren't a bit strange.

Euler is the famous example: one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, who by accounts had an otherwise ordinary life and was a respectable family man.

Von Neumann was also fairly normal. I can think of a few, but I can think of far more who were crazy (many, quite literally).

You make it sound as if he is the exception that proves the rule.

That was a cutting analysis; a pleasure to read and important to consider.