I’m sure you’ve also seen they type: brillant PhD, liked by everyone, natural leader, accomplished on multiple levels, perfect family and relations. These are the people that have been selected to be astronauts. How often have you seen one have a breakdown during a mission?

I'm not sure about mental breakdowns per se, but there has been some insubordination. I can't recall which at the moment, but one of the Gemini astronauts during an EVA refused to get back into the capsule until he was plead with. Perhaps this could be categorized as a mental breakdown. (Edit: It was Ed White: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_4#Extra-vehicular_activ... )

There was also that well publicized incident in 2007 where an astronaut's life unraveled and their career was destroyed, but that wasn't during a mission.

Many people who have had too easy of an upbringing may seem emotionally stable while inside the safety of their cushy comfort zone, but when they're put outside their comfort zone and hit with a real challenge or hardship, they often crumble, because they never learned how to deal with real difficulty

As far as we can tell, historically your assumption is wrong. Hard times do not really breed hard people it's a myth that comes from the antiquity and was used by philosophers and elites to link the moral corruption of a people with its inevitable downfall.

For instance:

> Under the assumptions of our Fremen Mirage, we ought to expect farming societies to be frequently overtaken and subjugated by their non-farming neighbors

Isn’t it basically the Vikings crushing their neighboors to get fertile territories ? That’s also France’s whole history, getting overrun in waves of invasions, backing up what he calls the “mirage” that is supposed to get debunked.

PS: in economic terms the counterpoint to his theory would be the resource curse, so it’s not a foreign to us concept either

Pirates would be the closest thing that comes to my mind, but it's more an economic activity inside a society than a separate culture.

The same way I do chores, but I'm not a house maid (until perhaps I quit my job)

Examples: Vikings, Barbarians, Huns, ...

Take a cat that has lived an easy life indoors its whole life and put it outside.

How long do you think that cat will survive outdoors compared to a cat who has lived outside its whole life?

I am not a psychologist nor anything similar, but wouldn't people who have gone through the same conditions without having the crazy thoughts in the first place be better suited for the job?

- Those that really try hard to make sure the computer cannot crash.

- Those that see the computer crashing as an inevitability, and want to ensure the appropriate behaviours are in place when it does happen.

The two are not mutually exclusive at all.

I’ve been forced to build coping mechanisms to survive. Every day is a struggle of some kind, so I’m ready when shit happens, because shit always happens to me.

I, like you, know how to cope but is that really better than not needing to know how to cope at all? I wish I shared your optimism.

It's been a very long, very hard road and I wasn't expecting to life past 30. Somehow, I managed to hang on long enough to get diagnosed at 32.

Medication and therapy have lifted so any burdens, which was more I ever could have asked for. I was a creative person robbed of the ability to create. Medication has given that back to me. My dream of writing stories has become a reality. I've managed to get a short story accepted, which makes me an author as well as a writer.

I guess I'm just thankful. I don't dwell too much on what I don't have, because there is so much I do have.

That depends on how bad it gets. Everyone has a breaking point and I'd prefer having experience to deal with it. There's not a single person on this planet that won't go through some sort of catastrophe in their lives.

I think it's naive to assume these people that get selected haven't had to go through difficult emotional challenges.

Not a psychologist either but from my anxiety experiences and what I've researched I've found that everyone gets crazy thoughts but people with anxiety conditions start to worry that their thoughts are wrong and no on else deals with them. My anxiety dwindled when I realized they're just thoughts and the crazy ones cause anxiety because my brain is trying to "protect" me.

So, people that don't have issues are really just able to dismiss the thoughts because they know they're only thoughts and nothing else.

I don't think those are the type that generally get these positions, however. As you say, a big ego is a big liability. The ones who have "the right stuff" are generally very intelligent, very accomplished, and very humble.

You're making the assumption that most of these people learned to live with a bad environment and they expect to live in that bad environment for the rest of their life.

What about those whose anxiety stopped because they left the bad environment? You're not going to leave Mars.