Dostoevsky has a nice paragraph on this topic: “One of these luckless men…is the guardian angel of his family, maintains by his labour outsiders as well as his own kindred, and yet can never be at rest all of his life! The thought that he has so well fulfilled his duties is no comfort or consolation to him; on the contrary, it irritates him. 'This is what I've wasted all my life on,' he says; 'this is what has fettered me, hand and foot; this is what has hindered me from doing something great! Had it not been for this, I should certainly have discovered — gunpowder or America, I don't know precisely what, but I would certainly have discovered it!' What is most characteristic of these gentlemen is that they can never find out for certain what it is they are destined to discover and what they are within an ace of discovering. But their sufferings, their longings for what was to be discovered, would have sufficed for a Columbus or a Galileo.”

(Part IV, Chapter 1, page 433)

Second; what is a great achievement? Is that health and safety for your family, and industrial breakthrough, enormous wealth, the best book ever written? (And how great is a great achievement)

And third what motivates you to strive for such an achievement. A miserable childhood, a life in poverty and hunger or a hunger for recognition.

If you are right, than depending on in which culture you ask these questions the answer would vary.

Thus-far I'm most familiar with the western approach, and only vaguely familiar with the Russian notion of constant suffering. I'll do my best to understand more of those

I think one big part of what it is is an indifference to suffering. In the US & the west, there's an obsessive focus on happiness and contentment. The “good” life is one which is full of love and free from pain.

In eastern culture, suffering seems to be taken as just a natural part of life & not really something that should be escaped from. The Chinese gaokao system for university entrance exams is a brutal misery and a good example of this. This is not a system for elites or only one type of person, it's broad based in society.

When I figure out a better way of explaining it, I'll write a seperate blog post but this is the best I have off the top of my head.

As I was thinking, do you think it's useful to split off the great artists from the great professionals? Judging by the suicide rates, it takes a lot more to be a great artist than it takes to be a great professional. And maybe you could be more clear on how great the contribution is to society. Are we talking here about a contribution so great that only one in a million brings it, or more on the scale of 1 in 1000, or if you claim that it's the favourite career path for entire societies 1 in 2?

I would wager that there are societies in which option 2 is overwhelmingly preferred to option one, most notably those from developing worlds and eastern cultures. In my own empirical experience, the skew is towards option 1 but not by much at all.

As far as I personally go, every time I read option 1, it fills me with a sort nameless dread. There's something so futile, so insignificant about that kind of life. It reminds me of a placid cow, kept happy, dumb & fed until it is one day slaughtered.

Maybe you can also look at motivation. What motivates some to go for option one is not that hard, it's just always doing the things that 'society' set's out to be the right things to do. But if you could ever find out what motivates group two, than we could revolutionize the world. If you have some time you could read outliers by Malcom Gladwell he discusses some of these points.

My favourite theory is that 4 years Siberia make you a better writer, or the other infamous quote “Miserable childhood leads to royalties”

It reveals an interesting disconnect in world view between two very different value systems which I'm planning to explore in a later post.