"If you were an artist you wouldn't think being an artist is good." - Singularity Utopia.
That's my quote; to which I'll add: our world is very un-artistic, it is culturally dead, even art is a sham thus true artists practice anti-art (Dada).
Famous artists who become rich occupy a rarefied, extremely niche market; they have managed to make their criticism of society socially acceptable; their dissent from the uncreative-norm is not too far pronounced and their artistic emotional temperament is not too extreme thus they can make a living. Not many artists fit into this narrow type of mind-personality, thus they are not economically compatible with society; furthermore the artists who can contort their creativity into a socially-laudable-portrayal, they are competing for a limited amount of jobs because due to the uncreative nature of the world, the demand for artists is small compared to the demand for structured-reality-TV-stars, film-stars, or popstars.
So before you think it could be good to be an artist, consider how even if you possess creativeness comparable to Picasso, the chances are you will suffer because there are an extremely limited number of Picasso-type jobs. More likely if you are an artist your artistic nature will be an utterly incompatible with civilization, your art will never be appreciated, your life will be an extremely hellish living nightmare, a shockingly diabolical atrocity where each second of your existence is indelibly marked by the deepest abyss of gibbering pain.
The pain is truly horrendous, beyond anything you can imagine, it slavers in your face akin to a loathsome, decomposing, excrement-smeared, and vomited-encrusted monster gnashing its rottenly cruel teeth millimeters from your face while you are utterly powerless to stop the agonizing insanity. This monstrous glimpse of the pain associated with being an artist is the tiniest percentage of what you would actually feel. The total agony is utterly unbearable but the artist bears it. You should think yourself very lucky if you are not an artist. The lucky ones are the mindless-uncreative ones.
I am what I am therefore despite these views I also realise I couldn't be any other type of person, although a part of me wishes I was normal. The problem is my eyes, they allow me to have vision. The things I see in the world are painful but I wouldn't really want to be blind. I write these words so people can remember or imagine how it felt to be intelligent in the pre-Singularity world.
