and I realized that someone that driven, that innovative, that much of a perfectionist had to be mentally interesting as most geniuses are. I found this article that sums Jobs up pretty well I especially like the last line; you have to be crazy enough – not too crazy, not too little – to think differently.
Steven Jobs: The Power of Being Crazy Enough
Of the many encomia Steven Jobs has received after his recent death, few have focused on not just how special he was, but why he was so special.
Here is a hint from a famous motto that Apple made its own, and used in posters and in its “Think differently” advertising campaigns:
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. – Apple Inc.”
In A First-Rate Madness, I argue that our greatest leaders have mental illness or mental abnormality (at least to a mild to moderate degree of depression or mania). Some prominent media sources have not so much refuted these ideas or the supportive major scientific and historical evidence, but simply ridiculed it as just unbelievable, thereby confirming Schopenhauer’s teaching that all truths are first ridiculed, then violently opposed, and finally accepted as self-evident.One such knee-jerk negative reaction was even titled “Crazy Enough”, which, ironicially, had been the working title of my book for a number of years until the final title was chosen.
Thinking of the phrase “Crazy Enough,” I realized after some time that it had probably entered my awareness through the Apple campaign, and I searched for its source so that I could quote it. In the end, I concluded that the most likely source was, as some have suggested, that Apple adapted it from a similar quotation in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Here is Kerouac:
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn.”
I used Kerouac’s phrase in the frontspiece to A First Rate Madness, along with the famous original quote from Aristotle asking why genius seemed to be linked to madness. The idea was there in ancient Greece and it’s repeatedly seen again in modern America.
Despite the incredulity of some mainstream arts and letters cognoscenti who (because of stigma against mental illness, or a less-than-complete formalpsychiatric education , or both) don’t appear to understand what it means to have depression or mania, we only need educate ourselves and open our minds to see this process happening over and over again before our eyes. Steven Jobs was a great example, one who was aware, rather explicitly, of the sources of his genius. Let’s not forget some unique aspects to who he was:
As a young man, he became a hippie, traveled to India, used acid, and studiedphilosophy and Eastern traditions of thought (and certainly studied Kerouac carefully). According to some sources , he was manipulative and difficult, especially early in his career , had bad personal hygiene, and abandoned a baby daughter to live in poverty. He did not get along well with people in his own company; as is well known, many major conflicts occurred internally, leading to his resignation at age 30. He viewed most people as “bozos” and had a “volcanic temper.”
Wrote one author:
“Jobs has embraced the personality traits that some consider flaws – narcissism ,perfectionism , total faith in his intuition – to lead Apple and Pixar to triumph against steep odds. And in the process, he has become a self-made billionaire.”
Years later, especially after his departure and eventual return and later serious medical illness, the hard edges of his personality dulled and he became the icon we just lost. Jobs was very private, actively resisted letting others know about his psychological states of mind, and rarely gave interviews. But who he was, and who he became, grew out of an unusual personality, one that, if all the facts ever become known, may well have been rather abnormal psychiatrically. One thing we can say with high probability: he was not a nice, middle-of-the-road, friendly, straight-laced, upright, respectable person; he was not the kind of person who would score in the middle of the normal range of personality traits of mental health. He was not a normal, average, mentally healthy person – unlike most of us.
Jobs was a great man, no doubt, and one reason why is this:
You have to be crazy enough – not too crazy and not too little – to think differently.
A Bipolar Journey Through The Rabbit Hole 
GREAT post. I think about this a lot. When I was younger, my manic side drove me to create and manifest huge projects, usually pissing off everybody in my path, but getting the job done. Once the project was up and running, I either quit or was fired by whoever I was doing the project for, and went on to another one. One of my employers was “me” ramped up about 100 times. He created an empire in our field, starting out working out of a camper trailer in a parking lot and building it up into a pediatric clinic that saw 500 kids per day. For fun he went helicopter skiing on Mt. Kilimanjaro and ice climbing epic waterfalls, etc. In fact, we docs who worked for him wanted to take out a Lloyd’s of London life insurance policy on him, because who would pay us if he died? But he refused to cooperate. He was horrible to work for but he payed us so well it was hard to quit, but I finally did because our mutual mania became incompatible with life. Oh well. Like Jobs (only not a brilliant successful creator of an empire), I make a better boss than employee, because I AM the Queen of All I Survey! But now I’m disabled by my illness, so that’s a moot point.
LikeLike