From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   Many people see artists as arrogant or elitist, even narcissistic. In my   
   experience, artists have been the most welcoming and the most open people out   
   there. Fancy a total stranger going into a meeting of doctors and reciting   
   poetry. In an art school, I    
   was welcomed and praised when I did just that.   
      
   I once ripped a hole in my pants while climbing a fence, then I stumbled into   
   a poetry reading in DC. They welcomed me. Would a bunch of lawyers, or   
   businessmen, or engineers, welcome a person with a hole in his pants? Yet   
   artists did.   
      
   Why do the artists have this reputation, and doctors or lawyers don't?   
   Probably because fewer people in places such as America and Australia see use   
   in arts than they do in law or medicine, which means that sometimes artists   
   have to blow their horn. When    
   someone is seen as useless, he needs to do more to make a place for himself   
   than when he is seen as useful; and doing that can come across to people as   
   chutzpah, narcissism or self-absorption.   
      
   I've known more arrogant doctors than arrogant artists. These people tend to   
   be of the conviction that because they've finished medical school they are   
   better than the rest of the world. I've also seen this attitude among   
   engineers, who tend to think    
   that only they do important work in the world and that everyone else is lazy   
   or insane. Many scientists, military people and businessmen also think that   
   they are the most important people in the world. I have known no artist who   
   thought that art was the    
   only important thing in the world, but I have known many engineers, military   
   people and businessmen who thought that their profession was the most   
   important profession in the world.   
      
   So no, artists are not more arrogant than an average person. Certainly there   
   are arrogant artists; but artists come nowhere close to owning arrogance. Some   
   artists are arrogant, some are not. Same with everyone else. It is time to   
   stop equating    
   creativity with arrogance and allow it to do its job of making the world a   
   more beautiful place.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)