I like turning it around and asking: why do human beings seem unable to achieve these heights without a jerk pushing them? I have a loose hypothesis of my own.

I like turning it around and asking: why do human beings seem unable to achieve these heights without a jerk pushing them? I have a loose hypothesis of my own. Most of us are wired for a vastly slower and quieter pace of life with very little change and very few large opportunities. Think hunter gatherers or simple agriculture, the environment and evolutionary pressures at play for 99.99% of our history. Now we have a very different environment: fast, lots of change, and lots of opportunities for huge gains everywhere. By the standards of this environment we basically all suffer from low grade depression and anhedonia. We are literally wired to watch the corn grow. But there are freaks. There are manics, bipolar people, high functioning psychopaths, people who are wired for fast opportunity grabbing and risk taking. Unfortunately these freaks being outliers are also often burdened by mental illness that comes with the package they got, and the odd way they are treated by society (as either gods or devils but never just peers) distorts their personality formation. They are wired in some ways for this environment, but they are socially deeply maladjusted. Jerks. We sort of use these people in an odd way. We make them leaders and via the mirror neuron effect borrow some of their drive. Then when their jerkish behavior gets too severe or things are not going well, we sacrifice the king. This seems to be how regular people are able to adapt to the present fast forwarded hypermodern environment. The other way is drugs. There are drugs like amphetamine that seem to allow regular humans to retune their brains for the current environment without borrowing motivation from a jerk. Unfortunately these come with major side effects and due to habituation the effects are not sustainable and stop working after a while.