Judging the Artistic Temperament.

It seems obvious enough to me that this point shouldn’t have to be stated, and yet it seems it is:

People who have the faculty for genuine aesthetic creativity are different from the rest. Creativity of that sort isn’t a manual or mental skill, it comes from somewhere else. They don’t fit into the box that produces bricklayers and brain surgeons, administrators and accountants. Lot’s of people can append ‘I’m artistic’ to ‘I’m practical’ on their CVs, but they’re not the same as the true artist – or writer, or poet, or composer, or sculptor, or whatever. The true artist is a different animal; he or she sees and thinks and feels differently because they’re made differently. They live in a different sort of world, and that’s why they shouldn’t be judged by the same criteria as are used for the rest of us.

Of course they must still be held accountable for their actions, and they must still be subject to the same laws that apply universally in the culture that sustains them. But it isn’t legal judgment I’m talking about, it’s the private judgment of one individual by another. That’s where the real injustice happens.

So is it reasonable to hope that those not so made will understand and make due allowance for those who are? Probably not.