Polymaths rare in the middle

Being cursed with contrarian personality traits, I was beginning to turn against the current interest and spread of reporting on polymathic matters, after a years long infatuation with the idea of polymathy. I was beginning to try the odd thought experiment- what if successful people weren't actually polymathic at all but were really rather narrow minded? However I knew this to be false at the top of the food chain- the super achievers who are nobel prize winners and top entrepreneurs and other prominent folk are reliably polymathic, measurably so in the case of Nobel prize winners who are 22 times more likely to pursue some artistic interest than a regular academic scientist. 

My mistake, which I think is made by most people writing about multipotentiality, was to think that everyone else was not polymathicly inclined. But a recent survey of facebook, and serious reflecting on all the people I knew with 'normal' jobs, who are neither super successful or super rich or even very prominent- just regular folk- I saw that they were WAY more polymathic in their interests and hobbies and serious non-job pursuits than any of the above average 'successful' people I knew. In other words, the distribution of polymathy is hour glass shaped. People at the very top and people lower down are polymathic. Those in the middle, striving and struggling to be top of their field or CEO or some other malarkey are not. They haven't the time or the energy - which is needed for the all encompassing demands of the job. In the 1950s a successful headmaster was one throwing his golfclubs in the back of the car at 4pm on a Friday. Now the model of the successful head is one working nights and weekends to make his school the very best. Time spent on work is all part of modern virtue signalling. We only have energy left over for box sets and a game of tennis if you're lucky. But those who don't care about climbing the greasy pole can use their leisure time to pursue all kinds of things- helped by the internet which enables new pastime discovery at a rate never before experienced. And all the evidence is that they are very happy thank you doing just this. They are in no need of lectures on being various.

The hour glass distribution of polymathy means that the appeal is mainly to the people in the middle, the ever squeezed, still ambitious middle classes, losing out yet again.