Paradox of Effort and the Obsessed Artist

We live in a world that rewards effort ,or at least, we are always taught to believe so. In the human psyche, we are conditioned to believe that to try harder is to be closer to success and happiness. The more you push, the more you sacrifice, the closer you get to the ultimate goal. It is an idea that is deeply embedded in the very fabric of our society, much like American Dream. It is essentially the idea that tries to eliminate the gap between poor and rich and .

We are often exposed to stories of millionaires who have supposedly gone from rags to riches.Yet in many cases, perhaps in the most valued ones, the harder we try, the further success seems to be.

In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s works, we see this paradox as a personal dilemma. His characters, particularly The Underground Man from Notes from Underground, reject the idea of progress and sabotage their own lives. The Underground Man insists on a logic that says, “Two times two is four is not life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death.” He suggests that true freedom lies in the refusal to obey, not in following some predetermined path.

In this sense, effort, when directed toward some preordained ideal—be it success, wealth, or even happiness—becomes a kind of prison and leads to a sort of conviction. This paradox also appears in the psychology of modern ambition. When effort turns into obsession, the line between reason and insanity blurs. Perhaps nowhere is this more vividly explored than in cinema’s recurring portrayal of the obsessed artist. In Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, Nina’s relentless pursuit of artistic perfection fragments her identity and leads to a tragic end. Another example would be Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, in which the artist is driven to the edge of collapse for the sake of greatness.

 As Søren Kierkegaard argued, the self is not what we are but what we become. And the harder you try to become a “self” based on external ideals—social success, recognition, moral perfection—the more likely you are to fall into despair. He distinguishes between different forms of despair. One of them is the despair of trying to be something far from you. This is where the connection to the obsessed artist becomes clearer. The perfectionist ballerina and the driven drummer. Both of them are trying to become something “higher” than themselves, something idealized and absolute, and this is precisely what Kierkegaard warns against: when we try to become something other than who we truly are, we fracture our selfhood.

“Despair is the misrelation in the relation between the self and itself.”

This despair is not always visible but often hides behind ambition, productivity, and even artistic brilliance. The character of Nina in Black Swan is a great example of Kierkegaard’s despair. She devotes herself entirely to becoming the “perfect” Swan Queen, but in doing so, she loses any stable sense of identity.

In both philosophy and art, the paradox of effort teaches us something uncomfortable: that not all striving leads to freedom. In fact, the most important human experiences—love, meaning, creativity—often arrive when we relinquish control, when we stop performing.