To your #(1): There are great thinkers out there but we have a society that likes to crush them like a bug.
There is so much about what's going on out there that's crap. And the crappers have such a strangle hold on the way things are done. So much so that when a great thinker sticks their head up to speak all the little crappies line up like good little robots and nail them to a cross. Then they wait a few hundred years or so and make a religion out of it.
To your #(2): You said it all.
To your #(3): I think that fellow painter you mentioned has a really good point. Though speaking for myself I would have a hard time with movie making, as there are too many other people holding a brush.
What do you think about all this digital software like Photoshop and such? Do you think Leonardo da Vinci, being the kind of guy he was, would have had a nice big Apple computer with a whole load of really great software and real wide screen?
Mark