Once upon a time there lived a Man who knew how to do everything right (or so he thought). No matter what other people did, after a rather quick (one may even say cursory) examination he would invariably find some fault in it. Moreover, it looked as if this gave him not a small amount of pleasure, and he especially enjoyed himself when it was obvious for everyone , including a doer himself, that things were done badly. For this apparently provided him with the immediate opportunity to point it out and, which seemed to be more important, to display his superior (in his mind) abilities - it was clearly done not to enlighten but to impress and put down. But even if everything was going well he would still look for some deficiencies. "If you had asked me before", was his usual opening, "I would have told you to...". The unmistakable implication was that nobody should do anything before consulting him because, regrettably, people of the world were simply incapable to judge for themselves how to conduct their daily lives and were making the decisions regarding that at their peril.
The most charitable explanation for such an attitude would have been that he was simply a perfectionist. But the "beneficiaries" of his wisdom never considered (and understandably so) such an explanation as valid and tended to settle on the more realistic one, namely, that he was unusually conceited and insufferably arrogant. As a result, though some of his suggestions could have been occasionally helpful if followed, nobody did that, which of course only confirmed his opinion that everyone he came in personal contact with was inferior to him, some in smaller, some in larger degree. The fact that people didn't ask for his guidance and most of the time were visibly annoyed by it didn't seem to matter, for the unsolicited advice he was "generously" dispensing was given not to help the others but to show them how inept they were at whatever they were doing and how much better he would have done it.
Of course, even he had occasionally to make an allowance for not being cognizant about everything under the Sun. But he solved this unfortunate problem by deciding at some point in his life that what he didn't know, what he didn't read, what he didn't see, what he didn't do, was not worth knowing, reading, seeing or doing. For if it was, then he missed something, possibly something very important, and this he could not accept psychologically. This would undermine his faith in himself as an extraordinary individual, even a genius, and without such a conviction he apparently could not go on living. To be honest, many of us resort to such a self-saving strategy, for most of our convictions are but the disguised self-justifications, the projections of our personalities on the world around us. But he certainly was much more assertive and straightforward about it than the majority.
Now, one would expect that a man who knew the right answers to all life's questions should be very successful practitioner of it himself. But it was not the case. On the contrary, judged by perhaps a too conventional standard, his life on the whole was an abysmal failure. Though fond of learning, he never completed his formal education. He kind of drifted through many jobs and occupations, but never stayed long enough in one place to reach some position of importance. He never married and had no children, thus failing to fulfill the primary purpose of existence, which is to produce the next generation. Finally, he didn't even have a permanent place to live, and all his worldly possessions could fill no more than a couple of bags.
And yet, he apparently never realized how contradictory his own life and his "good" advice to the others were. And even if he did, he couldn't openly admit it. For though he was a good judge of other men's character (concentrating in his usual manner primarily on the negative aspects of it) he seemed to be almost blind towards his own, which is not that uncommon - those who are the most critical of others often very forgiving of themselves. Moreover, to compensate for his own failures, he would demand more and more perfection from the others, as if trying to convince himself (and them) that they were failures too. He also, quite possibly, developed rather common to people in his situation tendency to confuse being very demanding of everything and everybody with being elevated into the higher position than the one they actually were in.
But whatever it was at the end it all came to one and the same thing - if he was a failure so must be the world and everything in it. And he would not settle for anything less.
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