Music and Math, the Beatles and John Nash...and "Community"

I'm currently in the middle of two different projects, both concerning highly talented and competent people and their working relationships within their respective crafts.  One you already know about if you've been reading this blog: I'm watching the film version of the Beatles and their January 1969 "Let It Be" sessions that Peter Jackson has re-edited and renamed Get Back: it's being shown on the Disney Plus channel, to which I subscribe.  The other is the 1998 Sylvia Nasar biography of American mathematician John Nash, titled A Beautiful Mind and adapted as an Oscar-winning Ron Howard movie four years later.  In both works we get a glimpse into the interpersonal dynamics of those at the top of their respective professions and how the love of what they do often gets greatly distorted by their egos, jealousies, intrigues, suspicion and vendettas.  I don't think this sort of social dysfunction is just a trait of the highly adept and accomplished...I remember in high school how, within certain circles, the same situations arose between students.  And to be perfectly honest...in other social settings I've in which I've found myself as an adult...I've seen the same destructive kind of behavior.  Yet I'm continually being encouraged to seek "community" in relationships with others, something that not only I instinctively resist as a bona fide lifelong introvert but have also bitterly learned tends to be more harmful to me than keeping mostly to myself.  They say the mark of insanity is to keep repeating the same thing and expect different outcomes...I've seen enough in my life over the decades to be distrustful of "community". When I was in school and was found to excel in a subject or course, inevitably the faculty would take me out of my preferred setting where I was better than my fellow students and lump me in with the other "high achievers", immediately thereby canceling out the good feeling I had developed before from working so hard.  Likewise, I imagine that's how some of the musicians and mathematicians felt when in the immediate company of the standouts in their respective fields.  Unfortunately, although it seemed that those portrayed in the film and book seemed to love their work for its own sake, their primary motivation was to be seen as the "top dog" and universally acknowledged to be superior to their colleagues. I'm like this myself, but only to a point...I mainly just want to be considered as a legitimate player.  But it can get to be a little spiritually deflating to be in a field in which, by almost anyone else's standards I am very competent with even a history of achievements but not even recognized as an equal by others within my circle of interests...George Harrison would have understood this only too well as this accomplished and very creative musical artist sat for years, almost as an extra, across from John Lennon and Paul McCartney.  Also, in watching the Beatles film and reading the Nash book I noticed that these people's lives and their choices of projects seemed very chaotic...almost random, as if they were going about their business and relationships like pinballs in a machine, bouncing off one experience into another.  I wonder whether this was really what happened, or was an effect created by the stories' authors and editors.  After all, with both the Beatles and John Nash we have two different versions shaped and presented by third parties according to their own agendas...their real lives were most likely quite different.  Yet one truth did come out: the almost nauseating tendency of people to obsess about establishing hierarchical pecking orders among themselves whenever they meet and engage in "community"...