Nigga please? Mental illness? How about, just playing the game to its fullest?
I have been guilty of this kind of behavior in the past. And I can totally relate to Sebastian here. In bureaucracies it is modus operandi for people in the top to count on fear and "decency" of people beneath them to not call out their bullshit.
In a court nobody can afford to comment on the emperors lack of clothes, since they are dependent on the system. But when an outsider comes as Sebastian did in this case - they have no power over him and this outsider has two options. He can walk away and solve his problem for himself - or he can call out the BS (risking some of his reputation on one end). Why? Because he is free of the influence of the court, thats what freedom means. You can be free as soon as you realize that you can do without the system, that you can forge your own system. You don't even need to be an outsider, just realize that freedom of mind is the ultimate freedom and that it cannot be taken away. You can have your body's freedom taken away, you can even get killed. But the freedom of the mind is the ultimate drug, the ultimate intoxication and the ultimate asset. And nobody can take it away.
Like he said, it is about treating people the way they want to be treated. It is also a winning strategy for an iterated prisoners dilemma - you offer cooperation, if they refuse - strike them into the ground.
What happened was that he "offered to save" the publishing industry, he has been around the block, seen other industries - but what he got in response was basically a "STFU NOOB!".
His response was pretty close as to what I would have done. When somebody wants to push me around with low blows, I get really upset. Especially if I am smarter and better prepared than they are. So if they want a dirty game - I will give them a dirty game. Hell I will show them state of the art in dirty.
And thats what Sebastian did.
Kudos to you Mr. Marshall!
p.s.: There is a lot of mental illness in the whole story, but Sebastian is not the one ill. Basically what Seb is doing is called Madman Theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory) and it is completely, totally rational.