I’ve decided to explain what makes people who “are extremely intelligent and don’t like it” interesting to me.

I suppose many have heard the phrase “the inmates are running the asylum”. Or, at least, know that some people tend to feel they’re in a world where everyone else seems crazy. You feel you’re a stranger, someone who doesn’t belong, because you’re apparently the only sane person, the only one who sees through the insanity that everyone else is living. And the leaders of the insane are even more insane. They won’t help you. Nobody cares about your issues. So, losing hope, you desperately look for some semblance of sanity, anything at all, somewhere in this world.

Many people who are extremely intelligent feel like this. However, it doesn’t work the other way – feeling like this doesn’t necessarily mean you’re intelligent. I believe it’s just as likely that someone bigoted, deranged, or corrupt would feel similarly estranged. Essentially, if you feel like this, chances are that you are, in fact, stupid, but don’t know it.

Unless, that is, you feel something more than that. Because there’s a subtle difference between how the stupid and how the intelligent feel about apparently being the only sane person. The stupid person will often think that this makes him/her superior in some way, and this belief will fuel his/her strength and resolve. (He/she may even aspire to run the asylum, put this crazy place back on track, and lead it into a new age of enlightenment.) The intelligent person, on the other hand, lacking evidence for such an assertion, will typically think quite the opposite.

So, if you’re truly intelligent, you don’t just see a world where everyone except you are crazy. You also envy them. With immense clarity, you see how enjoyable their simple lives seem to be, and wish you were crazy too, so you could be just as happy. But, no matter how hard you try, you just don’t seem capable of such madness. You’re perfectly able to fake it, all right, and get along with people if you want to, but faking it just doesn’t make you happy. Still, you take what you can get.

That’s what the combination of a strong head and a strong heart looks like. That’s what true intelligence does. And that’s the kind of person who interests me.

(And, by the way, if you understand all of the above, then you might also understand why clubs like Mensa exist. But that’s another matter.)