A sage

without a kingdom

The following words of a YouTuber reminded me of some things… (my translation from Spanish to English):

Being intelligent is a problem. Not because intelligence itself is negative, but because the world is not designed for those who see beyond it. From an early age you were told that intelligence would open doors, that it would make you stand out, that it would set you free. This is a lie. Intelligence doesn’t set you free, it isolates you. It doesn’t make you fit in, it separates you. It doesn’t give you an advantage, it makes you a target. If you’re here, you’ve already lived it. Overthinking is a self-imposed punishment.

This reminded me that, although I’m a 14-word priest, white nationalists—sympathisers of Christianity in general—ignore me because I realised that the CQ is more relevant than the JQ. The vlogger continues:

As your mind expands, you find superficial conversations unbearable, other people’s stupidity becomes background noise, and pervasive mediocrity feels like a weight you have to carry every day. And the worst thing is that you can’t say anything. If you do, you are arrogant. If you try to explain what you see, you are trolling. If your existence exposes the incompetence of others, you are the problem. Nietzsche understood this better than anyone. Society is not a community of individuals seeking truth; it is a control mechanism based on slave morality, a code designed to glorify obedience and punish independence.

Are you smarter than the rest? Congratulations, now you will be called arrogant. Do you think differently? Now you are conceited. Do you see what others ignore? Now you are a threat. If you talk too much, they isolate you. If you keep quiet, you end up drowning in your own mind. It’s a dead end.

That’s why so many end up faking it. They reduce their speech, disguise their thoughts, and hide their ideas behind common phrases so as not to make anyone uncomfortable. They learn to be mediocre to survive among mediocre people. And if they don’t, they are devoured.

Intelligence not only isolates you, it makes you the enemy. Because the one who sees beyond is a problem for those who have built their lives with their eyes closed. People don’t want the truth. They want confirmation of their beliefs, they want validation of their illusions, they want security in their cage. You are the crack in their walls, the reminder that they could have been something more.

Plato described this thousands of years ago in his Myth of the Cave. Imagine a group of people chained in a cave, seeing shadows on the wall, believing that this is the only reality. One day, one of them breaks free and sees the outside world. He discovers the truth. And when he returns to tell the others, what do they do? They reject him, they attack him, and they want to kill him. Because the problem is not that people don’t understand. It’s that they don’t want to understand [e.g., understand the Christian question—Editor]. It is easier to live in the dark than to accept that you have wasted your whole life looking at shadows.

The intelligent is a problem because his existence exposes the self-deception of others. If you have tried to share what you know, you have seen it with your own eyes. People don’t want depth, they want entertainment. They don’t want critical thinking, they want distraction. They are not interested in knowing reality; they want you to play along, to go with the flow, to not force them to think too hard. If you confront them with the truth, they crucify you.

That is why intelligence is an exile. No matter how hard you try, you will always be too much for the world and not enough to change it. You don’t fit into society because society is not made for those who think for themselves. It is made for stability, for conformity, for the balance of mediocrity. Those who see beyond that are ignored or destroyed. Most of history’s geniuses ended in ruin, in madness, in isolation. Not because they were incapable, but because their minds operated at a level where the rest could not follow. Socrates was condemned to death for asking uncomfortable questions. Galileo was persecuted for challenging the establishment. Nietzsche died alone and despised.

So the question is not whether intelligence is a burden. The question is what you’re going to do with it. You have two ways: pretend you’re not smarter than everyone else, reduce yourself, hide what you know, and numb your mind with banalities so you don’t feel alone. Or accept it. But accepting intelligence is not comfortable. It is to understand that you will be isolated, that you will be an outsider, and that you will never fit in. Intelligence is a condemnation if you let it be.

But it can be a tool if you learn to use it. You don’t need approval. You don’t need validation. You don’t need to fit in. You just need to know that most people will never understand you. And that it doesn’t matter. Because the world is not made for lone wolves. It’s made for herds. Intelligence doesn’t just make the weak uncomfortable. It makes those who rule uncomfortable. Because power is not maintained by force, it is maintained by ignorance. The world is not made for lone wolves, but a pack of wolves rule the flock. The difference is that the wolf of power is not a lone genius; he is a predator who learned to play by the rules of the pack. The one who is intelligent but does not understand how power works is just a sage without a kingdom.

You cannot dominate an awakened society. You cannot control thinking people. That is why, from birth, we are programmed to accept the balance of mediocrity. Ignorance is glorified, difference is punished, and genius is ridiculed. We are taught to repress our ideas, not to make too much noise, not to stand out too much. It is a systematic domestication. Foucault put it bluntly: power does not need to enslave you physically if it gets you to accept your enslavement yourself. No dictatorship is needed if the herd believes that the rules are for its own good. There is no need for explicit punishment if they make the punishment social exclusion. If you think too much, you will be an outcast. If you challenge the establishment, you’re in trouble. If you decide not to play along, you will be silenced. History bears this out. The world’s greatest thinkers were not rewarded for their genius; they were persecuted for it. The wolves who control the flock have no interest in having more wolves who might question them. If a wolf does not follow the rules of power, he is eliminated or ridiculed into a harmless buffoon.

Look around you. Look at what is glorified. Disposable culture, empty entertainment, quick and simplified thinking. It is not coincidental. It is intentional. Mediocrity is the best weapon of power. Because a sleeping mind does not rebel. Because someone distracted is easier to control. Because it is easier to entertain than to educate. The problem is that most intelligent people do not understand that they are at war. They still believe that truth alone is enough. That if they explain logically what is wrong, they will be listened to. They will not. It is not about logic. It is about power. Camus described it accurately: the man who thinks too much is confronted with the absurd. But society does not want to face the truth. It prefers the comfort of the known. That’s why the intelligent end up isolated, exhausted, and without the strength to keep fighting.

The rest I do not translate because the author doesn’t seem to understand the examples he himself gave: Socrates, Galileo and Nietzsche. In their time they had no chance to become ‘strategists’ or ‘foxes’ as the author says, as they lived against their time (remember Nietzsche’s tragic life).