Intelligence Yes, Intellectuals No

Yes, my reach exceeds my grasp, but perhaps this is just an objective description of the human situation. In other words, God is the only person(s) whose reach and grasp are identical.

Would things have turned out differently had my brain been functional earlier in life?

Nah, I doubt it. If that had been the case, then I would have likely assumilated all the wrong things, as the smart kids tend to do. Instead of a head filled with nothing, it would have been cluttered with all the malignant sophistries and diabolical illusions that dominate our intellectual class. 

It's almost as if my own stubborn numbskullery protected me from such a fate. In fact, mere intelligence

appears to be associated with intellectual conformity. It has been shown that people who are more intelligent are better at noticing what the dominant worldview is, better at realizing the social benefits of conforming to that dominant worldview, and better at forcing themselves to believe it, through coming up with superficially convincing arguments for so-doing (Dutton).

The same book points out that progressives are less empathic than conservatives, in that we understand them but they don't understand us, which is why they freak out at their own laughably twisted projections and mischaracterizations of us. 

As a result, "the liberal will be more dogmatic -- more fervent -- about his foundations than the conservative will be about his," such that the progressive will tend to see us as "simply inherently evil and dangerous." 

A quick consultation with Common Sense and Daily Experience confirms the above. Our pal Voegelin would say that postmodernism itself is literally a disease -- AKA pneumapathology -- and he didn't require any breakthroughs in genetics to see the "massive illiteracy" -- masquerading as its opposite -- that "pervades the educated stratum of society."

One of his bottom-line takes is that "the essence of modernity is the the growth of Gnosticism." As Paul Johnson wrote in his book Intellectuals,

Over the past two hundred years the influence of intellectuals has grown steadily. Indeed, the rise of the secular intellectual has been a key factor in shaping the modern world.

He goes on to say that "the decline of clerical power" merely created a vacuum into which the secular intellectual leapt, and these assouls were "just as ready as any pontiff or presbyter to tell mankind how to conduct its affairs." These pretentious wackolytes

proclaimed, from the start, a special devotion to the interests of humanity and an evangelical duty to advance them by his teaching. [They] brought to this self-appointed task a far more radical approach than his clerical predecessors.

Gone were "the collective wisdom of the past, the legacy of tradition, the prescriptive codes of ancestral experience," replaced by obnoxious midwits who claimed "that they could diagnose the ills of society and cure them with their own unaided intellects." 

No longer "servants and interpreters of the gods," they were substitutes for them. This wasn't just unphilosophical but rather antiphilosophical, revealing a deep and abiding hatred of reality (and of mankind):

The Marxian spiritual disease... consists in the self-divinization and self-salvation of man; an intramundane logos of human consciousness is substituted for the transcendental logos.

Such an approach must "be understood as the revolt of immanent consciousness against the spiritual order of the world. This is the core Marxian idea." 

At its root "we find the spiritual disease, the Gnostic revolt.... Marx is demonically closed against transcendental reality.... His spiritual impotence leaves no way open but derailment into Gnostic activism," featuring a "characteristic combination of spiritual impotence with a mundane lust for power."

But it is ultimately impossible to "deny God and retain reason. Spiritual impotence destroys the order of the soul," leaving man "locked in the prison of his particular existence."

Marx both denied Genesis 3 and discovered a loophole in it, for he "knew that he was a god creating a world. He did not want to be a creature."

I don't need modern genetic studies to figure out -- more or less -- that 

Psychoticism correlates with liberalism at 0.5. This means that, no matter what they might signal about kindness and equality, liberals are, in general, less selfless and more selfish than conservatives. 

And that

the more liberal one is, the more likely one is to use dehumanizing language about one's political opponents; in other words, to hate them and incite hatred of them (Dutton).

Likewise, "liberals are high in Machiavellianism and Narcissism," and "are motivated by an individualist desire for power, and, related to this, by a desire to be adored." 

Moreover, "it has been found that the biggest single predictor of supporting a very left-wing policy (specifically coercive redistribution) is 'Malicious Envy.'"

Nevertheless, I am frankly ambivalent about this appeal to genetics. I'm sure there's some truth to it, but it is suspiciously monocausal, and besides, I would prefer to ground my arguments -- as does Voegelin -- in transcendent truth available to all men at all times, rather than immanent genes and human biodiversity, as the latter can become its own from of covert Gnosticism, i.e., a total explanation known only to a few initiates. 

For example, Genesis 3 presents a timeless -- AKA eternally true -- cautionary tale about indulging in any Godlike intellectual pretensions. Rule One for would-be thinkers: don't be an irritating Gnosis-all!

Speaking of which, the last page of Johnson's Intellectuals has a good summary of what's wrong with the babeling kleptomaniacs of the left, who can't help themselves from trying to steal fire from the gods, and who don't know their place in the cosmic scheme of things:

One of the principle lessons of our tragic [20th] century, which has seen so many millions of innocent lives sacrificed in schemes to improve the lot of humanity, is -- beware intellectuals.

Note that he doesn't say to beware intelligence, which would constitute an endorsement of stupidity. But who could fail to notice that intelligence -- no matter how intelligent -- can go off the rails and transmogrify into evil? 

Now, how could intelligence ever become so naughty? Well, this is one of the threads that runs through Voegelin's entire corpus. We'll get to him, but allow Johnson to finish his point and his book:

Not only should [intellectuals] be kept well away from the levers of power, they should also be objects of particular suspicion when they seek to offer collective advice.... 

[I]ntellectuals, far from being highly individualistic and non-conformist people, follow certain regular patterns.... Taken as a group, they are often ultra-conformist within the circles formed by those whose approval they seek and value.

Which again proves that we don't need those genetic studies to prove the obvious. The instinct to spontaneously assemble into an intellectual cirque du jerk is what makes the intellectual class

so dangerous, for it enables them to create climates of opinion and prevailing orthodoxies, which themselves often generate irrational and destructive courses of action.

A lone intellectual, like a single madman, can only cause so much damage. But when a swarm of them takes over an institution, then we have a problem, because it can cause the institution to become a madhouse, as we've seem in recent months with the new Hamasidal Hitler Youth. 

This is how the university has become the looniversity bin, and how the deep state has become a political and judicial insane assoulum. What can we do about it, besides vote for Trump?

Above all, we must at all times remember what intellectuals habitually forget: that people matter more than concepts and must come first. The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas (ibid).

Good place to pause.