I have observed two distinct types of intelligent people. I call the first type Egoistic Intelligence, and the second, Fluid Intelligence.
A certain kind of person gives their personal experiences so much weight that they reject all other possibilities. They lock onto their narrow perspective and begin to believe it is the ultimate truth. You will rarely spot these individuals by their curiosity; instead, you will spot them by their constant need to correct others. They do not offer alternative possibilities; they simply impose their "truth" onto the room.
I have noticed that these individuals are often heavy consumers of information. Yet, they consume without deep analysis or questioning of authority. They seek out only the knowledge that strictly aligns with their pre-existing ideology. They do not acquire knowledge for the sake of truth—they consume it to feed their ego.
In the early transition toward genuine self-awareness, this phase is normal. The issue arises when people get permanently stuck there because their ego convinces them they have reached the final destination. This stage grants them a comfortable illusion of intellect, perfectly tailored to fit what I call "self-interest ideology."
What is self-interest ideology? It is a biased, highly selective morality. You can find this everyday hypocrisy everywhere.
Take, for example, the person who harshly criticizes superstitious beliefs. They mock the concept of Nazar (the evil eye)—until they have their own child. Suddenly, they begin practicing the very rituals they once condemned. When reality contradicts their past stance, they have two choices: admit the people they criticized were right, or manipulate their own logic to justify their actions as something "different."
Or consider the person who complains that the cinema industry is unoriginal and obsessed with making love stories. They fiercely criticize filmmakers, failing to realize that cinema is merely a mirror reflecting society's taboos. This same critic personally treats love as a taboo in their own life, actively upholding the very societal suppression that makes love stories so culturally fascinating and prevalent. They criticize the reflection while maintaining the taboo that created it, simply to sound intellectually superior.
Similarly, consider the person who criticizes traditional fire rituals (hawan) as backward, but when building their own house, performs the exact same ceremony. To protect their ego, they manipulate the ideology: "I don't believe in the religious aspect; I'm just doing it to purify the air." The action is identical, but the justification shifts. This is self-interest ideology at work.
These individuals rarely cross the threshold into true Fluid Intelligence because doing so would render their self-interest useless. If they cross that line, their ego loses its armor.
For instance, a man might secretly want a traditional dynamic where his partner cooks his meals, but his modern self-image prevents him from admitting he aligns with "old-school" thinkers. To admit he shares their values would make him ordinary, which wounds his ego. So, what does he do? He finds a middle ground to correct the narrative. He invents new, pseudo-logical justifications for why "cooking is an essential survival skill," desperately manipulating logic to validate outdated rules without associating himself with them.
He becomes a guru of his own illusions, rejecting anyone who challenges this narrative, purely to satisfy the belief that his intellect is superior.
And this brings us to the core tragedy of Egoistic Intelligence. When we are children, we are taught that "A is for Apple." For a child, that is the ultimate truth. But as we grow, we realize "A" is also for Astronaut, Art, and Awareness. It is merely the first letter of a massive, complex alphabet. Egoistic Intelligence learns "A for Apple," builds an entire identity around it, and violently rejects the rest of the dictionary. They sound smart to themselves, but in reality, they have simply stopped reading.
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