Intelligent people see the truth of the world, the universe. If the truth, if it were good, that we lived in a wonderful society with wonderful people in a universe that cared about us, smart people would be so happy.
But being smart is merely a conviction of your enlightenment to the awful reality of things. Bravo, you learned about all these awful things you can’t do much to fix, and the reward is to languish in existential dread. Congratulations, you have learned the history of humanity and how our society functions, and your reward is sullen remorse in the unending cacophony of injustice.
This is the kind of overly cynical philosophy that ends up defeating itself. Obviously it can Pascal's Wager itself away (i.e. it's rational to not have this philosophy as it will tend to make one sad and ineffective with no clear benefits other than convincing yourself of your own intelligence).
More importantly some of the premises are suspect at best. Intelligence doesn't reliably cause one to see the truth of the world, and it's not obvious how to evaluate whether the world is good in the first place. It's further unclear that said goodness would make smart people happy, or that its absence would make smart people unhappy.
I was not familiar with that term. Still, I think I disagree that a firm conviction based on perceived and/or veririfiable facts and/or experience will get subdued because "it's rational to not have this philosophy".
In case of a conflict between rational cost/benefit estimate and perceived truth I would think that truth should win at least as often as cost/benefit.
Congratulations, you can observe and complain and be a bloodless intellect, someone with no skin in the game,
Once you're past wallowing in self pity because of the burdens of the great intellect you have been given, then it's time for you to develop some wisdom.
Wisdom is accepting the limits of your being and mortality AND THEN DOING YOUR BEST ANYWAY. Wisdom and intellect is acknowledging the fact that you cannot fix everything but using your gifts of intellect to generate multipliers (processes, automations, repeatable IP, free software, open papers, sharing knowledge).
** Use your intellect to magnify your intellect and maximise the amount of good you do. **
Intellect and courage is carrying forward the light, speaking up against injustice, patiently educating and inspiring the young and reducing tyranny.
The weak intellects have undeserved lazy entitlement (they think simply because they are smart everything should be given to them, not true) or wallow in self pity because taking action brings about the possibility they might fail which would demonstrate their inadequacy and therefore hurt their self identity. These people have a disease and should be helped overcome their limits
Yes you are locked inside a burning building with no way out and no one else will acknowledge the building is burning down. Best thing to do is write pamphlets about random errata and make as many quality widgets as your boss tells you to. This is the true path to enlightenment. Worthless toil as you slowly burn alive.
Thats not even close to what I said, and is a sad reflection of your perceptions, you should seek help, because before you can help others (as I suggested) you have to be in a good place yourself (which clearly you are not)
I was just going say/write the same, smart people see both sides of an argument, see the good but experience the societal bad and generally spend more time reflecting, aka worrying.
But being smart is merely a conviction of your enlightenment to the awful reality of things. Bravo, you learned about all these awful things you can’t do much to fix, and the reward is to languish in existential dread. Congratulations, you have learned the history of humanity and how our society functions, and your reward is sullen remorse in the unending cacophony of injustice.