Okay, from the title alone, when you see the extremes of both ends you see them suffering, but a balance seems to lend to a lack of hesitation and the means to act.
The question then becomes: What is the right amount of intelligence?
Okay, from the title alone, when you see the extremes of both ends you see them suffering, but a balance seems to lend to a lack of hesitation and the means to act. The question then becomes: What is the right amount of intelligence?
I think the fear of being "too intelligent" is pushed far beyond what the evidence would justify. The stereotype of the highly intelligent person becoming awkward, miserable, isolated, or incapable of acting makes intelligence sound like it carries an inherent penalty when those traits don't logically follow from cognitive ability.
There can also be a social incentive to discourage people from becoming too detached from conventional goals. Someone who questions inherited desires and expectations may become less willing to participate in them, while someone who remains vulnerable to those expectations is easier to direct toward socially preferred behavior. I wouldn't assume this requires a deliberate conspiracy. Social systems can reproduce those incentives without anyone consciously designing them. From a samsara perspective, that can simply amount to continued attachment to externally supplied desires and roles.
I also don't think there's necessarily an "ideal" level of intelligence where people function or "flow" more smoothly. That assumption seems more like a trope than an established reality, and even if there were some truth to it, it shouldn't distract from the larger reality. Everyone remains subject to suffering, uncertainty, biological limits, and death. All rivers lead to death regardless of how smoothly they flow.
