I really don't like the idea of consciously making myself sound dumber or less confident or less straightforward about what I'm saying.
Neither do I. I think if you adjust your approach a little bit, you would actually sound more confident, more straightforward, and maybe even a little bit smarter. But you could very well interact with others in a different way from what you've presented here, and almost certainly do speak differently, so it may not be that important. It seems unimportant to dissect the sources of my opinion; I don't mean to be insulting, and you seem fine with the way you present yourself.
But the dog's a dog. The dog's not a human being. One has standards for human beings.
Certainly, but your standard apparently included holding people slower/dumber than you in such low esteem that you could even consider them to be practically sub-human (your first category of such people was "people who come to the same conclusions I do a long time after I come to them partially because they're not as smart"). Even a "stupid" person in one of your classes is far more intelligent than the smartest dog, has a much richer set of emotional responses and a fuller perception of life, has a life's story to tell, etc.
My mother and my father have both scored a bit below me on intelligence tests. Does this mean I don't respect them? No. Likewise with many others in my life who have done so as well but who continue to teach me many things.
That's good. Before, you made it sound like your parents, your male friend in Europe, and a handful of professors were the only people you could really handle dealing with on a personal basis.
... take, for example, people who deny their children medical treatment for various reasons, people who perpetrate or perpetuate genocides and other violence (a great example of how bad it gets in some places is chronicled in the blog Other Things Amanzi -
http://other-things-amanzi.blogspot.com/ - where this kind of crud is commonplace, people who use religion as a justification for various human rights abuses - or really anything else, including their own homophobia or racism or sexism or anything else, people whose own willful ignorance digs them into financial holes, people who are simply too unable to learn to dig themselves out of things, and other people who hurt others either directly or indirectly due to their own lack of brains. The list of iniquities visited upon humanity is long and being continually written and it grates.
I can understand disliking bigoted people, and your scornful attitude towards people in financial trouble seems to be not so unusual, at least here in the Northeastern US. If this is the rough list of people you dislike, you're probably roughly normal. Before, I got the impression that you disliked pretty much everyone who was slower than you, and that you only really could get along with your parents, the guy in Europe, and a handful of professors.
I guess in the end, you may have just needed a place to vent. People do that here pretty regularly.
Welcome.
