Weak in Power, Precocious in Wisdom

Kong Rong's son was a prodigy. When Cao Cao had Kong Rong executed, the boy was only eight or nine years old. Rather than panicking, he calmly remarked, "If the nest is overturned, can any eggs remain unbroken?" If he'd stayed silent, he might have lived—his boldness, however, only deepened Cao Cao's suspicion and sealed his fate as a necessary head to be lopped off.

Turn that around and look at Liu Shan: "Here I am happy; I do not think of Shu." As silly as he appeared, the real question is whether feigning brilliance would have kept him alive?

Without the strength to back up your cleverness—even genuine intelligence— you're no better than a poor man with a stunning wife or a powerless figure swimming in wealth. It's like a child strutting through a busy market with a bag of gold: all it does is invite envy and malice.

When you lack sufficient capability yet insist on standing out as an anomaly, that's not defiance—that's just a script for self-destruction.