I agree that intellectuals typically need the less reflective folks. That's why itinerant monks used to beg for food. Intellectualism or enlightenment can be selfish. As I say elsewhere about ascetic so-called saints, "spiritual discipline would have compelled them to eschew the acquisition of material goods, so they’d be practically as helpless as infants who must beg to be parented."

But an intellectual question to ask about mass progress is what all that productive labour is really achieving in the long run, besides our apparent self-destruction? Headless labour may be counterproductive, after all. So that's what intellectuals should be providing, a worthy goal for us to achieve.