Smart man's burden

Now I am not the smartest person I know but I clearly am well above average and this leads me to some guilt.

As I view the evolution of humans it seems to me that societal and cultural evolution happens in discrete steps brought on by the best of us. Revolutions need their very bright and charismatic leaders, innovations need their geniuses. Now that our population has reached such large numbers the number of people capable of these things increases. Most migrate to the rich world leaving the poorer countries devoid of these people to live a better life for them and their families.

Then there is me. I come from a middle class family were I had many advantages most don't. I had parents who were involved with my education and provided with sufficient resources and opportunities to nurture my curiosity. After all that I started asking and being interested in the most fundamental of questions (knowing I'm an atheist these are non-superstitious questions obviously) and so I am completing my Ph.D in physics. But here is where I start to feel some guilt. There are many problems in our world such as malaria, cancer, global climate change etc that I could work on. I could help these efforts and I feel some guilt in not being fully interested. It's not that I don't want to save people (this is the source of the guilt) it's that the problems that need to be solved to do this aren't as interesting as the physics ones. In one sense I feel I should try and be like Dr. Borlaug (unarguably the greatest human who's ever lived).

To put this in perspective imagine if all the brilliance that went into string theory or into high temperature superconductors went into malaria or cancer! But I guess you just have to live with the guilt since if there is little interest and only motivation you'll go nowhere fast... at least that's what I keep telling myself.