"I went through a phase of beginning to think my intellect was isolating me and realized I was just a self absorbed asshole eventually."

Everyone is self-absorbed to some extent; it's an evolutionary trait that helps with our survival. Some will be self-absorbed in a narcissistic sense, others, as you've mentioned, with their security and position. Then there are those who are so completely self-absorbed with their ideas and interests—interests that have become so integral to and inseparable from their thinking that the way they think has shaped their identities. In essence, ideas have shaped and remolded their personalities in ways that let them think and dream of little else other than their principal interests.

I would suggest that if we examined the behaviors and inner personalities of many if not most of history's great illustrious thinkers such as famous scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and many others who we now revere and respect—then there's little doubt that we'd find many of them would easily be classified as self-absorbed assholes. Moreover, the term self-absorbed asshole would automatically apply to many by virtue of their very nature—and it would still apply irrespective of whether their interests are noteworthy or important and or whether their work actually possesses any real value or utility or not. Simply, one can be a self-absorbed asshole no matter what the intrinsic value of one's work is.

For instance, take Isaac Newton, who from various accounts was a rather nasty man and that's likely putting it mildly. Then there are true self-absorbed bastards like Fritz Haber the German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the Haber–Bosch process to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen that led to the large-scale production of fertilizers, this process has benefited many millions of people worldwide over the past century. Despite Haber's important discovery he nevertheless remains a self-absorbed asshole with his stripes as rotten as ever—just by virtue of the fact that he's also the Father of chemical warfare having overseen the 'weaponisation' of chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I. Haber's virtuous discovery doesn't mitigate him in any way as from various accounts he was a truly nasty person.

Then there's Einstein. Can you imagine Einstein arriving at the patent office in Berne fresh off the very tram that he'd already envisioned as central to his thought experiment in relativity—only to confront his co-workers with those very ideas? I've no idea whether Einstein did so or not [he likely had more sense not to] but it's easy to imagine that he did and that his co-workers quickly offered excuses then exited his presence in great haste.

The fact is, one has to be self-absorbed in one's thoughts if one is to achieve anything worthwhile. Whilst there are notable exceptions, I'd respectfully suggest that for most people that it's not possible to integrate thought into concepts and cohesive ideas without being obsessively involved with them.

How one presents or hides this self-obsession to others in the outside world that is perhaps the main or most important issue. Being adept at handling one's obsessions in the presence of others and in social settings is a worthwhile trait, that's if you possess what it takes to do so. Unfortunately, not everyone does and the ones who don't are likely to end up with the 'asshole' moniker.

(For my own part, when I'm self-absorbed with a problem it's best others not be around me as they'll likely be ignored. At least nowadays I've some cognizance of my problem: for the women in my life have repeatedly pointed out that being male means I've only the limited capacity to think about one matter at a time. I now understand this.)

There are of course a few in the genius class who can be both totally self-absorbed in whatever interests them and who simultaneously seemingly run normal lives without any additional effort, it's as if they've two independent brains running in parallel. Names that spring immediately to mind are the likes of Mozart and Leonard Euler but there are many more. There are stories of Euler—likely the most prodigious and prolific mathematician in history—being totally absorbed and doing mathematics whilst his rowdy kids surrounded him, it seems that nothing ever distracted him). If I recall correctly, all up Euler had 13 kids. How he also managed to have ever had sufficient time for doing great mathematics remains one of the great imponderables.

Finally, we need to mention and separate out how great minds interact with one another when on matters of common interest. Such individuals often have obsessive interests that are so heightened that their psyches exclude them from considering almost everything else. It's not only a specific common interest that binds them but also it's the minutiae of detail within that interest, it's key—it's the very 'spice' of such interest. One can imagine being a fly on the wall in the heady day of the early 1900s listening to conversations between the likes of Einstein, Hilbert, Lorentz, Poincaré, Minkowski and others. That said, the fact that pockets self-absorbed assholes — assholes of such high and outstanding caliber occur with such rarity that they can be ignored for all practical purposes.