Do people learn Lisp to feel smart?
Yes. Similarly for other esoteric languages such as Haskell. These languages are more like cults than practical tools. The so-called "enlightenment" is obtained from having to endure fundamental idiosyncrasies of these languages. After experiencing the annoying parentheses of Lisp and the incomprehensible "lazy" nature of Haskell, one becomes a better programmer in other languages simply because the cognitive torture stops when one is not using a painful language such as Lisp.