When you saw others not using Lisp and matching your productivity, you concluded that Lisp wasn't giving you as much leverage as you thought. The egotistical part is ignoring other possible explanations. Maybe those people are just really smart, and don't need all those nice Lisp features to help them think. (I personally benefit a lot from macros helping me think.)
Unfamiliarity? Discomfort? The choice could be emotional as opposed to intellectual. Smart people can spend a lot of time and effort defending the status quo.
