Do you mean to say that a sense of self is inherently a locus of suffering?

No, the point is that despite his superintelligence, he's ultimately selfish - what he obsesses over is achieving ever higher organization of knowledge and its implications, rather then wanting or trying to apply his discoveries practically to help other - i.e. he comes up with how to build an anti-gravity device with present day technology, but doesn't think that's very interesting because now discovered he knows it will work and its implementation wouldn't contribute to his greater understanding and organization of knowledge.

The opposition who takes him down is the opposite: after concluding how to build efficient fusion generators, his premise is further thought is not needed until the solution has been implemented - and his plan is to set out to apply his conclusions to uplifting the world.

Of course the opposition isn't "good" per se - he's still going to use the ability to out-think everyone to accomplish some measure of enslavement, but the plan at least is to try and improve the world for all humankind.

In a practical sense to the rest of us of course, the future reality was going to be alien cognizances subjugating the world in one way or another.

Selfishness in this context is a balance between different forms of self-identification. e.g. national identity is a new invention designed to foster cooperation over previous bounds of identification. If it worked once, why not try it again...?

Lack of cooperation on Earth is a bloody affair for the constrained resources, so an intergalactic campaign under the same assumption may lead to advanced alien cognition desiring to expand our sense of self. I.e. if multiple timelike dimensions exist then our survival mechanism is maladapted to that topology. If you discover this constraint expansion on your own, it is freedom. If you are told, it is subjugation. ...or so I muse.