Allie Fox from the novel Mosquito Coast.
He's a certified genius inventor with multiple patents to his name, but suffers from the cowish tendency of really smart and self-taught engineers to assume they have comparable skill in all walks of life because everything is applied engineering when you get down to it, right? Naturally, his people skills are about zero, he talks down to everyone he meets, lambastes them for their personal inefficiencies, and is a euphoric atheist who's read and MEMORIZED the Bible just so he can jump on religious people when they misquote scripture.
He's also got a massive ego, which has made him something of a martinet to his family. There's the usual heavy-handedness of forbidding the watching of TV, the reading of comics or the eating of junk food (he particularly despises aerosol spray cheese for some reason and rants about it frequently) but he's also pulled his kids out of school because public education is too dumbed down and never actually spends any time teaching them anything beyond letting them watch him work and run errands for him, making him perhaps the purveyor of the modern unschooling movement. (Whenever the truant officer comes around, he claims they have communicable diseases and he can't in good faith let them make other kids sick, even though he DESPISES other kids as OPL-level windows to hell)
His ego, and matching disgust with normal people, grows steadily until he declares America bankrupt, overrun with drooling idiots, and beyond saving. Their only hope is to move to the jungles of Honduras (the titular Mosquito Coast) and set up a new life free of the taint of modern consumer society. His family naturally objects, but he gradually wears down their resistance with nightly dinner table tirades about the USA's obvious moral/intellectual rot: "You can get rich on crime in this country!" "Dentists invest in candy factories! Detroit finances oil wells!" until they relent.
Once in the jungle, they actually do well for a bunch of Yankees. Thanks to Allie's ingenuity their commune soon has running water, a sewage system and plenty of healthy crops. Unfortunately, that success only feeds Allie's ego, which now cooks up his magnum opus, he'll build an ice-making machine. "Why?" asks his family, such would eat up lots of their precious resources, and for what gain? Allie once again brow-beats them into compliance by simply repeating the same mantra over and over when questioned: "Ice means civilization!" He's obviously blind to the fact he's creating the ultimate pointless luxury good, ice in an equatorial jungle has a half-life of hours, it's useless, the same kind of useless as the luxury goods he railed against back home. Unable to deter the "genius", they relent. The ice-maker works and soon the family finds itself conscripted into carrying the heavy ice blocks it produces to neighboring village, just to prove to the locals how smart Allie is... he's created what nobody else, not even GOD could in the jungle. But to his dismay, the denizens aren't the stereotypical savages he assumes they will be, they've all seen ice before, and batteries, and electric lights, after all, they've been trading with christian missionaries for years. Allie demands trips further and further into the interior in an effort to find people ice (and those meddlesome preachers) have never reached, but their blocks, no matter how big, always melt before they get anywhere.
Now a new problem has arisen, a group of militia that's been hiding in the jungle hears about this new wacky guy's settlement through all the ice-hauling and decide it sounds like the perfect place to set up a base of operations. When armed men suddenly descend on him, Allie (who never packed any firearms) has no means to get rid of them, except to sabotage everything, including the ice machine. When he does, the ammonia-based chemical refrigerant in it spills out and poisons his crops, and it starts a massive fire that spreads to the huts, In his effort to displace unwanted guests, he ends up leveling his own settlement.
The family now want to go back to the States, as they are totally without food and shelter, this is understandable. Nope, Allie says they have to try again, see, the problem was he didn't get far enough away from civilization, they have to go DEEPER into the jungle. The family protests, but Allie tells them they can't go back to the US, it's been destroyed by a nuclear war. See, he knew it was coming and moved them down here to get them away from it. They don't believe him, but again are forced to relent under his crushing domineering personality (he graphically describes how you die in a nuclear explosion whenever questioned, causing his kids to break down crying, charming huh?)
The locals take pity on him after his original village burns and supply him with enough spare seeds to start over, but they caution him the place he intends to go is not suitable for settlement. Allie ignores him, what do THEY know? THey aren't geniuses, like he is. Sure enough, the area Allie picks has only one water source, which soon dries up. Then when the rainy season rolls around, it floods, and their crops are destroyed once again. Only quick thinking by Allie, who converts their hut into a raft, keeps them from drowning. Now, twice-ruined, the family pleads to leave the jungle. Nope, see, they haven't failed, HE hasn't failed, he just hasn't gone FAR enough from civilization. Using the very last dregs of their resources and goodwill, they procure an outboard motor and ride upriver to TRUE non-civilization. (Allie nearly kills himself en route when the rickety thing throws its prop and he dives into the muddy water to find it). When it finally does conk out for good, Allie declares they've reached an untainted place to build their perfect world, only to find they've actually run ashore next to a missionary settlement that has running water, electric lights and even it's own airstrip. Furious, Allie sets out to "save" the natives from modern society and attacks the settlement, managing to destroy their electric generator before he gets shot through the neck and paralyzed.
His family carry him back to the coast. (having learned from the missionaries that no, the outside world has NOT been nuked to death) All the while he protests they're going the wrong way and rants about how he just didn't go DEEP enough. His idea was great, it was the PEOPLE around who failed him, but he won't fail NEXT time.... he's still dreaming about go number four at his utopia when the local fauna notice the helpless quadriplegic and vultures peck him to death. His family, now free of his influence, return to the states and live a normal life.
