A very old friend—old in the sense that I have known her for
a long time (we first met in 1965)—writes a blog for the Toronto chapter of
Mensa. Today’s entry was entitled: “Creativity Unbound: How Does a Mensan
Think?” My friend has been a member of Mensa for as long as I can remember. I
joined, met Ann, and then dropped out because of an offensive racist article in
the national newsletter that the editors refused to take responsibility for.
Anyhow… the point is, I think I know a little bit about how a Mensan thinks,
having been one myself for a very long time, being married to one, and some of
my life-long (if you count from about age 20 onwards as “life-long”) friends
are, or have been, members of that organization. They say like attracts like,
though, in the case of members of Mensa the only “like” I recognize is the
deep-seated shared sense of alienation that people with brains that work well
have living a society that appears to value willful ignorance as a virtue. Oh,
the stories I could tell…wait a minute, I do
tell stories. J
Anyhow… as I frequently say.
I certainly did not recognize my mode of thinking in my
friend’s article. Don’t get me wrong, I cherish my friend as one cherishes old
friends—which means I recognize and accept her eccentricities as being part of
what makes her who she is—but my thinking process, well, it is nothing like
hers. While she focuses on detail, I see mainly the big picture (and frequently
screw up in the details). She makes notes and assembles her art works with
precision and planning; I charge in all guns blazing and figure out what I am
doing when I am already well into it. I've known people like my friend all my
life. They usually drive me nuts. Come
on, let’s get on with it! I think as they painstakingly work their way
through each step of a process. I am done, brushing my hands of the task while
they are still midway. They produce a near-perfect result while my careless
errors start appearing. Ever since I can remember I've missed important little
details, like: I know I’m supposed to be at Joe’s place on Friday, but damned
if I can remember what time I’m
supposed to be there. Okay, there’s an assignment due next class, but, what
was the assignment again? You know, the little things.
I was once asked during a job interview what it is like to
be a member of Mensa. I answered: It’s
whatever you want it to be. (Yes, I got the job.) Because, if truth be
known, there is no such thing as a “Mensan mind.” I once tried to explain it
this way to a newspaper reporter doing a story on local Mensans: It’s like having a talent for athletics. It doesn't mean that you are going to been a member of an Olympic team, or that
you are good at all athletic events, or even that you are better at some events
than other non-talented people. It just means that some events are going to be
easier for you to master than others and you will likely pick them up faster
than most non-talented people. The article, by the way, was a disaster,
with the writer misquoting me extensively in an apparent effort to make Mensans
look like arrogant fools—which is how many “normal” people react when they meet
people whose brains work a little better than theirs do in some
areas—apparently thinking that they benefit by tearing down those who they
think (with little or no justification) are superior
to them.
I never met a member of Mensa (well, there was one, but he
was exceptional) who considered themselves to be in any way superior to anyone
else. If anything, they are often envious of those who seem to fit into the
world with ease. One very clear advantage that I do enjoy, though, is that
people I've met who have difficulty with tasks we consider to be intellectual
(I am trying very hard not to be politically incorrect here) seem to be instinctively drawn to me and trusting. It’s as if they can see an alienation
from “normal” in me similar to what they experience. When I worked as a tax
preparer I had many clients who confided that I was the only one they trusted
with their accounts—and the one thing that many of them had in common is that
they were “challenged” (to use the polite word). When they admitted to me that
they could not write their own names—or spell them—they got empathy and
patience from me. I had all the time in the world for a woman who could not
remember what I had just asked her less than ten seconds ago. On the other
hand, I get very impatient, very quickly, with people who consider themselves
to be “normal” when they are just being plain stupid. (An aside, people with
low IQ’s can never be stupid in my book; only “normal” people can be stupid;
and only people with high IQ’s can be idiots. Something you should keep in mind
if I should ever target you with one of those words.)
So, my friend’s article, while it did tell me something of
how she thinks, told me nothing about the thinking of Mensa members in general.
One of the aspects of Mensa membership I appreciated was the existence of many
special interest groups (called, for some odd reason, SIGs). There are SIGs for
just about any topic or activity you can dream up—and, in my early membership,
I joined several. I especially enjoyed the puzzle-solving SIG. Each month
members would get a killer of a puzzle and the first ones in with solutions won—well,
they won; there were no prizes except for an acknowledgement in the newsletter.
I did quite well in that SIG, as working with piles of graph paper was a
pleasant-enough way to pass an evening before the home computer was invented
and invaded our homes. The SciFi SIG was an interesting one: all the members
were the same misfit nerds that any non-Mensan group would attract. They
probably are the same people, as nerdiness and high IQs tend to go together.
Let’s not generalize too much though: there are mountain-climbing SIGs, capital
investment SIGs, and there might even be a Conservative Party SIG for all I
know.
About thirty years ago a newspaper reporter in New York
discovered the world’s smartest person. It was a woman with an IQ measured at
over 240 (if I recall that detail correctly). The article, widely published,
was a gushing description of this woman’s attractiveness, making the point that
one can be smart and attractive—or, perhaps more realistically— marveling over
this unique exception to the inverse relationship between sexual attractiveness
and brains (writers seem to have difficulty determining definitively if brains
are sexy). In any case, the reporter wanted to know what the smartest person in
the world thought about a number of different topics. Guess what? They were the
same kinds of answers you’d expect from any uneducated lout who never reads
newspapers and rarely watches TV news or reads books. And, why should we
expect anything different? Having a few well-oiled circuits in one’s head does
not mean you have an open conduit to the world’s knowledge (though, sometimes I
suspect Hollywood writers think that’s how it works; you know: teenage genius
takes less than 30 seconds to guess a password in a top secret computer
installation and immediately locates and gains access to the key file, in
plaintext, of a document that will cause the collapse of Western Civilization;
or boy genius builds a fully-functional space ship out of scrap metal and
discarded computer parts).
So, how does a Mensan think? I don’t know. Don’t ask me. I haven’t
a clue.
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