Mensa 75th anniversary special issue

75 More Years!
Thoughts on the future of Mensa
By Björn Liljeqvist, International Chairman
This month we celebrate 75 years as the
world‘s foremost intelligence society.
Clearly we must have done something
right, or we wouldn‘t still be here.
W
hat did we do? I think the key was to
give intelligent people a chance to
feel normal and ordinary, to be smart without
necessarily feeling smart or unusual.
When Roland Berrill and Lance Ware met
on a train as the story goes, IQ tests were
new and cool and the idea was straightforward:
let‘s use this fascinating tool to gather
objectively smart people. 75 years later,
we know that some early visions did not
play out as planned, but the result is – if you
ask me – better than anything our founders
imagined. Mensa has made a great difference
in the lives of many people. Let‘s keep doing
that.
Now, I was asked to peer into the future
and write of what I see.
Near future: growth
Mensa‘s recent past shows the path for
our near future. Once life returns to normal
from the dreadful pandemic, people will
again meet and seek out intelligent life in
their vicinity. We are many who can‘t wait
to sit down with other Mensans to eat, drink
and talk about things that matter and antimatter,
both rational and real. Then growth
will pick up again, as testing resumes and
curious people everywhere seek us out to
join our ranks. For on the whole, Mensa has
been growing for some time: more members
and more countries than ever before.
Expect this to continue. There are still
white spots on the map, even in Europe. In
ten years time, the number of full national
Mensas should have grown by another ten,
from today‘s 39 to 50 or more. Given in how
many countries there is Mensa activity and
interest in starting a chapter that is a realistic
number.
Total membership numbers should also
grow from the pre-pandemic 140 000 to at
least 150 000 and, in the 2030s, to 200 000
22 | mind magazin sonderheft 75 jahre mensa | oktober 2021