Mensa 75th anniversary special issue
An special issue to Mensa's 75th anniversary produced by MinD-Mag, the magazine of Mensa in Deutschland
An special issue to Mensa's 75th anniversary produced by MinD-Mag, the magazine of Mensa in Deutschland
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and possibly much more. There are 39<br />
countries with 20 members per million.<br />
This does not include the really big countries<br />
like Brazil, Pakistan, India, and others<br />
with huge populations and relatively small<br />
<strong>Mensa</strong> groups. If these 39 well established<br />
<strong>Mensa</strong> groups alone were to have the same<br />
number of members per capita as Hungary,<br />
there would be close to half a million<br />
members in the world. If they reach Swedish<br />
density, that‘s 900 000 members. Add<br />
the big countries, and two million members<br />
does not seem so outlandish. In that light, a<br />
meager 300 000 is certainly within the realm<br />
of the possible.<br />
And all these people will want to meet<br />
across borders. Among our top priorities<br />
right now is the creation of a unified international<br />
member database, something<br />
you‘d be surprised to learn does not currently<br />
exist. Data privacy laws, inadequate<br />
technology and organisational inertia has<br />
made this necessity harder to achieve than<br />
it should be. Getting an easy and automatic<br />
way of verifying membership internationally<br />
will speed up a lot of things.<br />
Remote future:<br />
three core themes<br />
The purpose of <strong>Mensa</strong> is becoming clearer<br />
too. Why should there be <strong>Mensa</strong> at all? The<br />
social club is our base, but the voice of <strong>Mensa</strong><br />
advocating support for gifted children<br />
and indeed highlighting the value of intelligence<br />
itself gives a deeper layer of meaning.<br />
This is what we must build on to last another<br />
75 years.<br />
For our long-term future, there are three<br />
key factors to watch:<br />
The first and most crucial is how intelligence<br />
and IQ research will progress. The<br />
scientific consensus on how intelligence<br />
should be measured sets the boundaries<br />
for <strong>Mensa</strong>. We don‘t have our own definitions,<br />
that is why we work with psychologists<br />
to ensure proper testing standards. These<br />
standards have to work in a greater context,<br />
however. Will society treat intelligence as a<br />
fact of nature, to be explored by scientists –<br />
or will it become a social taboo to be avoided<br />
in polite conversation?<br />
<strong>Mensa</strong> is famously non-political but what<br />
should we do if our defining topic is itself<br />
politicized? We should stick to our plan, is<br />
my answer. <strong>Mensa</strong> should keep supporting<br />
quality research and shout loudly from the<br />
rooftops why intelligence matters. If larger<br />
forces of society are at play here then maybe<br />
they will shape <strong>Mensa</strong> more than we can<br />
hope to shape them. Still we should try, for<br />
it is one of our constitutional purposes: to<br />
support research into the nature and characteristics<br />
of intelligence.<br />
The second key factor to watch is how human<br />
social interactions will evolve as virtual<br />
and actual reality blurs into a strange<br />
new digital metaverse. Facebook has already<br />
changed the world and <strong>Mensa</strong> along with<br />
it; that was only the start. Will people still<br />
want to go through the hassle of joining a<br />
club with entrance criteria in the future?<br />
After all, if one can find stimulating environments<br />
online and hang out with smart<br />
people without taking a test, why bother?<br />
Because the best meetings still take place<br />
in select circles. <strong>Mensa</strong> does not compete<br />
against the social media companies – instead<br />
we build on them to offer something<br />
that isn‘t that easy to find elsewhere after<br />
all. Speaking personally, I once joined <strong>Mensa</strong><br />
so I could have high quality conversations<br />
with unusual people. What <strong>Mensa</strong> offers<br />
is the experience of feeling understood<br />
even when going off on obscure tangents.<br />
My favorite PR slogan: „Join <strong>Mensa</strong>, we get<br />
your jokes.”<br />
24 | mind magazin sonderheft 75 jahre mensa | oktober 2021