'S a Funny Thing . . .

. . . many people outside Mensa hold the organization in awe while regarding Mensa members as snobbish, elitist pillars of the Liberal Establishment.

In my association with Mensa and Mensans, I have found the above a reasonable view of the national hierarchy, but local groups to be mostly friendly, welcoming of newcomers, and at least as conservative as myself . . . somewhere to the right of Ethelred the Unready.

Mensa, or at least those representatives with whom I am acquainted, is a truly democratic organization that takes no notice of circumstances of its members beyond rites attendant upon their admission. The proctor who administered my test was a guard at a nearby state prison; the LocSec of my first chapter was a petroleum land man. In my present chapter, the LocSec is in advertising, the newsletter editor an artist/writer . . . you take my point.

The thought isn't original with me, but people eligible for Mensa have existed throughout mankind's development. There were no nerds among cave dwellers . . . or medieval villiens. It wasn't until opportunities began to present themselves that pre-Mensans emerged: people such as Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, and others (I leave out painters, sculptors, etc., because their creative genius is usually egocentric and often not socially acceptable, present company excepted).

Imagine a Mensa whose members included Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, et al. And for each of those giants there were countless faceless men and women of equal capacity, lacking only opportunity.

There is an odious tendency among those for whom Mensa is their only claim to fame to indulge in maneuverings reminiscent of academic politics, described by an anonymous wag as "so vicious because the stakes are so low."

— Charles E. Jones