J’Accuse IQs
The solution to the anagram "Bulky Pert Rust" is which of the following: (A) The author of this column. (B) Joined a club in a futile attempt to make a girl happy. (C) Got dumped by said girl for passing the entrance test. (D) Couldn't get a date with any of the other members. (E) All of the above. [Download Bulky's reading of this column in MP3.]
Some people simply have an affinity for groups. They are those who like attending meetings and serving on committees. They enjoy being addressed as “Ladies and Gentlemen” and can even tolerate sitting through the reading of the minutes of the last meeting. I am not one of those people.
For one thing, once you join a group, somebody or other is going to wind up speaking on your behalf. Heck, I don’t even care to have the President of the United States, whichever party he belongs to, presuming to speak on my behalf.
That’s why I don’t even identify myself as a Republican. Instead, I call myself a conservative. True, I wind up voting for Republicans, but, more often than not, that’s because Democrats are so abominable.
Some well-meaning friends have suggested I would be happier supporting a third party candidate, but third party candidates can only be spoilers. Thus, in 1992 and 1996, Ross Perot siphoned off enough votes from the GOP to help elect Bill Clinton; and in 2000, Ralph Nader returned the favor by garnering 2.8 million votes that would most likely have gone to Al Gore.
My disinclination to join groups is not a recent development that could be attributed to the cynicism of an aging curmudgeon. Unlike my old friend, Groucho Marx, who famously rejected membership in a certain country club on the grounds that he refused to belong to any organization that would have Groucho Marx as a member, I reject all groups.
In fact, as I look back over my life, the only group I ever joined was Mensa, and that, more or less, was an accident. It happened back in my 20s. I was dating an attractive young woman at the time. Apparently wishing to prove that she had more than good looks going for her, she decided to prove her worth by passing the Mensa test. That was okay with me. If other people wish to join groups, that’s their business. The problem was that she insisted that I, too, take the test. I guess the way she saw things, it would be unbecoming for her as an official member of the big brain club to be saddled with a knuckle-dragging nincompoop.
So, one Saturday afternoon, as I recall, we took the test. As anyone the least bit familiar with life as it is depicted in movies and TV sitcoms could readily predict, I passed and she didn’t. Worse yet, I don’t think she believed me when I told her I didn’t think any the less of her. However, if our positions had been reversed, she would have obviously dropped me in a New York minute, and she clearly doubted my sincerity. That was that, except that I was now a card-carrying member, and I soon began receiving invitations to Mensa events.
Being dateless, I figured I had nothing to lose. After all, unlike some men, I preferred intelligent women. So off I went to a mixer for new members. Frankly, I’m not sure what I expected. But whatever it was, I was sorely disappointed. Never having been in prison or a mental institution, I’d never met so many embittered people in my entire life.
Having an IQ in excess of 140 or 150 or whatever the cutoff was seemed to ensure only two things. The first was having had one’s sense of humor surgically removed. The other thing, and obviously related to the first thing, was that, without exception, these people were convinced of their natural superiority to mere mortals. They all felt that their employers, their supervisors and their colleagues at work were all a bunch of dumb clucks, and if only God, Himself, were bright enough to be a member of Mensa, He’d have seen to it that they were the ones in charge.
Thinking perhaps that I had caught them on a bad night and that I shouldn’t make any snap decisions, I went to a few other get-togethers. But it was just more of the same.
There and then, I decided that high IQs are highly over-rated, and that when it comes to evaluating a person’s worth, it makes about as much sense as judging them by their phone numbers or their zip codes.
Television writer Burt Prelutsky is the author of %%AMAZON=1581825714 ‘Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco (101 Reasons Why I’m Happy I Left the Left)’%%
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6 Comments
1. Manuel Delgado:Being a Spanish Mensa member, I have to say things are not the same over here. The Spanish Mensa’s meetings are all but boring, and we do not have that sense of superiority. Maybe you mixed with the wrong people.
Using your own words, just as IQ is not valid for evaluating a person’s worth, it makes just as much sense as asserting that Mensa members lack their sense of humour and their humility.
Jul 28, 2007 - 4:27 am 2. william jonas:Perhaps intelligence is a useful chahacteristic and desirable to some extent. However from my perspective it is way down the list.A normal IQ seems to serve most of us nicely but some traits are very important and receive little praise. Loyalty and obedience are of great value and often the rarest qualities one finds in our kind. Most employers would admit that their best people are loyal and obedient. The result of loyalty is dependability and that is something to be praised.
Jul 28, 2007 - 6:54 am 3. Tolbert:Another trait of importance is persistence . Of course this can cut both ways but in a positive application it is a powerful thing.
Witness bees and ants and other creatures with this driving force.
The most important I would think is a keen sense of truth. This takes some time and practise to develop, but when it reaches fruition it becomes a thing called wisdom.
We don’t value wisdom much anymore. It can be easily overwhelmed by noise, mass denial and ridicule. All manifestations easily generated in our modern communicating society. We value “smart people”. Those nimble souls with the assets to bend or deflect truth,or to twist it to their liking,
Nope. IQ isn’t really all its cracked up to be.
Singular proof that I.Q. is not all that it’s made out to be…
James Earl Carter.
Nuff said!
Jul 28, 2007 - 3:09 pm 4. Pat Berry:IQ tests don’t measure “intelligence” (whatever that is). They measure IQ. What’s IQ? It’s a number that indicates your ability to score high on IQ tests.
And “intelligence” is not a measure of human worth. The world is full of people who are good at Jeopardy or calculus or astronomy, but who can’t change a tire, grow tomatoes, or maintain a successful relationship.
Historically, whenever a country has decided to put the intellectuals in charge, the result has been a bloodbath. That tells me all I need to know about the value of Mensa.
Jul 31, 2007 - 5:32 am 5. Assistant Village Idiot:IQ does measure a real g-factor of intelligence, in the sense of raw brain power. I liken it to height in basketball: it’s an advantage, everyone would like a little more, but the tallest players are not always the best players. As william jonas notes, other skills come into play which are often more important.
The myth that people of medium-high-IQ, like Mensa members, are any more likely to be incompetent at daily tasks is envious nonsense. There is certainly some social dysfunction at the highest levels because of the increased number of Asperger-y folks, but even that is oversold.
As to the arrogance of Mensa members, its commonness has certainly been noted by others, though it is hardly universal.
Jul 31, 2007 - 7:44 am 6. Fred:I was a member of Mensa for ten years. I never encountered the behaviors you describe.
Jul 31, 2007 - 10:53 pm