GENIUS IS AS GENIUS DOES
[A Post I Wrote Shortly Before Resigning from Mensa (I Find Soi-Dissant "Geniuses" Obnoxious)]
A member of Mensa wrote: "Corporate boards aren't usually looking for 'geniuses,' even ones with good ideas."
To which I responded:
I'm glad you wrote the word geniuses in single quotation marks. I think we can clear up a lot of confusion in Mensa if we clear up this particular point of confusion.
Genius, by definition, is a preternatural phenomenon. A preternatural phenomenon, by definition, does not occur in 1 in 50 individuals in a species that numbers in the billions; neither does it occur in 1 in 100, or 1 in 10,000. Perhaps one in a million approaches the preternatural in a species whose number is now approximately six billion (I'm feel myself overextending to be generous here).
Every genius is unique unto himself or herself. No genius is like any other who ever lived, even if they work in the same field. Why do I say this? A genius is someone who will bring something that has never been in creation into creation. How can that possibly be predicted? Genius, therefore, cannot possibly be determined, or predicted, on the basis of standardized tests, certainly not on the basis of standardized tests that were developed by people who were normal enough not to be shunted aside by the academic establishment, and even convinced the establishment to grant them a PhD, thus giving them a "consider yourself one of us" certificate. This is true even of the tests considered to be the hardest, those that test for the extreme IQ ranges. The supposedly most difficult tests administered by the highest IQ of the high IQ societies are merely more of the same fallacious thinking.
Genius does not concern itself with itself overmuch. Genius is something that concerns itself with the task it will accomplish. I have never encountered Stephen Hawkings or Noam Chomsky on a Mensa board chatting late into the night about how bright they are.
I can't remember whether it is James Watson or Francis Crick who it is said has an IQ of 125. Nevertheless, they discovered the double helix structure of DNA. Genius is as genius does.
I have often wondered what sort of a test of genius Einstein, Picasso, Isaac Stern, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Erich Fromm, Helen Keller, Henry David Thoreau, Confucius, and Rabindranath Tagore might send us from heaven if they were to take time out from eternity and devise one for us. I suspect it would be very different than the types of tests now being administered to test for intelligence and predict genius which, again, is an exercise in futility because there cannot possibly be a predictor of someone who will come into the world and create a way of thinking that has not been heretofore known.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
