Now what can we do?

My name is Leo Hesting. I'm the LocSec of Northern Michigan Mensa (NMM) - pending a bylaws change so my Mensa job title will be "President." NMM is one of American Mensa's smallest local groups at just around 70 members, sparsely spread out over a fairly wide geographical area with just one small city. I'm also a proctor, and have, for example, driven 700+ miles round-trip to administer a Mensa Admission Test (it took me all weekend) - northern Michigan's a fairly large area and our population sparse. And, I'm also a newbie and a learner - having joined Mensa less than 4 years ago.

I'm writing this in early 2025 and some events have been happening at and adjacent to the American Mensa Committee or AMC level (which I am going to call "National" for short - please note that I don't mean that other entity called "National Office" or NO, which refers to paid staff). Though murky, these events seem to amount to squabbling, infighting. As I write this, both the outcome and the import seem uncertain. Of the many comments regarding the situation, the most poignant and to the point was the question: "Now what can we do?"

There are Mensans who've got more decades in Mensa than I have years, so I am not qualified to prescribe or proscribe. Still, a number of us would actually like to know some answer. And since (satisfying, actionable) answers aren't forthcoming from National it falls to us to come up with our own. Here's my essay at it.

First a word about the word from National. The couple of statements of what will be happening next procedurally and organizationally, seem to be kind of ad hoc solutions (snap elections, ad hoc creation of ad hoc nonvoting board members), the legality of which, many Mensans claim, is sketchy.

Here's the clearest and most complete message from National - a sample article made available for Mensa members, for publication in our newsletters:

Happenings at National

We've had some big changes on the American Mensa Board of Directors (AMC). Pursuant to a complaint, the national Hearings Committee determined eight Regional Vice Chairs (RVCs) and two appointed officers should be removed from their offices and be prohibited from serving in any capacity - including local and regional positions - for a number of years.

The announcements from our Chair Lori Norris and the Hearings Committee are posted on the national website under Lead → Board of Directors.

Since you may not be seeing your usual RVC newsletter article, I've been asked to help keep members informed. There have been many questions raised since the announcements were made:

Floreat Mensa!

I figure that that's about as good a letter as I'd have been able to produce if I had been charged with the task of "Encourage member Mensans; play down the significance of whatever happened; try to minimize the confusion; and attempt to forestall and/or ameliorate any disruptions, disquiet, challenges."

Unfortunately the last small bullet-pointed section at the end, amounting as it does to "just keep on keepin' on," doesn't sufficiently help, given the current challenge (e.g. Mensans quitting in disgust) and considering the overall situation.

Should we act, or not?

First comes the question of whether we Mensans in the trenches - or out in the field - should take any particular action at all.

It's possible of course to view anything from an academic point of view, take things philosophically, delay, deny, ignore - whatever you may call such an attitude, posture, or behavior of non-engagement. But this kind of fails when - to use my own case as an example - my deputy LocSec calls bullshit on all of Mensa and resigns forthwith. You can't just keep keepin' on in the same old way when, as has happened, unexplained odd/bizarre events occur, people seem to be going nuts or acting silly or counter-productively, persons in roles of responsibility act irresponsibly and fail or refuse to respond, and eminently possible outcomes include:

In fact the scenario of the "core" organization devolving into chaos, ceasing to exist and/or function, or losing all relevance and/or credibility, leaving us in our local groups to fend for ourselves and largely on our own, seems possible. Fortunately such a scenario - though not the preferred outcome - is eminently manageable, as I will attempt to show. Certainly, the proposition that the same actors, system(s), and procedures that created this mess, will somehow fix things and "make it all better" - so that all we at the local level need do is just wait - seems untenable. I figure that:

I regret that certain folks (in "authority") seem to be either stymied, paralyzed, painted into a corner - or wasting time, energy, and goodwill by getting into (self-) destructive infighting, not getting positive work done. Aggravated by the trust issue, I figure that I can either just quit, or else try help figure out what to do on the local level.

Who's invited to the party?

'Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.'
- John Adams


I've written elsewhere about The Irascibility Problem that appears to have plagued Mensa from the very beginning, throughout its/our existence, and right on up to and including the present day.

Though not identical to irascibility (which can be "just personal", unaffecting an organization) is a willingness to fight. Reading and listening to Mensans it seems that a number of more or less interrelated factors affect this willingness:

That's a sloppy list with incompleteness and overlap but it will do.

Not every Mensan involved in spats exhibits all the above and perhaps some don't exhibit any of them. But plenty of Mensans - or in this case at least a quantity sufficient to cause and/or allow confusion and havoc - seem to not understand or follow the various precepts, practices, moral teachings, et cetera which have been made available to us over the past decades and millennia by folks such as ancient (and modern) Jews who crafted and centered the concept of Shalom, Jesus Christ, Tolstoy, Gandhi, the folks who crafted the Rochdale principles of co-operation, Martin Luther King Jr., the 1960s peace movement, and Elvis Costello ("What's so funny 'bout peace, love, and understanding?").

Or for that matter lessons learnable from Operations Theory with its finding that such strategies as general honorable behavior plus a tit-for-tat strategy in case of conflict or oppositional behavior, are most optimal.

Or one can look to the business networks and practices formed and followed by Mormons; or to the Rotary Club precepts, ...

The list of guideposts is long, the information's available for the taking. Be a mensch, take it easy, get along, work together, don't fight.

But some do like to fight. Ancillary questions or considerations arise that can be material, germane; they're worth keeping in mind:

Lay principles also apply:

I think that solutions to our current problem-situation, and any attempt to move forward, creating, participating, and leaving behind something that's both enjoyable and also fundamentally good and sound, must take all this into consideration. The details of just how to do this, remain to be worked out and will differ depending on, among other things, the scale (size) of the group, and of course its makeup.

But the outline is clear: you're not going to get much of value done, you're not going to get much satisfaction; if you have to be fighting all the time.

Declining to fight

Considering and concerning our current situation, I feel that:

  1. We should recognize that there may be folks among us who to love to fight, who are "fighty" by nature.
  2. To get involved in the current mess, or fight, is basically an energy-sapper. It's a tar-baby that I don't want to touch. I'm just not going to do it; I think there are avenues of service that are better, more potentially productive.1
I myself like to be not "fighty" and my default preference regarding fights and spats is summable up by a quote from an old movie titled War Games. At the end a supercomputer in charge of running a nuclear war concludes:

Strange game.
The only winning move is not to play.

In the practical world and in the/our current case, this answers a solution - or challenge - that I've seen voiced in various fora: "If you don't like it, run for office yourself (and fix things)". This by itself doesn't work. Historically, this idea has a poor track record: plenty (maybe millions) of people have tried to fix things from within - for example spending years or whole careers in the public school system. Most often we find that The System manages to co-opt, subvert, frustrate, and/or defeat such efforts.

And in the current instance, if there's a fight going on, that's not any place to accomplish good work. It's a waste of time and energy.

The current and ongoing/historical mess: rules, bureaucracy, and brokenness

Though it seems likely that some folks involved might like to fight, and/or they didn't know where to draw the line and where to stop before "a little" became "too much", I don't actually know any of them. I'm a relatively new Mensan and my personal experience with them - other than my own RVC - consists of just one chat with one of those folks, some months ago.

However it does seem clear - either from 1) reading Mensans' posts in which they interpret Mensa's constitution and procedures, or 2) by glancing at said constitution - that there are a lot of rules, and interpretation and contention regarding same. Apparently sometimes a parliamentarian was or wasn't called in to interpret and facilitate? I didn't follow or try to, that whole sub-mess is beyond me to figure out. Much less the interplay between American Mensa's bylaws, American Mensa's constitution, and the laws of New York State, where American Mensa is incorporated. Mensans and ex-Mensans are discussing all this in various fora and it's a complex mess.

A common response in a situation like this is to recognize flaws in the rules and try to improve them, amend them. I see this happening all over the place right now! In Mensa and "outside" unofficial fora such as this one: https://groups.io/g/MPolM - open to all verifiable Mensans via a quick and easy subscription - Mensans busily craft alternate schemes including:

Lots and lots of really interesting-sounding ideas! And much discussion, elaboration, etc. My own instinct is to re-architect Mensa to match a system I worked within when I worked in and with natural food consumer co-ops. Our structure had three levels:

  1. The Active Membership.
  2. The Co-ordinating Committee.
  3. Paid and volunteer staff.

The level of control was as it appears; each level answered to the level above it. So for example decisions about the staff's pay, creating new positions, new product lines or member services, were made by the Co-ordinating Committee. That group could be - and was on occasion - overridden by the Active Membership - there were formal Active Membership meetings approximately once per quarter (or they could be called/scheduled in between). All sorts of things got decided at the Active Membership meetings, including firings, contentious issues such as whether or not to sell meat, and whether to fight a developer which wanted to raze our co-op's building, or play along. From what I heard we had borrowed this corporate structure and/or the names from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee which existed back in the 1960s. I worked in the co-op in the 1980s and the setup and structure worked quite nicely for us. At one point our co-op was the highest grossing food single-location food co-op in the country. It was a great setup and system, very effective, responsive, and actually enjoyable to be part of. Yet I do not think that reconfiguring Mensa according to this structure, would work. Nor do I propose it.

There are three problems with pursuing these kinds of solutions.

First, in our current situation, any amendment to current rules would clearly advantage some and disadvantage others; so everything gets seen through that lens and progress becomes impossible as the discussion's no longer about "what might work best in theory" and instead becomes "How does this threaten me (or my opponent)?" and/or "Is this a way I can win?"

Secondly, even if we could work in a vacuum - or if for example we made a clean sweep and replaced every elected and appointed position at National - the proposition that "If we just craft the rules more perfectly, our problems will be solved, or perhaps greatly ameliorated", is wrong. In practice - when actually trying to actually  implement such a scheme - you need to add personnel. So the idea of "let's craft a better/the perfect rule set" becomes the proposition that "If we can just build a better bureaucracy things will be all right." This is false. (I'll support this assertion in a bit).

Third, trying to rules-craft our way out of this situation, which I claim amounts in practice to trying to build a better bureaucracy, doesn't originate from an ability to sum up the situation, seize the opportunity, and take effective action. That sort of effective, practical action is a whole different domain, well-described (elsewhere) as the OODA loop, which stands for "Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act."

Rather, the tendency to try to rules-craft:

As Mensans we are particularly vulnerable to that latter conceit. This is one area in which persons of lower I.Q. actually - typically, commonly - have an advantage over us - they're a little "closer to the real world", more down to earth - less able to distance themselves intellectually, to live in the world of analysis. They know that a web of hifalutin' fantasies is tissue-thin; they know darned well from life experience that The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men Gang aft agley.

But we have access to the same truths; we can see the folly of "brilliant idiots" (such as Robert McNamara of Vietnam infamy). In this case, probably most of us have a kind of general or vague idea that:

That whole direction or thrust - the whole project of "crafting better rules" - ends up with suboptimal results. So, why the appeal; what is the attraction? Why do we still keep doing it?

What is it about us that resembles Vladimir Lenin, whose only cure for bureaucracy was more bureaucracy? If that seems an odd comparison, consider this:

  1. There's the AMC. AMC Members may not desire to act like bureaucrats; nor, when we think of a bureaucracy, do we generally picture a decision-making body following Robert's rules. But the AMC in its procedures and functions, acts like a bureaucracy.
  2. There's the National Hearings Committee or NHC, which as we have recently seen either is, or has been turned into, a "layer" above, and/or an enforcer or disciplinarian with power over the AMC.
  3. From a post2 on Mensa connect, we find there is or was a "hearings process committee. (Which is distinct and different from the actual hearings committee so they do not get to determine their own processes)." - this from a former chair of said committee.
  4. Elsewhere we also find that the AMC has input into those hearings processes.

So not only are there 3 layers of bureaucracy but there's a cycle or loop in which the flow of control moves from one body to the next until it gets back to its starting point. Visions of the snake eating its own tail, or Self-Licking Ice Cream Cones3, come to mind. Also I'm reminded of this quote from an article about working for the government4 :

Federal work can, indeed, be boring. The amount of paperwork is staggering, and the adoption of modern technology is painfully slow. There are rules for rules.

That part about "rules for rules" matches nicely with items c. and d. from the above list. It also matches my general impression that I get when I try to read Mensa's various rules about the current mess, and also the explanations that have been offered by National.

I'll close this section with the observation that organizations that try to rule-craft, end up being hidebound, difficult to work. By that I mean, hard to work within, hard to work with, and simply, hard to make work in the sense of getting them to function. Just as one example in Mensa, we are years behind in dealing with the topic of how to do our own Mensa Admission Testing, in the context of today's real world.

Mensa is broken

When I consider all that I know - and recall, I'm a relative newbie and therefore this is a bit of an outsider's perspective - it seems to me that Mensa is broken. Judging by both current events which seem to paint a picture of an institutional capture. I am not sure just who has been doing the capturing - that's part of the secrecy that National is maintaining - and this capture of a different sort than the institutional capture that we have been seeing in the past decade world- and institution-wide, but it (this part or aspect of Mensa that I'm describing) still feels like this:

"[T]he dominant institutions of American life - in education, in the arts, in politics - are either totally broken or so weak or corrupt that they're becoming irrelevant. In a way, the only thing I know that I believe in is ... brokenness."

That quote appears in an article5 about general brokenness; still, it resonates.

I will refer to Victor Serebriakoff's book Mensa in a bit, but for now I'll just state a distinction he makes between an association and an organization. We, Mensa, are - and were constituted to be - an association, not an organization. Yet the structure of American Mensa is that of an organization. So, though a feeling or characterization of brokenness is generally abroad, discerned worldwide and observed about very many organizations; and though this may be affecting Mensa, maybe it isn't either - or maybe it's a minor factor. As far as I can tell Mensa never "went woke", at least not as badly as many organizations. The resemblance may be accidental, incidental.

I believe that the fundamental problem with Mensa is and has been that the model of collaboration (or "governance") standard in regular organizations, is fundamentally ill-fitted to an association, such as Mensa. Inevitably there is a top-down command-and-control chain of authority. We're seeing it right now; the mismatch. "Who are you to tell me my/our elected representative(s) no longer represent? Besides feeling un-American and contrary to a native sense of propriety, it just doesn't fit. It makes no sense.

Personally what comes to mind when I think of a voluntary association, is Alcoholics Anonymous and its various "cousin" groups. These are actual associations and they match Mensa in their flat-out statement that they take no political position, are open to folks of all (or no) creeds, races, etc. Actually even their anonymity is a partial match - I myself am "in the closet" as a Mensan, along with about 50% of Mensans I meet.

These various 12-step programs are locally and loosely "governed" if you can even discern any "government." There is some collaboration and there is some sort of national organization but the feel of all of that is completely different, from that of Mensa or other groups. There are principles and rituals that they follow, and these are very stable and in some crucial points or aspects, quite inflexible. But as for politicking, governance, and the trappings of institutional authority - notably absent.

I shall stipulate here that my knowledge of 12-step programs was temporary and somewhat incidental; so though I have a lot of respect for them, and think that we could possibly learn some things from them, I can't - nor do I - claim expertise.

My own experience

I first heard about these current events when I noticed an email come in from Tom, my Deputy LocSec. In his email he asked me to telephone him and also forwarded Lori Norris' announcement - her "Message from chair" - that she had emailed earlier that day. I had missed the announcement - I was busy working and I often treat Mensa announcements from "on high" as second priorities. A message from Tom, however, is top priority - Tom's a good guy - so I read what Tom wrote, then phoned him. Tom told me that 1) he has an excellent "bullshit detector" honed by decades of experience; 2) "called bullshit" on this; 3) said that he didn't want to have anything to do with an organization that gets into this sort of thing, and 4) resigned on the spot. He wasn't angry; just "resigned" in the emotional sense. But there was no chance of convincing him otherwise - his mind was made up. And Northern Michigan Mensa - already tiny - lost a good, strong, contributing Mensan.

What stuck in my mind about that - other than the loss itself - was Tom's characterization of the matter as "bullshit."

Now, in recent decades, two important works having to do with bullshit, have appeared. One was Harry G. Frankfurt's book On Bullshit; a good book but it treats of "bullshit" in its other sense: verbiage that is neither truth-telling, nor lying either - just "bullshit." It's basically about speech, so not so relevant here.

The other popular work about bullshit was the book Bullshit Jobs by Daniel Graeber. This of course described the phenomenon - common in Corporate America and other large institutions and organizations - of jobs that don't really seem to have much reason to exist. That was a good book that rang true to a lot of us. The connection here is that that same author, Daniel Graeber, also wrote an excellent, small, lesser-known book titled The Utopia of Rules which is relevant here. Graeber takes his same no-bullshit or anti-bullshit attitude but applies it to the question: "What is it about humans, that we so like to create so many, so (overly) complex rules?

Some of the answers you can probably come up with yourself. When you're writing up a set of rules, in a way, you're both imagining and creating reality, or trying to - it's a bit like playing God. "Whatever can happen and what should we do when it does?" Especially in hindsight it's easy to imagine a modification of a ruleset that would've (could've) forestalled some particular outcome.

The appeal is lost to many of us, though. Not a lot of people, for example, find it worth skipping a walk in the park, in favor of poring over a 14-page Progressive Discipline Policy. Still, the attraction remains, the temptation. Especially for clever persons of a certain bent.

Graeber's book's worth reading in its entirety, but to save Mensans that task I'll quote from it:

[B]ureaucracy does not just make itself indispensable to rulers, but holds a genuine appeal to those it administers as well. ... The simplest explanation for the appeal of bureaucratic procedures lies in their impersonality. Cold, impersonal, bureaucratic relations are much like cash transactions, and both offer similar advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand they are soulless. On the other, they are simple, predictable, and - within certain parameters, at least - treat everyone more or less the same. And anyway, who really wants to live in a world where everything is soul? Bureaucracy holds out at least the possibility of dealing with other human beings in ways that do not demand either party has to engage in all those complex and exhausting forms of interpretive labor...

[emphasis mine]

I think that Mensa and Mensans are not the best candidates for a system that tries to "treat everyone more or less the same." The technical term "heteroskedasticity" - as it applies to smarts - means that the smarter we humans get, the more we diverge from a norm. To use some mocked-up numbers - if you're twice as smart, you're likely to be not just twice as different - rather 4 times as different.

Or to sum up: Mensans are really different.

Therefore, the entire mission, of setting up a complex, detailed, and fair rule-set - meaning one that treats everyone the same - is even more precarious, even less likely to succeed, when applied to Mensans. Quite possibly and arguably, a general principle such as "treat others fairly" (or the Rotary 4-Way test I've written about elsewhere) would serve us better.

Bureaucracy, official secrets, and entrenched power

When this matter first came to light - and even right up to the time of my writing this - the hottest topic in this whole sad mess was this prime question:

What in the heck are they hiding and why in the heck are they hiding it? Just tell us!

I happened to come across this (also quoted in Graeber's book), by eminent sociologist Max Weber:

Every bureaucracy seeks to increase the superiority of the professionally informed by keeping their knowledge and intentions secret. Bureaucratic administration always tends to be an administration of "secret sessions": in so far as it can, it hides its knowledge and action from criticism ...

The concept of the "official secret" is the specific invention of bureaucracy, and nothing is so fanatically defended by the bureaucracy as this attitude, which cannot be substantially justified ... . In facing a parliament, the bureaucracy, out of a sure power instinct, fights every attempt of the parliament to gain knowledge by means of its own experts or from interest groups ...

Does any part of that sound familiar to you? It seems an apt description and/or explanation of what's going on.

But there is more going on than just bureaucracy and its tendency to keep "precious secrets".

Strangely inverted logic

I said above that no matter how skillfully we might craft rules and procedures, accomplishing this (a great ruleset), by itself, won't work. After all, look at our own Mensa constitution. I presume that folks worked hard to make it as good as they could, yet here we are in this situation. An interpretation of the constitution's definition of "acts inimical to Mensa" combined with a creative use of a committee - apparently originally intended to handle completely different situations - has occurred. To many Mensans this seems puzzling - an offense to logic and common sense.

It turns out that a thinker and author - eminent in his field - named Edward Luttwak has written extensively on the topics of war, conflict, and associated matters such as "grand strategy." Here are some quotes excerpted from his book Strategy - The Logic of War and Peace. He starts by describing how he came to realize how contrary the logic of war is, compared to normal, everyday, common-sense ways of thinking:

[O]ver the years, tantalizing continuities began to emerge, forming patterns more and more definite ... these patterns did not conform to commonsense expectations: they were not ordered by any familiar, straightforwardly causal logic. As a vision of strategy emerged ..., I found that [it consists of] paradox, irony, and contradiction.

Moreover, the logic of strategy seemed to unfold in two dimensions: the "horizontal" contentions of adversaries who seek to oppose, deflect, and reverse each other's moves - and that is what makes strategy paradoxical; and the "vertical" interplay of the different levels of conflict, technical, tactical, operational, and higher - among which there is no natural harmony.

Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare [for] war, goes the Roman proverb, still much quoted by speakers preaching the virtues of strong armament. ... Why is this contradictory argument accepted so unresistingly, indeed dismissed as obvious? ... [E]ven those who reject the paradoxical advice do not denounce it as a self-evidently foolish contradiction that common sense should sweep away. On the contrary, they see it as a piece of wrongheaded conventional wisdom, to which they oppose ideas they themselves would describe as novel and unconventional.

And so the question remains: why is the blatant contradiction so easily accepted? Consider the absurdity of equivalent advice in any sphere of life but the strategic: if you want A, strive for B, its opposite, as in "if you want to lose weight, eat more" or "if you want to become rich, earn less" - surely we would reject all such. It is only in the realm of strategy, which encompasses the conduct and consequences of human relations in the context of actual or possible armed conflict, that we have learned to accept paradoxical propositions as valid.

The large claim I advance here is that strategy does not merely entail this or that paradoxical proposition, blatantly contradictory and yet thought valid, but rather that the entire realm of strategy is pervaded by a paradoxical logic very different from the ordinary "linear" logic by which we live in all other spheres of life. When conflict is absent or merely incidental to purposes of production and consumption, of commerce and culture, of social or familial relations and consensual government, whenever that is, strife and competition are more or less bound by law and custom, a noncontradictory linear logic rules, whose essence is mere common sense. Within the sphere of strategy, however, where human relations are conditioned by armed conflict actual or possible, another and quite different logic is at work and routinely violates ordinary linear logic by inducing the coming together and reversal of opposites. Therefore it tends to reward paradoxical conduct while defeating straightforwardly logical action, yielding results that are ironical or even lethally damaging.

Incidentally, in a footnote to the above, Luttwak writes:

The politics of repression, by contrast, are warlike, even if bloodless. All its manifestations resemble military operations, with their own versions of attack and defense, of the ambush and the raid. As in war, secrecy and deception are essential: the police seek to infiltrate dissident circles by deception, while for the dissidents secrecy is survival, and surprise is indispensable for any action.

I include that footnote because it offers another potential explanation for "Why all the secrecy?" - it's an essential part of the field of "strategy".

Again, to get a really good idea of Luttwak's arguments, is to read his/the entire book. It's not too difficult - the book's short and an easy read - though you might find yourself pausing in your reading, as you take some time and mental effort to cogitate; digesting, assembling, and attempting to square with your own experience, some of the unfamiliar implications.

Luttwak is a military thinker and he says above and elsewhere, that his observations and explanations of paradoxical thinking - that seems illogical (or incomprehensible, baffling) at first glance - apply to war and actual armed conflict. I'm not going to argue with him, an expert, but it's clear to me that the sort of thinking Luttwak describes - which he calls "strategic" - happens in other contexts as well. Such as corporate takeovers. Or in the current situation in Mensa at the National level.

The long passage I quoted above includes language about "levels" of conflict, specifically, "technical, tactical, operational and higher". Again, to fully understand these levels is beyond the scope of this post (and again I refer the interested reader to Luttwak's book) but basically what he's saying is that the "perverse", paradoxical, seemingly illogical logic he describes, permeates all different levels involved in a conflict. I'll cite just two examples from Luttwak's work, one from the "technical" (the lowest) level, the other from the "grand strategy" (the highest) level.

What applies to our situation, I believe:

Some history that rhymes

I imagine that we all know the saying about history repeating itself; and probably most of us know some of the variants. My favorite of the bunch is that "History doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes."

I had read Victor Serebriakoff's book Mensa a few months ago, before all of this. It's a good, detailed history of Mensa during its historical time of great growth. I went back and read chapters 2 and 3, and found that much of the history seemed to "rhyme" - or strongly resemble - what we hear has been going on recently. The details are of course different - for example, many of the spats Serebriakoff recounts were of the form of the central group or "old guard" being attacked by gadfly Mensans. Here I quote some selected passages. If you find them interesting I recommend you read both chapters 2 and 3 or even the whole book, which is good.

[After Serebriakoff describes contention in revising the Mensa International constitution]

On reflection I can see that, after their own lights, both factions had a case. We could have made the necessary changes more peacefully but, considering that we were scattered around the globe and the parties could not know each other really well, we could have done a lot worse.

As in many such disputes the casus belli seems to me to be more symbolic than real. Two years later we can see that little has really changed. Constitutions and changing them are really distractions from the real problems. Once composed they are hardly ever looked at and so cannot really have much effect on what actually happens.

What happens depends on an astonishingly small group of activists and constitutions neither help nor hinder in finding them.

I remember Chicago well because it was a turning point. The outlying members in the local groups had at last begun to accept that which they found hard to believe at first. People of goodwill and decency, that is to say the overwhelming majority of Mensans, began to accept that there really are ill-disposed members or sincere self-deceiving ones, who harass elected Mensa workers without just cause. There is no smoke without fire but seeing smoke does not tell us who lit the fire. The boring old accusations of autocracy, suppressing 'legitimate criticism', and fixing elections which were hurled indiscriminately at any one who was vicious enough to win an election, were patently absurd when applied to the patient, friendly, compassionate chairman Marvin Grosswirth. So it was the accusers who came under fire. They were a tiny group of people who seemed to be acting from an inbuilt hatred of anything that could be set up as an 'authority' or indeed anyone who achieved any prominence. They get frustrated. They get nasty.

At Chicago there was a very healthy and overdue counter-attack from the local secretaries and local journal editors from the very constituency the disruptors relied on to create uproar. Uproar there was but they themselves were its victims.

Obviously the details differ - that was then and this is now; all the players/actors are different - but when I read about this, I found that the feeling seemed much the same as today's. It all kind of reinforces my contention that this problem - which I described and analyzed in detail in another post - really is part of Mensa, whether we like it or not, and apparently always has been. Obviously that's a curse; but there's an upside too - we can come to our senses, right our ship, get things sailing smoothly again. Hopefully.

One last point about history rhyming, and Serebriakoff's book. Today, in light of recent goings-on, a group has formed calling themselves "Reform Mensa" with a website https://www.reformmensa.org/. Serbreiakoff in his book describes in some detail a "movement" that occurred in which a faction - according to Serebriakoff apparently bent on creating havoc to Mensa's detriment - requested the official formation/designation of a Mensa Special Interest Group or SIG as they termed it back then and we still do now. The group called themselves SIGRIM meaning Special Interest Group for Reform In Mensa. I refer the interested reader to Serebriakoff's book; but I find that the two groups, just going by their names, "rhyme" pretty well.

Here's another historical rhyme, between today's situation and one I read about that occurred back in 1996. The documents6 describing what went on back in that day read as if they were written yesterday. Much discussion of the Hearing Committee, the Ombudsman. The issues appear identical in spirit to me, they "rhyme".

These same problems have been recurring, like a bad recurring dream, for many decades. The incidents and actors were and are clearly unrelated to one another. They represent or indicate a mismatch between 1) our structure and 2) our function and our membership.

The positive, constructive path forward

When I participated in Ken Lawrence's productive and valuable Sunday night "improving Mensa" online meetings, I got a lot of ideas. Many really good ones! However many of them couldn't apply to my own situation, since what works for a local group with 900 members in a major urban center, can't work in my own little bitty group of just 70 Mensans; about 55 of whom live "out in the boonies" like I do.

Now I feel like my group's small size is actually an asset. All the while the elephants are carrying on with their big fight at the National level, we ants are too small to be of any interest. Also because of our size, we're not as liable to be impacted (ants, even when stomped on by elephants, still survive), internal cliques and blocs are less likely to form, much communication and "beneficial gossip" happens automatically.

Obviously any Mensan has the option of just quitting in disgust, which is just what Tom, my deputy LocSec did. Tom is smarter and quicker than I am, so possibly I should just accept his judgement ("Mensa's bullshit") and follow his lead. But I feel like giving it a little more time, see if I and we can wait things out. I know that historically, the folks who stick it out - even when this seems dumb to do - and weather the storms, come out on the other side and (can) end up becoming the core of something good. So I figure, I'll stay involved, see what happens after the dust settles.

But not just hunker; in the meantime, I personally plan to:

The more hunkered, defensive path forward

I hope that things don't actually go badly wrong at the National level. It is hard to say whether a solution could be as simple as: one resignation and these problems will all go away. But it's easy to see that some plausible scenarios could result in dysfunction, pressures, maybe even destructive actions such as I've heard credible witness of, such as, retracting honorary awards already conferred. Or for that matter trying to "put the hammer down" and quell insubordination by terming it "inimical to Mensa."

Here's the thing. National's clearly weak and appears to be indulging in, not quite a "circular shooting gallery" but certainly a (self-?) destructive way of handling dissent and/or those who advocate possibly major change. Or maybe it's a matter of personality conflicts. The upshot's the same: persons or parties willing to pull off dictatorial-style actions such as disenfranchising 80% of an elected board, might well direct those same kinds of debilitating tactics and energies elsewhere. Including local groups.

What I'm not sure that folks at the National level understand is, their weakness is not our weakness, their attitude or contamination - their willingness to think along Luttwak-style (oppositional, war-like) lines and adopt his "strategic" logic, isn't our willingness. Their illness or dysfunction is not ours. Factors which cripple them don't (necessarily) and may not apply at the local level. Personally I'm a Midwesterner and at least some of these perpetrators seem to be from "the bicoastal set" - we in the Midwest do have an advantage in these matters. Our habits; outlooks; down-to-earth natures; resistance to chasing off after tangents, charismatic leaders, or the next new thing; and our general attitude of "Midwestern nice"7 are more resistant to squirrely pretzel logic and outrageous behavior; therefore slightly less prone the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune - not to mention, less amenable to using such slings and arrows on one another. But of course this view is obviously parochial and chauvinistic - there are Mensans of good will in every region. How to hook them up with each other, that is the question.

At present it seems that the shenanigans at National has not caused major harm to us in our local groups, yet - though the potential's clear. Also, so far, I'm not sure that folks at National are inimical to we Mensans-in-the-field, though some ordinary Mensans have made a good case that they are in fact, just so: inimical. Either way it is easy to imagine a number of scenarios in which folks at National try to whip local groups, or individual Mensans, into line. I hope that nothing of that sort would happen but the potential seems to exist.

In such a (distasteful) scenario, we individual Mensans and/or local groups might find ourselves needing to act like Dick Gregory (once famous comedian; later, social activist) suggested: "You make yourself so strong - like a diamond - that when the machine tries to crush you, instead you remain uncrushed. You defeat it; it jams on you and wrecks itself."8 In other words, if things went badly south, and "folks at National" tried to crush us, their tools may not be up to the job.

Here are some examples of what I mean. Whether or not you consider them in an oppositional context, they are still good to know of, and may be used to strengthen your own local group. Basically they are all variants of the same theme: "We have strengths - including options not everyone knows of - and can do it for ourselves."

Dues and official membership.

If things 1) don't improve very soon at the National level, 2) word spreads out locally (many Mensans in my area will have ignored, or not opened Loris Norris' letter), and 3) I see a large-ish refusal to pay dues come March, of course National will consider that those folks aren't Mensans. I hope this doesn't happen but it could. Suppose for example that my ex-Deputy LocSec, instead of quitting, refused to subsidize National's misbehavior by refusing to pay his dues. (Perhaps putting the dues into escrow as people do who go on a "rent strike".) National would of course be pretty likely to consider those individuals to be no longer Mensans in good standing. But ask yourself the same question I posed earlier:

(Barring actual misconduct) What, exactly, is the difference between a Mensan and an ex-Mensan?

My answer: not much.

At least in a small group like mine, we have the option of ignoring a Mensan's - or ex-Mensan's - membership status. We can invite 'em anyway! Still partner, still socialize. Who's gonna know?

This offers an effective defense, if National were to try to play a harsh hand in this matter and start expelling Mensans. Expulsions could backfire and encourage behaviors such as joining Mensa for a year, getting the membership card, then dropping out, keeping the membership card, and staying in touch on an informal - but practically equivalent - basis. The Mensa Journal or other minor perks, would not be particularly missed. You can figure out for yourself details of how this could all be made to work and play out; my point is not to plan, plot, nor encourage, some sort of insurrection. Only to point out a possible avenue of hope if things get really dark at the center.

In an oppositional context this would amount to telling folks at National: "It doesn't matter to us whether you consider John or Jane Doe to be Mensans in good standing. We'll make our own decisions as regards to that and do what we like."

Testing, proctoring.

Another "hard-handed" attitude National could take would be this: "We won't let you test, we'll de-certify or un-recognize your proctors." There is precedent for this: Mensa proctors have been forced out of their roles; their duties severely circumscribed, (very nice, and treasured) awards they earned taken back - at least at the local and/or state levels. Also, at least a largish contingent of proctors feels, from treatment we get from the National folks, that they consider us to be on the way out anyway. In favor of private testing and some on-line solution, yet to be announced, apparently/rumored to being in development, without proctor involvement or consultation.

National could figure, that without testing capability, natural attrition would mean that our local groups would shrink away and die. Again, I hope that such a thing - or threat - will not come to pass; but again, there's (at least a partial or near) precedent, so this must be considered.

Such a ploy or dictate might possibly have succeeded as recently as 10 years ago. All the best I.Q. tests - ones reliable enough for us - were owned (copyrighted, published, sold) by major publishing houses, and were highly and carefully guarded, relatively expensive, and hard to get. But that's no longer the case.

That comes to 3 free, reliable, valid I.Q. tests that are available. Restrictions on their use vary but they're all intended for use, and with skill and care - including carefully involving appropriate experts9 - any local group could implement a testing program based on these tests. Plus the screening tests may be very useful in supporting roles.

There are other factors in play here, such as, proctors having to follow the rules set out for us by Mensa's National Office and the current supervisory psychologist. This topic is way too involved to fully - or even partially - explore here. Suffice it to say that many of the rules we proctors operate under, exist purely because said supervisory psychologist is licensed in the state of Texas, plus the American Psychological Association (and/or its Texas branch) limits what a consulting psychologist can do and/or allow. Other states - including Michigan where I live - have different and frequently much less restrictive standards. Standards which still protect the general public, but allow much greater freedom of administration. Generally, it is possible to - at the local group level - legally, ethically, and professionally carry out such a program - a program of testing in order to find persons of Mensa-level I.Q.

To take this scenario just one step above the local group level, for example to a multi-state level, "we" (Mensans) would need to develop some standards so as to ensure that the "top 2%" criterion is consistently met and assiduously adhered to. And then to craft some policy that honors and accepts Mensans certified/validated in other states. That is all eminently possible; it's easy to model such a scheme based, for example, on how states honor one anothers' Hunter Safety Certificates, Boater Safety Certificates, drivers licenses, etc. Or how various universities and colleges craft articulation agreements with one another.

The implication of all of that: imagine that for some reason the State of Texas itself, and/or National Office, and/or the AMC, and/or the position of supervisory psychologist, all ceased to exist. Individual states and local groups are in a completely OK position as of right now, to carry on Mensa's mission without either National or the National Office's support, rules, permission, or even existence.

I'm not advocating this; there are better solutions than a complete divorce. Neither am I advocating that we adopt a pugnacious attitude: defiantly telling Mensa's National Office power structure that supervises and vets proctors, to "go take a hike, we're doing it on our own." That would among other things require local groups to do a bit more work. However it behooves all of us to recognize that the world out there, has changed, just in the past 10 years. We have options; you could say we have power - as in "power to the people!"

Personally I see that out of all the things Mensa does, the most critical is gatekeeping - ensuring that testing is accurate (and available, affordable, not cheat-able, and so on). The gatekeeping is foundational to our very definition. Without that function working properly, there'll be no Mensa. In times past the power to achieve this was:

Neither of these are the case today. Ordinary Mensans, with perhaps a weekend of instruction and on-the-job training are capable of this gatekeeping and its sub-fuctions: testing, certification, record-keeping, collaboration/referral.

Summary

A restructured Mensa consisting of a loose network of affiliated groups - as opposed to the top-down centralized scheme or setup now in place - is eminently workable. Many of us have personal experience in similar organizational setups. If things at the national level really got down to a miserable power struggle, and/or complete disarray, contention, and failure, local groups could vet and accept candidates' "prior evidence", and also generate such evidence (via testing) for themselves, cutting National Office staff completely out of the loop.

The administrative

It occurs to me that an organization has a national office in order to (at least putatively) provide:

I am not sure just how much of those latter three points our National Office or the American Mensa Committee does provide, nor how much it should:

In short, from an organizational standpoint, I'm not sure how much those folks at that (National) level- really matter.

Looking forward, we do have paths, and the paths don't depend on what "our" board manages to salvage after the/their latest power struggle or shenanigans. Local groups can survive and thrive. If - as seems inevitable unless American Mensa fixes this mess forthwith - lawsuits start getting filed, legal expenses begin to mount and sap our financial strength, bad publicity starts, and we lose both members and any value our "brand" has left - then it is possible to still function on the local level. It would take work, but it would not be that hard.

The feeling and attitude

There is plenty of bad attitude going around. Above, I attempted to sketch out how things might work out if a positive direction emerges; also how things might work out even if the various evils persist and things continue to go badly wrong. Overall I feel that I come out of this with a positive attitude. I've done my best to figure things out, suss things out, plan things out. The current shenanigans have actually helped me focus my thoughts and give me some energy boost. I feel like I understand the lay of the land a lot better than I did just 3 months ago, and am kind of stoked. It seems there's room for happiness and success; but of course only if that is the aim. Those with hidden or not-so-hidden alternative desires - basically folks who like to, want to, and have a propensity, to fight - have different aims.

I am interested in sharing, comparing, and creating notes and information about drumming up demand in small, sparsely-populated local groups. But since I have just barely started all that I have not much to write about it, yet. I mentioned that I spent months in Ken Lawrence's excellent "reinventing Mensa" discussion group. While participating I learned that my/our situation in our tiny little local group, is quite a bit different from, say, an urban group with a membership of 1,000 or more. Obviously. Though some tips I was able to learn from large groups, will come in handy.

I personally think that small local groups can be good laboratories for change and reinvention, reinvigoration. With a smaller group there's less inertia. And suppose I succeed in identifying, inviting, and inducting, say, 12 "Mensans in their/our Teens, Twenties, and Thirties" - that number, though small, would make up a significantly large proportion of our total membership. Meaning it's be relatively easier to change the course of the whole local group.

Maybe, if I work hard enough and skillfully enough at it, I/we might even be able to keep our local group, which at present has one foot in the grave - from sliding all the way in!

Jon Gruebele's letter which I quoted in full above, closes with the words: "Floreat Mensa!" I like the spirit, but it occurs to me after all this pondering, that if Mensa is to actually flower, we may need to do just a couple of things a little differently.

These same words: "Floreat Mensa!" are the same words as Victor Serebriakoff uses in the book I've mentioned, to end his Chapter 3. I think that any Mensan sufficiently interested - and with sufficient time - could benefit from reading the entire book, and maybe even enjoy it, as I did. But besides being an inspiring history the book is also a cautionary tale. Again and again, in effort after effort, Serebriakoff documents factionalism, in-fighting, severe personal attacks, scurrilous behavior. He mentions that such behaviors seemed to him, to get worse whenever positive progress was going on. So for example when a major - and "majorly successful" membership drive was going on, spearheaded by a competent, energetic man named John Codella, out came the critics, who pursued their attacks with means both fair and foul, eventually driving Mr. Codella out of Mensa.

The problems we face in Mensa, at all levels, are from a technical, practical, administrative level, eminently addressable and solvable. But the main "enemy" - or energy-sapping destroyer of both progress and cameraderie - remains as it seems to have been throughout all of Mensa's history. I wrote about that - The Irascibility Problem - elsewhere. I think it's eminently addressable; certainly at the local level. Scaling such a scheme would take some collaboration with other clubs. I'm interested in doing that but such an effort has to wait until The Problem's addressed locally.

Afternote - about personality traits, including bad ones

I'm an intelligence researcher so personality traits aren't central to my area of interest, nor expertise. However they come up a lot since to be an effective, happy, successful person obviously requires more than just raw smarts. In normal life people make the normal, natural, everyday, and accurate observation that high intelligence doesn't adequately predict, for example, how good an employee, co-worker, partner, friend, father, or collaborator, someone will turn out to be. The lay characterization of this phenomenon is that "Sometimes so-called 'smart' people sure do some really stupid things." You can also substitute "nasty" or "dishonest" for the word "stupid." Typically the interested lay person thinks of different sets of "extra factors" besides g that contribute to or affect both life outcomes and - relevant to us - how good it'll be to partner and/or socialize with someone:

Folks know that intelligence is important. The question then naturally arises, because it's compelling and relevant to everyday life - "How do all of these various things tie into or interact with; how do they correlate with, raw g or general intelligence?" That is too big an area for me to get in to. However in these posts I have stated my belief that if all we look at is g, we're doomed. I believe that both everyday Mensa experience, and historical evidence, support this/my claim.

For those who are interested in this related-to-us and (I claim) vital area, here are some resources, only about that last point, personality traits.

Perhaps most Mensans are aware of the "Big 5" personality traits, that (though it had been defined earlier) gained popularity among researchers in the 1980s and 1990s. It didn't take long for folks to realize that it is an incomplete model. Actually anyone reading either the original work, or a current summary, kind of can recognize - something (quite) important is being left out of the Big 5. In the early 2000s Paulhus and Williams published their "dark triad" theory and/or characterization. That went a way toward capturing something important. At around that time also the HEXACO model of personality came about; basically adding a 6th personality trait, named "honesty-humility." Later research, for example this article:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886914000683

titled The Dark Triad, the Big Five, and the HEXACO model, established that that last personality factor, "honesty-humility" correlated well with the "dark triad" traits. Given that this article was written by Ashton and Lee, who literally wrote the book about HEXACO, I guess it carries some weight.

In another paper, titled Low Correlations between Intelligence and Big Five Personality Traits: Need to Broaden the Domain of Personality, (at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6480733/pdf/jintelligence-06-00026.pdf) Lazar Stankov mentions a 3-factor model he came up with; he names the three factors:

Stankov's other articles give more detail about his model, but what matters to us Mensans (and is the topic of Stankov's article cited here) is that these personality traits - especially "nastiness" - don't correlate to any significant extent, with intelligence.

Reference, resource

I have referred to Victor Serebriakoff's book titled Mensa - The Society for the Highly Intelligent. If you are interested in reading that book you may find an excerpt consisting of Chapters 2 and 3, also the whole book in a couple of different editions, here:

https://m-mm.org/

1I guess I should stipulate that I'm not saying, that humans should never give battle. Yes, some things really are worth fighting for. But the principle of "pick your battles" applies.

2February 8, 2025, Region 3 Member Communities

3Worden, S. Pete (1992). "On Self-Licking Ice Cream Cones". Proceedings of the seventh Cambridge workshop on cool stars, stellar systems, and the sun. ASP Conference Series. Vol. 26. Astronomical Society of the Pacific. pp. 599� 603. Bibcode : 1992ASPC...26..599W . ISBN 0-937707-45-7 .

4https://unherd.com/2025/02/the-feds-gave-me-refuge-from-woke/

5https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/brokenism-alana-newhouse

6May be found at http://dcn.davis.ca.us/~sander/mensa/hcom1.html

7https://scribblesandgrits.com/difference-between-iowa-nice-minnesota-nice-midwestern-hospitality-southern-hospitality/

8Gregory said this some 40+ years ago and I'm going from memory, paraphrasing, and adding my own words.

9Such as attorneys, experts in state licensure, test authors and providers, and local members of state chapters of the National Association for Gifted Children.

10See for example here: