Sub-Geniuses Unite

Over the weekend while ruminating over a few ideas of questionable value when somebody looked me square in the eye and said "if you're so smart". I was about ready to complete that sentence with a defensive rant of how IQ and net worth have no real connection but I let him finish. "If you're so smart -why don't you take the Mensa Test?"

That was a surprise. First I haven't heard anyone mention Mensa in years. It was a real prestige to be a member of a society that represented the top 2% of human intelligence. There's the famous Mensa IQ test and in my case I would need a lot luck and a cheat sheet to pass it.  I already know my IQ and I'm proud to say it's above average but it's far below the 150 minimum needed to get into Mensa.   

Yes, I'm in that category of sub-genius. Somebody bright enough to conceive a good idea but not smart enough to plow through all the details and bring it to fruition. The sub-genius is the titan of intellectual thought and as you might remember from high school Greek Mythology a titan was more than a man but far below the gods.   

You can now take the test online but it doesn't count. To get into Mensa you have to take the test in person ... just like the SATs.

Prometheus was a titan and he had the clever idea of stealing fire from the Mount Olympus. Sadly he didn't plan on the wrath of gods or map out a good escape. So all mankind benefited from what Prometheus did and Zeus had him chained to a rock where an eagle got to rip out his liver for the rest of eternity. In the end it sucked to be Prometheus and to this day you can go to any slightly up-scale bar at happy hour to see the metaphoric children of Prometheus, the sub-geniuses of the world, punishing their livers on discounted drinks.      

The sub-genius fills the ranks of middle management in every large organization, they are Betas in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, they are the great social buffer that keeps the ordinary masses from eating the elite. The Russian Revolution was only possible because all of Russia's sub-geniuses had either emigrated or were killed in World War One. By October of 19 17 all that was left in Mother Russia were a few Tsarist twits and lots and lots of hungry peasants -oh and of course there were a few Cossacks mixed in, for some unexplainable reason you can't have any major event in Russian history without Cossacks being involved. 

With the elimination of the sub-genius in Russia the center did not hold. After Lenin, Stalin's purges continued to persecute the sub-genius. The Soviet Union became a place of extremes where the masses were treated like cattle and a few exceptionally talented people became national treasures.  That's why Yuri Gagarin was the first man to orbit the Earth but on the ground they still couldn't make a  can opener that actually worked.  

As tough as it is being a sub-genius it can also be lonely at the top. What seems like a whole life time ago I was part of a social circle that was made up of mostly Viet Nam Veterans. Jeff was certifiable genius with an IQ north of 150. He did a complete combat tour of duty and came to the conclusion that if the US Army just electrified every village and handed out free TVs we would have won the war. That might have sounded quite satirical but  Jeff understood that you can't win a war without a peace plan.

Through Jeff, I met Daniel. Daniel was not veteran but had an IQ of over 180. He was truly a one in a million character.  As smart as Daniel was, he was awkward around people. At that time he was almost twenty-five and never had a intimate relationship with another person. The super high IQ was like a trap, as he put it "have you ever tried to have a conversation with somebody who's IQ is 30 points lower than yours?" That was troubling thought, the average person's IQ is 100 and if you take away 30 points that leaves you with an IQ of 70 -which is the legal borderline for mental retardation. At a 180 IQ Daniel was a freak of nature and prisoner of the bell curve. Daniel could be kind and considerate to others but felt it was almost impossible to have a meaningful exchange of ideas with 99% of the world.

For a short time Daniel and I hung out together. He was working on a physics concept of how time and gravity are both particles and dimensions. That all the universe is a fractal expression of these two particles. Daniel was nice enough to show me his work and explain some of the equations that gave me the most blistering migraines.

The last time I saw Daniel he was heading out to Stanford. He said that he was never sure about me, he couldn't figure out if I was exceptionally funny or just an idiot savant of humor. To this day I can't decide if that was a compliment or a dig. I guess that the tough thing about true genius -sometimes it is so hard to understand.