...Mensa's present structure has the conventional hierarchical form of most social organizations.  A central (international) management committee delegates part of its responsibility to regional (national) committees that validate and control the formation of local groups within each national region.  Liaison between the levels is maintained by representatives of the local groups on the regional committees and of the latter on the central committee....  
 

But Mensa must not be just an organization that caters to the inferiority hang-ups of underachievers, a kind of nonoccupational therapy to cure the affliction of being intelligent.

It is surprising how closely (the) organizational profile of Mensa...corresponds to the structure of the American society.  There is the same lack of defined goals and the same assumption that the goals are nevertheless agreed on, so that what should be mere means become ends in themselves--in the case of America, the accumulation of more power and more material things; in the case of Mensa, more members and more activities.  There is the same feeling of powerlessness that characterizes American political life, the same anomie, the same apathy and lack of general participation by the general population in the discussion and formulation of issues, the same centralized power and top-down manipulation of people.

The reason for the similarity is the same:  both societies are burdened with rigid obsolescent structures in a time that demands change.  But a member can leave Mensa without uprooting himself nationally and occupationally.  Perhaps one can hope that there is another difference:  that, of the two, Mensa's structure may be somewhat easier to change to suit the times;  Perhaps also a beneficial change in the smaller unit might lead to a better understanding of practical ways to change the larger one....

...The question of under-achievement deserves special study.  Sociologist Karl Mannheim has made a study of intelligentsia that suggests there are two kinds of underachievers.  He says that a stratum of society made up of people whose social expectations are thwarted tends not to emulate the class from which it is excluded and is likely to adopt a defiant attitude and contravening models of thought and behavior.  Those who are unable to articulate and express an effective counter ideology may fall victim to the kind of repressed resentment that turns people into cranks.  But other underachievers, who find a collective outlet for their expressions of discontent by associating with people in the same situation, may channel their resentment into constructive and creative social criticism and social action.  Mannheim sees this kind of situation as the usual source of an active intelligentsia in any culture....

...The premise that "functioning" at (their level of capability) is measured by the standard of socially recognized success...is at least theoretically wrong when we are considering Mensa.  Why should it have been established at all if not on the assumption that the top 2 per cent have a potential for some kinds of self-expression so undervalued by society as a whole that they are justified in joining Mensa?

The point is that our increasingly centralized, things-dominated Western society does not provide a fit environment for most high-IQ people who have fulfilled or still hope to fulfill their human potential....

So, let's face it--statistically we are likely to be underachievers.  But Mensa must not be just an organization that caters to the inferiority hang-ups of underachievers, a kind of nonoccupational therapy to cure the affliction of being intelligent.  It must give them an opportunity to be achievers, but of a different kind from those society chooses to reward--our own kind of achievers who want to liberate themselves from the commandments of a mechanical society....  So at best Mensa members should be people who try to tell it like it is, a kind of leaven in society, a center for those who recognize the tendency of our obsolescent economic games to inhibit human values and who want to point the way to a new freedom from hypocrisy and self-deception.

It must be a "counter-society" in which our facility for pleasant and rewarding social activity is focused and directed to more meaningful ends.  The basic aim should be self-development and fulfillment of personal goals that are usually barred in the outside society--a kind of non-psychedelic turn-on.  Mensa should encourage all gifted people, including underachievers and social drop-outs, to know and to do what they want to do, not what society expects them to do....

(Here follows a detailed proposal for revising the political structure of Mensa from the local group on up.)

Comparing this dream-structure for Mensa with reality, the basic deficiency of the latter becomes clear:  the kind of people that are likely to gain central policy-making power are precisely the overachievers whose administrative and executive skills should serve the organization and its proper goals--instead of controlling it.  As in all organizations that have a top-down centralized power structure--the epitome of machine-organization in our time--all possible goals become institutionalized into objectives like preserving the power-relationships, increasing efficiency (for what purpose never becomes clear), and being productive in terms of numbers and measurable things....

A significant call for radical decentralization was made....  It even suggested that the national Mensa should be responsible to the local groups....  That, children, is the handwriting on the wall--and if the rest of Mensa is ever going to turn on, the organization is going to have to tune in to a different drummer.