[On Mensa's growth and growing pains, Bulletin #211, November, 1977]:. . .While it is true that there is strength in numbers, the value of numbers can easily be exaggerated. In Mensa we must take care not to do ourselves a disservice by allowing either the allure of sheer numbers of people or the concerns that attend their growth to distract us from a value that is central to our existence as a group: the importance of the individual member. . . .
Let us continue to grow, and to invite others to share in our fellowship. Each new member adds to the assurance that a society such as ours can endure. But let us not so dazzle ourselves with numbers that we lose sight of each other. Our primary strength is not in numbers but in the network of personal bonds that keeps us all together. Lacking a unifying goal or collective purpose, we have no other binding force.
Rare indeed is the member with a job title at any level of the organization who imagines his position to be one of power. [On purposes for Mensa, Bulletin #216, May, 1978]:
. . .I have at last resolved the conflict I felt between an awareness of our so-called potential and an opposition to the idea of promoting causes. . .we need not have a purpose in order to serve a purpose. Without assuming any new definitions, taking on any new projects, or expressing any new aspirations, I think we can grant recognition to a purpose we already serve, and serve well. That purpose is to provide a fertile ground for our members.
By "fertile ground" I mean an environment or context in which individual potentialities may flourish; in which those who can and will explore possibilities and seek solutions are encouraged to do so, and may if they wish find others to share in the process; in which many whose gifts have gone unacknowledged discover their own innate abilities and experience the first flowering of confidence, ambition, and the pleasure of interaction with their peers.
This purpose is not one that we have to adopt, for we serve it simply by being what we are. . .and that's the one thing we are fit and qualified to be. . .furnishing the fertile ground in which great things may begin.
["Blest be the Tie", Bulletin #224, March, 1979]:
The entity we call Mensa is like a spider's web, built of slight silken strands that together form a strong structure. Our network is made up of links between people. . . . Any member who makes contact with just one other Mensan is creating one of those gossamer bonds. . . . Then the entire network becomes stronger and Mensa becomes a better organization for each of its members. . . .
Some see Mensa as a ponderous beast without purpose or direction, slow and awkward in its movements, perpetually entangled in its own jungle of politics and procedures. I see Mensa as a glistening web with millions of strands joining individual persons of all ages, locales, temperaments, inclinations, and capabilities--an exciting network of brilliant minds and fascinating personalities and human emotions; a network of immeasurable resources, infinite combinations, and great resiliency; a network I can touch by sending out a single strand.
["Hierarchy and Power", Bulletin #228, July/August, 1979]:
Frustration is a fact of life. Who is there who has not been afflicted by it at one time or another? Some of us live with it daily, year in and year out, in minor ways or even in the major activities of our lives. Whenever there is a conflict of wills, someone is bound to be frustrated, and in the hierarchies that govern most of our lives it is usually the will of the superior that prevails.
Every one of us is born into a natural hierarchy as a member of a family. We are subordinates to our parents, our teachers, and our employers, as well as to the authorities created by our society. Most of those hierarchies are permanent and inflexible: becoming a parent oneself does not alter the fact that one is still the child of one's own parents. Advancing in a job may gain us subordinates, but it never frees us of superiors in the endless chain of service and supply.
Within this scheme of things, there are few areas indeed in which we have the pleasure of exercising absolute control. If we examine our habits and our pastimes, we are more than likely to find that we have developed a number of areas in which we do enjoy total autonomy. Perhaps we may even note a relationship between the extent to which we have done so and the amount of frustration we endure in other ways. . . . We. . .enjoy deciding upon our selection of reading matter, our style of dress, product brands, bedtime arrangement of furniture, ice cream flavor, one lump or two, regular or menthol, hold the pickle. . .have it your way!
The more our important decisions are made for us, the more we may be looking to exercise authority in all the trivia of our lives. . . .
The hierarchies that control so much of our lives, subject us to so much frustration, and drive us to establish all our personal little autonomies are absent in Mensa. The "round-table society" liberates us from the superior/subordinate relationships that govern us elsewhere. . . . Yes, we do have members who hold titles of office, and some of the titles carry more authority than others. But that authority is simply what must go with responsibility--a necessary tool in getting the job done, a means of setting relative priorities in order to produce constructive activity instead of chaos.
In Mensa, a person becomes a VIP. . .only if his fellow members regard him as such. Conditioned by other hierarchies, we create our own stars, our own heroes. If they have a certain status and are treated with a certain deference, it is because we freely accord them that status by our behavior. It does not come automatically with the job. Rare indeed is the member with a job title at any level of the organization who imagines his position to be one of power. Rather, the title. . .simply indicates the amount and kind of work its holder has agreed to do for the organization--nothing more. . . .
But there is another kind of power that Mensa office affords. . .the same kind of power that we [see] in the undisciplined dieter, the cigarette smoker, the television watcher, the tyrannical parent. . .and all those others who have found ways of governing the little areas of their lives. But in Mensa it is beneficent--for the worker and for the group.
In Mensa, superior performance is both welcomed and acknowledged. Effort is rewarded. Creativity, diligence, and achievement are recognized as the life-blood of the organization. If you are fortunate enough to hold office in Mensa, you know that you can put into your task the very best that you are capable of producing, with no holds barred, no risk of threatening a superior, and no resentful co-workers. Mensa will take your utmost in time, skill, and dedication--and it will ask you for more. It will trust a proven worker with its safekeeping and it will demand that he act responsibly on its behalf. Most of us will never have a better chance to discover how much we can accomplish personally on the strength of our own talents and abilities. . .[an] opportunity to shed one's frustrations, unleash one's full powers, and discover the true value of being oneself.