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One table for the best brains in Indonesia
Rene Descartes walks into a bar
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Rene Descartes walks into a bar. He orders a glass of wine and drinks it.
The bartender says, “Would you like another?”
Descartes replies, “I think not.” And he disappears.
If you got the joke on your first read through, you should really consider joining Mensa Indonesia, a club for highly intelligent people.
Mensa members are highly receptive to ideas, and love riddles and intelligent jokes that others find hard to understand. They would know that Descartes was a French philosopher, famous for his statement “I think, therefore I am.”
A branch of Mensa International, the club is dedicated for high-IQ people who have scored among the top 2 percent of the population according to professionally supervised IQ tests. Most of its members
have an IQ above 131. By comparison, undergraduate students should have an IQ of at least 110 to complete their studies.
The word “mensa” means table in Latin. Thus, Mensa is a roundtable society in which race, religion, age, politics, education and social background are irrelevant.
Recently, Mensa Indonesia held an IQ test for the public at Bina Nusantara University in Senayan, South Jakarta. A total of 57 people took the exam, which cost each participant Rp 50,000 (US$5.55).
Some have said Mensa is basically a club for “weirdos”.
“Well, if you are from the upper class and are part of a highly educated society, they will call you eccentric. And if you are from the lower class, they will call you crazy,” Mensa Indonesia chairman and businessman Thomas Hanan Thoha told The Jakarta Post recently.
A member since 1990, banker Ferial Fahmi said Mensa members were sometimes peculiar.
“It’s like we are living in our own world,” he said.
For example, one member who was a company director refused to have his office cleaned for days, while at home spent hours in his bedroom reading his newspapers, Ferial said.
“We think seven steps ahead of other people. That is why they think we’re weird,” he said.
Thomas said Mensa members had a tendency to be peculiar because they often concentrated too much when thinking about their ideas, and forgot about everything else.
“Thinking too hard, some of us might forget where we left our glasses, when in fact they are on our own head,” he said.
Thomas, who joined Mensa International in 1981, established the Indonesian chapter of the club seven years later to accommodate the large number of high-IQ people in Indonesia.
Today, Mensa Indonesia has around 300 registered members, most of whom live in Jakarta.
Liliana, who joined the club in 1996, said its members were from different professions and educational backgrounds, which included consultants, businessmen, auditors, undergraduate students and a taxi driver.
She said most members had joined the club because they believed they were smart and had a high IQ.
“I am proud to be a part of the group,” she said, adding that she had gained precious networking through the club and had met great people.
Ferial said he was proud to be around people who could think outside the box.
“It’s always fun to share ideas among members,” he said.
Thomas said some people applied for membership to prove they could “beat” the IQ test.
“The test, consisting of a series of pictures, is designed to assess people’s logic and how fast they think,” Thomas said, adding that high education does not guarantee high IQ. (ipa)
