An Insight into intelligence

I was on SBS Insight recently to be on a forum about intelligence. I had responded to a call for comments and they thought it was interesting that I qualified for Mensa but didn’t find any use in it.

I had just returned from Island Vibe at Stradbroke Island so I had circus on the brain. Myself and my friend Joel (who’s a physicist and a performer) were mainly asked about what we think intelligence is, if we faced any challenges – simple stuff. They had 6-year-old Albie who’s really bright but also really restless, and I ADORED her – she was so much like me as a kid and I just wanted to smuggle her squeeeee.

I was also on the webchat with a few of the other guests – psychologists, researchers, a Rhodes Scholar-cum-Olympian. I felt distinctly underqualified! There was a lot of discussion about school and learning so my alternative education background came in handy!

The entire show will be online on the SBS website so feel free to check me out some time. Some things that got cut out from the airing or that I didn’t get to say:

• A lot of IQ tests – and a lot of the definitions of success and intelligence – are constricted by privilege and culture. Another guest talked about opportunity – maybe high IQ people tend to live longer and be richer because they come from backgrounds that allowed them better healthcare and education to begin with! Tests don’t often control for that, and yet we tend to judge people on a factor that has too many variables for it to be useful.

• I qualified for Mensa in 2007 after taking the test on a lark (one of those Things I Must Do In My Lifetime things). I joined for a year but didn’t get much value out of the organisation – the meetings didn’t interest me (mostly puzzles) and the magazine was too full of “We’re so smart! Let’s talk about how smart we are and how people don’t appreciate us!”. I was hoping for more efforts to do something productive, like volunteer work or creative work…but nothing. Towards the end of my membership year there were some efforts to have a Young Mensans meetup in Brisbane, which would have been cool, but not enough to entice me to keep joining.

• I actually made a plug for my circus group Vulcana Women’s Circus but that got edited out :P It was in response to intelligence and communicating – I talked about how my ideas for performance work were more intellectual and that I found it very challenging to step out of my brain and express myself physically. It takes a different sort of intelligence to be able to convey abstract concepts into visuals, actions, music, costume, moves.

• They showed Morris dancing in the show and I smiled when they said that dancing was scientifically one of the best ways for older people to retain brain cognition. I was a little annoyed at someone who said that there was no hope for people to improve their skills beyond a certain age, that intelligence is stable – my circus director started at 40 and she rocks! If you put the effort in it and you’re open to learning then most things can happen for you. There are opportunities out there. And man, performance totally does magic for your intelligence – it challenges you in a big way.

• Some people in the forum were talking about taking supplements for intelligence so that they can get better jobs and pass university and such. I’m supposedly high-IQ (According to Mensa) and I’m finding it hard to find a job. The creative industries is a hard place to break into sustainably, but also there are more factors to job success than just your intelligence – heck I’d wager to say it’s one of the least considered factors. It’s not like I advertise my Mensa membership on my resume. That said: hey people coming here from SBS Insight – want to sponsor or hire me ? :D

Feel free to continue the chat here if you’d like!

Comments

1. Dancing improves cognition at any age, because we keep a sequence of steps and work with other people. Also, it is a response to music, and music is known to kickstart cognition and certainly language.

   There is a 50-plus woman of my acquaintance who has been advised to take supplements and such. When she tries to remember politics or Bible verses, she gets very very stressed indeed.

   — Adelaide · Nov 7, 12:12 PM · #