Interesting + Bizarre = VAS

From wikipedia.org, Mensa's mission is to:
1. "to identify and foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity;"
2. "to encourage research into the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence;"
3. "and to provide a stimulating intellectual and social environment for its members."

After reading what Mensa is about, I grew to have a positive attitude towards this organization. It supports people who have high IQ's. It's a society which would have similar ideals to magnet schools, gifted student programs, and the like. And those institutions are very normal and a part of American and European society. They're for the smart kids...

The book, VAS, points out something criminal about Mensa members. British Mensa members, being so intelligent, are asked how to improve society (129). In 1962, 47% of them say it's a good idea to kill "sufficiently unhealthy or subnormal infants"(130). Further, in 1994, Mensa members want to get rid of "homeless, retarded and elderly" (130). How absurd is that?

So now I'm confused. If people this intelligent can think such evil things, where is society headed? I'm coming to really dislike this idea of eugenics because it says if you're not one of the smart ones you should be "dead" (sterilized).

How do Square and Circle fit in? Is he stupid and insignificant in society, as seen by Circle? Or is it another matter altogether?

Order, reason, knowledge: underlying conflicts

During our group discussion, these were a few of the underlying conflicts that we discovered in the book:

1. freedom v. order

• page 28, paragraph 1: "I felt trapped, imprisoned in that primitive cage, caught by the savage whirlwind of the ancient life."
• page 28, paragraph 7: "To be original is to be in some way distinct from others. Hence, to be original is to violate equality."
• page 35, paragraph 4: "Freedom and crime are linked as indivisibl as...well, as the motion of the aero and its speed: when its speed equals zero, it does not move; when man's freedom equals zero, he commits no crimes...The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom."

2. emotion v. reason

• page 87, paragraphs 2 and 3: Instead of D joining the rest of the numbers during their march, he is looking for I, wandering the streets alone. He wants to tell her he can't live without her even though he knows he's breaking the rules, his emotions are taking over his reason.

3. unknowable v. knowledge

• page 39, paragraph 1: "This irrational number had grown into me like something foreign, alien, terrifying. It devoured me-it was impossible to conceive, to render harmless, because it was outside ration."