The prolific science fiction author Isaac Asimov, best known for books such as I, Robot and the Foundation series, devoted his life to the causes of science, knowledge, and education. He valued the importance of intellect for a healthy democracy, lamenting the United States’ tendency towards anti-intellectualism. Yet, he also criticized the arrogance, foolishness, and elitism of some of the most intellectually-gifted in our society, particularly in his involvement with Mensa, the social organization of high-IQ individuals. His experiences with the group, good and especially bad, fostered his growing distaste for IQ tests, intellectual gamesmanship, and reactionary politics. In this essay, we’ll be exploring these themes and how their interaction cultivated Asimov’s unique position of anti-elitist intellectualism.
In one of his most celebrated essays, “A Cult of Ignorance,” published in Newsweek on January 21, 1980, he explored the problem of anti-intellectualism and proposed some solutions. He opened his column with a critique of the phrase “America’s right to know.” He retorts, “It seems almost cruel to ask, ingenuously, ‘America’s right to know what, please? Science? Mathematics? Economics? Foreign languages?” He followed up his rhetorical question with a disappointing answer: “None of these things, of course. In fact, one might well suppose that the popular feeling is that Americans are a lot better off without any of that tripe.”
This sets up his larger point, wherein he reflects on the state of the American public’s ignorance and broader distrust of knowledge. What follows is one of his most influential, and controversial, passages from his body of work:
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
As an example of this trend, Asimov cited the wildly different presidential campaigns of Adlai Stephenson and George Wallace. Stephenson, the two-time Democratic presidential nominee and later ambassador to the United Nations, “incautiously allowed intelligence and learning and wit to peep out of his speeches,” but nevertheless lost both times to General Dwight D. Eisenhower. By contrast, Wallace, the Alabama Governor who declared “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” decried the “pointy-headed professor” in his speeches to some electoral success, at least in the southern part of the United States.
An often-derogatory “buzzword” that Asimov later mentions was “elitist,” referring to “anyone who admires competence, knowledge, learning and skill.” He found this “funny . . . because people who are not members of the intellectual elite don’t know what an ‘elitist’ is, or how to pronounce the word.” It is important to note here that Asimov is not actually condoning elitism, but rather criticizing the way in which the word is rhetorically employed to silence those devoted to reasonable discussion and open investigation. Much like Wallace’s “pointy-headed professor,” the “elitists” were identified by an easy epithet, one that the public could absorb without fully contemplating its meaning.
Asimov also blamed Americans’ distrust of intellectuals on the decline in general literacy. As he questions, “The average American can sign his name more or less legibly, and can make out the sports headlines-- but how many nonelitist Americans can, without undue difficulty, read as many as a thousand consecutive words of small print, some of which may be trisyllabic?” Thus, road signs, print advertisements, and television commercials provide more content while requiring less and less reading from the public. With print media in particular, “it may be that only 1 per cent-- or less-- of Americans make a stab at exercising their right to know.”
His solution combined a commitment to knowledge as well as a belief in democracy. First, he argued that Americans should consider “whether ignorance is so wonderful after all” as well as encouraging the “social approval of learning.” On an egalitarian note, Asimov declared, “I believe that every human being with a physically normal brain can learn a great deal and can be surprisingly intellectual.” By calling for all Americans to become “members of the intellectual elite,” Asimov believed that “America’s right to know” and, indeed, any true concept of democracy, [could] have any meaning.” With this connection of intellect and democracy— knowledge and equality— Asimov presented a way of embracing education and intelligence while also advocating for a healthy, open society.
His involvement with Mensa, however, exposed the author to actual elitism, which he recalled in his memoir, I. Asimov, and in his letters. Asimov became involved in Mensa in the early 1960s, after a friend suggested he take an IQ test to get in. After some trepidation, he completed the test, did well, and became a member. For the next 20-plus years, the author and polymath became increasingly disillusioned with the group and with intelligence testing in general. As he wrote in I.Asimov:
…[T]hough i have been a lifelong beneficiary of intelligence tests, I don’t think much of them. I believe they test only one facet of intelligence— the ability to answer the kind of questions other people with the same facet of intelligence are likely to ask. My IQ rating has always been out of sight, but I am perfectly aware that in many respects I am remarkably stupid.
Asimov’s view here was strikingly against the grain of his reputation as one of the world’s most intellectually gifted people, acknowledging that success on a test is not the same as applying oneself to real-world situations or to particular fields of study. It’s also no guarantee of success in life. As he wrote in his letters, “I don’t know what part intelligence plays in human achievement. I know that I couldn’t do what I do were it not for that I am enormously intelligent. But I know people as intelligent as I am who accomplish little or nothing.”
While he encountered many people within the organization that he enjoyed, Asimov essentially saw his time in Mensa as a negative experience. In particular, he found members’ attempts to intellectually spar with one another a tedious exercise with little to no benefit outside of ego. Younger members even wanted to test Asimov himself, which he strongly disliked. “Every young whippersnapper of a Mensan seemed to think he could win his spurs by taking me in a battle of wits and winning,” he wrote, “I don’t want to play that game.” Asimov believed that the best way to test your wits was in a spontaneous, playful way that didn’t have the foreboding subtext of resentment or envy.
Alongside his distaste for mental gamesmanship, Asimov deeply disagreed with many Mensans’ proclivities to beliefs and subcultures that he viewed problematic, especially in regards to politics. He reminisced in his memoir:
I became uncomfortably aware that Mensans, however high their paper IQ might be, were likely to be as irrational as anyone else. Many of them believed themselves to be part of a “superior” group that ought to rule the world, and despised non-Mensans as inferiors. Naturally, they tended to be right-wing conservatives, and I generally feel terribly out of sympathy with such views.
Asimov, a lifelong social democrat and secular humanist, had no patience for conservatism and superstition. In a letter from February 2, 1977, he recalled “discover[ing] that a surprising number of Mensans favored [Barry] Goldwater. It dawned on me that my criterion for a congenial pal was not whether his IQ was higher than a certain minimum but whether he, like myself, disapproved of Goldwater.” As an Arizona senator and 1964 presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater ushered in a new wave of conservative politics that completely reshaped the modern Republican party. He favored extremely limited government and staunch anti-communism, going so far as to indicating support for nuclear strikes on the Soviet Union. This kind of brash, anti-humanist politics didn’t square with Asimov’s own views, and discovering that some Mensans supported Goldwater further disillusioned him.
A lifelong skeptic, Asimov was also appalled by the amount of superstitions and fringe beliefs permeating Mensa’s membership. “There were groups among them,” he wrote of the membership, “who accepted astrology and many other pseudoscientific beliefs, and who formed ‘SIGs’ (‘special-interest groups’) devoted to different varieties of intellectual trash. Where was the credit of being associated with that sort of thing, even tangentially?” He believed in the positive and open application of science and reason, not the support of beliefs untenable to even the most modest but skeptical inquirer. This was not the sort of company he wanted to keep. “I do have an overwhelming desire to avoid gun freak, theists, mystics, and so on. They have a right to their opinions, but not necessarily to my company,” he declared. Asimov dedicated his life to educating the public on science and the value of a skeptical worldview, so finding himself associated with such “intellectual trash,” as he called it, was an affront to his life’s work.
At its core, Asimov’s objection to Mensa boiled down to rejecting their elitism. Writing in a letter from October 28, 1983, he said bluntly, “It seems to me that Mensans tend to be elitist in many of their views— an attitude with which I, personally, am not in sympathy.” In his estimation, valuing intelligence, science, and education is completely at odds with creating a subculture which resents and demonizes anyone less intelligent than them or those who can’t score as high on an IQ test as them. Recalling Asimov’s views in “A Cult of Ignorance,” he didn’t advocate for the super smart to rule over everyone; rather, he encouraged all people to expand their intellectual horizons so as to become better individuals and citizens within a democracy. This democratic, ant-elitist stance separated Asimov from many of his fellow Mensans, which led to his resignation from the group in 1989. In short, Isaac Asimov didn’t wield his intelligence with a closed fist, but with an open hand to anyone who desired to learn and grow in an open, humanistic, democratic society.