Q. Can someone become a genius?
A. Da Vinci, Franklin, Hypatia and all other geniuses, throughout history, started out by simply being persons of high potential. They then had to take that potential and put forth considerable time and effort to achieve the great things they did.
There might have been millions of other prople, throughout all of history, with that same exceptional potential who, for whatever reason, were not able to achieve the same results. Imagine what the world would be like today if each and every high potential person would have reached the maximum use of their gifts!
There are two ways to look at genius, the theoretical and the practical. In the theoretical sense we would be talking about persons of genius level IQ, in the practical sense we would discuss those who achieved and accomplished in ways that show exceptional talent or ability. If you choose to look at genius in the above stated theoretical sence (IQ), then one wouldn't be able to 'become genius', but if you look at it in a practical sense then the person is not born genius but works toward it.
Q. Why not seek to encourage everyone to reach their full potential?
A. We would love to be able to reach and encourage every person to achieve their full potential in life, but it is not feasable for one organization to effectively tackle a goal that big. That said, I'd like to mention that some of our advocacy efforts (namely of minority youth and education reform) will help society as a whole, also, please keep in mind that membership is open to all people, although there may be some restrictions on participation and program access.
Q. Why Focus on High IQ people?
A. Exceptionally gifted people experience and respond to life in a far different way than the average person. Due to this difference in perception and experience gifted persons have unique needs and challenges.
While the positive effects of giftedness may be apparent, there is little understanding of the consequences, such as isolation and alienation, which may plague gifted persons throughout their lives. Due to the lack of understanding we at Hypatia Society, believe that the gifted individual is a person who is often neglected and underserved in society.
Q. Why do you consider some of your members of higher potential than the others?
A. We believe that every individual has the potential to achieve great things in their life, but due to the increased rate of learning, and application of knowledge, we believe our High IQ members simply have more time available to achieve great things.
If, for example, a high IQ and normal IQ person were attempting to learn Latin, it might take a proundly gifted person 1/4 or half the time to master the language (given the same level of aptitude). Since it would take so much less time to master each skill, the high IQ peson would be able to master more of it if both were studying for the same amount of time. This is only one example of the possible mental differences between High IQ and normal IQ persons, there is often a number of other differences which effect ability; such as the ability to think divergently, increased comprehension and information retrieval mechanisms, hyper-sensitivity and overexcitabilities (see Dabrowski), and increased creativity.
