GRABBING THE BRASS RING
                    (C)1993 Alan M. Schwartz

Many and varied organizations exist admission to which is based 
upon demonstrated intelligence via performance in standardized 
tests.  Mensa (98%-tile) is the grand old lady of them all with 
100,000 members worldwide.  Other major players are Intertel 
(99%-tile), Triple 9 (99.9%-tile), ISPE (99.9%-tile), Prometheus 
(99.997%-tile), and Mega (99.9999%-tile). Among them all, the 
International Society for Philosophical Enquiry is unique in 
soliciting continuing achievement among its constituents, and 
denying full membership status and suffrage to any admitted 
Associate who does not submit minimal credentials thereafter.

Among them all, ISPE is unique in having sponsored two books of 
its members' papers - "Thinking on the Edge" and "Thinking Beyond 
the Edge."  At the time of this writing, six months into its 
release, the former has sold more than 3000 copies in the world 
at large while the latter is in editorial process.  A romance 
novel or other pedestrian book is a commercial success at 5000 
copies sold.  Perhaps these folk are on to something.

The top 0.1% are now embarking upon the ISPE Institute for 
Advanced Studies.  They contemplate a multi-million dollar 
physical and virtual electronic linkage of their best with the 
dataflow and challenges of all mankind, complete with television 
and other media interface.  I support the creation, publicity, 
funding and operation of a consortium of superior and aggressive 
minds given stellar resources to exercise and valuable, difficult 
goals to achieve.  Serendipity alone will furnish triumphs.

Critical points exist in history where mankind evolved.  The 
codification of thought through philosophy and the conception of 
rigorously traceable validity of knowledge starting with geometry 
elevated Greece.  Rome's political unity derived from common law 
and language, and macro-engineering in support of society.  The 
Renaissance cauterized Church-imposed secular isolation to open 
mercantile and scholastic commerce across the planet, and 
unveiled the rules of visual perception.  Newton and Leibniz each 
formulated calculus, a language suited to analyzing all creation.  
Darwin proposed a means of reflex biological improvement, and the 
watch no longer needed a watchmaker.  The end of the 19th century 
gave rise to Relativity and quantum mechanics, precise models of 
the fundamental structure of reality.  By 1980 the capacity of 
digital storage devices exceeded that of all Terran brains summed 
and grew exponentially.  Now what?  We solicit the genius needed 
to plot a course perpendicular to everything.

The bulk of humanity drags its heels as the minority pulls.  
Beneficent social agendas metastasize to oppose valuable 
evolutionary pressures discarding culls in favor of conquerors.  
Proper thinking is legislated and enforced to the detriment of 
innovation.  In our own time Environmentalism opposes progress, 
technology and prosperity in all their varied forms.  Non-
discrimination renders unlawful an education based upon the 
requirement and standardized evaluation of excellence.  The 
multi-trillion dollar wealth of the most aggressive, original, 
sovereign and capable nation in history has been poured down the 
throats of its poor to no effect save greater requisition.

Civilizations contain themselves within their own introspection 
like the surface tension of a water droplet.  Progress awaits an 
ambitious minority adept at bursting through to there where 
monsters lay, or external conquest by more vital champions.  A 
handful of Spaniards expunged Amerindian society.  The largest 
polity of planet Earth, the Chinese, amounted to nothing and 
starved for it.  Hong Kong and Taiwan won something better.

University tenure cherishes superior minds in a fertile setting 
and protects them against the vengeance of fashionable beliefs.  
Industrial research is a rich womb for technical development.  
The former is critically addicted to now diminishing government 
grants; the latter is moribund within an economy drowning in debt 
come due.  Now what?  Genius is never budgeted for herbivores.  
ISPE is unique among intelligence societies in that it does not 
graze - it demands accomplishment of its members and rewards 
them.  The best of the best must secure resources, repay their 
financiers with acceptable coin, and pursue a concurrent hidden 
agenda of unbounded evolution.  

The Industrial Revolution provided mechanical prostheses to 
amplify almost without limit an individual's or an economy's 
physical jurisdiction.  Wealth beyond measure was born.  The 
microprocessor provides mental prostheses to amplify almost 
without limit an individual's or an economy's intellectual 
jurisdiction.  The ISPE Institute for Advanced Studies promises 
to empower the next great grab for evolution's brass ring.  Lead, 
follow, stand aside, or be destroyed.