FYI ---------- Former Monkee is a believer in intellectuals' roundtable Diverse group of thinkers put their heads together 07/26/98 Michael Haederle / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News NAMBE, N.M. - When some of the world's brightest people gathered at an estate in this rural mountain village for lunch and conversation last weekend, they presented a scene of relaxed civility and erudition. The guests studied an exhibit of photographs from the personal collection of artist Edward Ruscha, then dined on couscous in a large tent decorated Bedouin-style with carpets. Those who cared to were welcome to take a dip in the pool. Just a few hours earlier, the group, the 1998 Council on Ideas, had put the finishing touches on a position statement responding to the standing question, "What is the most important issue of our time?" By all accounts, the council members didn't have an easy go of it. And presiding over it all with an enigmatic smile was Michael Nesmith, philanthropist, filmmaker, novelist and, yes, former Monkee. The Council on Ideas was launched in 1990 by the Gihon Foundation, established 20 years ago by Mr. Nesmith's late mother, Liquid Paper inventor Bette Graham of Dallas. Every two years, the council gathers three to five "thought leaders," as Mr. Nesmith likes to call them, for a long weekend to ponder the most pressing issue of the day. This year's council members were actress Jane Alexander, who chaired the National Endowment for the Arts; Mexican theoretical physicist Ana Maria Cetto; Harvard paleontologist Steven Jay Gould; Robert D. Kaplan, contributing editor for The Atlantic Monthly; and Jessica Tuchman Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It was a difficult experience," said Ms. Mathews, as she sat with a slightly dazed expression at the table strewn with legal pads, pencils and pens where the council members had debated. "It was difficult by virtue of the assignment and by virtue of the totally different lenses most of us have to look at the world." A few minutes earlier, Ms. Mathews had read the council's brief statement to a group of journalists and alumni of past councils, beginning with a sobering observation: "We are living in a time of change unprecedented in both extent and rapidity on a planet now so filled by our presence that little further space exists to accommodate serious mistakes." Population growth, environmental degradation and powerful weapons raise the chances for conflict, even as the information and communications revolution brings people closer, the members noted. "More than ever before," the statement said, "we are truly stuck with each other." The panel suggested guidelines, including the need for a basic consensus among different cultures, a healthy wariness of claims to absolute truth, a clear understanding of history's lessons and the exercise of foresight based on better understanding of present trends. Finally, the council called for new institutions bridging governments, civil society and transnational corporations. "The coming era demands a period of concerted social innovation and institution building - this time encompassing all sectors - comparable to that which followed the end of World War II." In a question-and-answer period that followed, Ms. Mathews explained, "The central idea is, this is a time of extraordinarily rapid change, and we tried to identify those things that societies need in a time of rapid change, and there isn't a lot of room for error." If the statement seemed long on platitudes and short on specifics, it was about par for the course. The 1996 council proposed that the solutions to the world's problems "begin with the lifelong human capacity to enjoy and share the process of learning." And the 1992 council insisted, rather mysteriously, on the need to "reinvent and celebrate the sacred" through the development of "a transnational myth structure." But if the statements aren't exactly earth-shattering, the process itself seems to intrigue the intellectuals who are selected during a rigorous screening process. Invited to hear this year's council give its statement were participants in earlier councils, including political columnist Georgie Anne Geyer, Dallas commentator Lee Cullum, theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman, USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro, former NBC News chief Lawrence Grossman, artist Todd Siler and N. Scott Momaday, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. Also on hand was Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who first theorized quarks as the basis of sub atomic structure. Ms. Mathews, whose expertise is in global environmental and nuclear proliferation issues, was still processing the experience. When she had first learned of her appointment to the council, "I was bemused by it," she said. "The description seemed so impossible. It was nice to be elected as a thinker, but I didn't imagine what would come next." The panel members were left to their own devices, it turned out. "As you sit down with four strangers, that first step is like, 'Arrrgh! What do we do now?' " Ms. Mathews said. The "language gap" between professionals of widely varying backgrounds made it especially difficult to word the statement, she said. Mr. Kaplan, who has written extensively on foreign affairs, acknowledged the challenge posed by the group's diversity, but he said they reached an accommodation. "We really all came from different backgrounds, different beliefs," he said. "I think we reached a real medium level of disagreement where we were able to hash some things out." He acknowledged that out of a collective sense of humility, the statement was intended to be "minimalist" and that it perhaps lacked some punch. "It's a law of writing that a solitary person writing alone will come up with a more powerful piece of writing than a committee," he said. Mr. Kaplan also said he was delighted to discover that Mr. Gould - whose theory that evolution proceeds in fits and starts rather than in a smooth, linear way has ignited a debate in the world of biology - is a font of baseball arcana. "There's nothing he doesn't know," Mr. Kaplan said admiringly. In her four years chairing the NEA, Ms. Alexander found herself in the eye of a political storm revolving around the agency's funding of art deemed by some to be indecent. Representing the arts to a group of nonartists comes easily to her, she says. "I'm glad someone was there," she said. "We don't approach things the same way." Ms. Alexander agreed with the others that there was some difficulty in breaching the boundaries of different disciplines, but she said: "It was Steve Gould who reminded us there was more common ground in being human." For Mr. Nesmith, the prospect of giving some world-league thinkers a devilish problem-solving exercise is exciting. "There's a part of the process that we call 'the watch,' " he said while sitting on a patio and sipping ice water. "One of us sits outside the door within earshot and listens in. Being able to hear the process as it goes on is always edifying, and it was particularly good this year." Mr. Nesmith's hair has gone silver, and he has put on a few pounds since his days on the popular 1960s TV show The Monkees. Now 54, he's followed multiple paths in recent years, managing a solo recording career, producing films and music videos and recently completing a novel to be released in November by St. Martin's Press. The Gihon Foundation originally was a grant-making entity, funding the American Film Institute's directing program for women, said Mr. Nesmith, the foundation's chairman. In 1989, he decided to shift the orientation. He believes the Council on Ideas still preserves his mother's ethic of "entrepreneurial philanthropy" - a sense of investing in ideas that yield a public good. Mr. Nesmith readily admits he has no way of knowing for sure what the council's work will accomplish, although he will send copies of this year's statement to the heads of the various branches of the federal government, the nation's governors, the heads of Fortune 500 companies and the winners of the Nobel, Pulitzer and Pritzker prizes. "The only measurable input comes from the council members themselves, who tell me it means a great deal to them," he said. "They form alliances here across disciplines that are difficult to establish." He takes another sip of his ice water. "I certainly have a feeling that this thing is evolving, and it's going to respond to nourishment and care." Michael Haederle is an Albuquerque, N.M., free-lance writer. -------- Discuss this story in the Texas and Southwest Forum Send a letter to the editor about this story Back to Texas&Southwest indexes C 1998 The Dallas Morning News
