Last year I delivered my first paid lecture, ever, in my life, at the prestigious Henry George School of Social Science in Manhattan. The title of my talk, so amazingly paradoxical given the depth of my anti-business and pro-humanities nature, was "Toward an Ethical Transformation of Business."
It was, perhaps, the climax of my "business activist" phase, a period of my life that saw the creation of 4 books on making money for the cause, a soon to be defunct organization I founded called The Ethical Business Society, and the delivery of 3 lectures on the theme of "making money while making the world a better place."
Luckily, I caught myself just in time however, before going too far down the rabbit-hole of business banality. Still, my 3 year phase as a progressive business activist is one I'm proud of, and one I hope will continue to send its ripples into the world. In particular since, ironically, it was my namesake, J. Bruce Bredin (my paternal grandfather's cousin) who married the daughter of Irenee Dupont, the man who created the first conservative business think tank in 1934. Known as the American Liberty League, it was the prototype for all conservative think tanks that came after; organizations that played a vital role in the slow but steady shift in American politics from left to right from the 1930s to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980--and even further to the right in the decades since.
Let me identify 3 factors now catalyzing the birth of my re-imagined and revitalized lecture tour. 1. A recent You Tube encounter with Harold Bloom's lectures on Whitman and Shakespeare, filmed talks he delivered at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC in....I believe it was 2012. Let me not feel "anxiety" to be influenced by this great intellectual's wondrous love of literature and ability to express this love in a non-slick, non marketized, non-glib, beautifully erudite manner that is an oasis of culture in an increasingly "one-dimensional" society--if I may quote the title of Herbert Marcuse's important 1964 book. 2. The loving confidence instilled in my by Joe Franklin, the inventor of the tv talk show who, remarkably, I was able to befriend just a few months before he died at age 88 last week. Thank you Joe for making natural, unscripted, off the cuff dialogue on television cool, and for your beautiful faith in me. 3. The amazing reception my spontaneous college lectures receive when I talk freely and openly in the classroom of subjects that matter most to me such as finding your voice, the art of dialogue, why the arts matter, the power of writing, educational reform, and keeping our democracy strong.
Yes, I'm happy that 50 people viewed the first blog post of "Enriching the Conversation." The fact that nobody felt compelled to write to me, however, is something I choose to take in stride. The internet, though a powerful tool to get your message out, remains associated with too much fluff (Facebook divas, banal advertisements, etc.) that might "water down" even its most important content in a guilt by association connection with its ephemeral, disembodied "never never land" status. All the more reason for me to take my show on the road in real time--in person, in the flesh, eye to eye--in a barnstorming lecture tour a-la Emerson, Dickens, and Twain, with a touch of 1960's "Be-in" authenticity sprinkled in: i.e. Lacan's seminars, Alan Kaprov's "Happenings," and Phyllis Yampolsky's "Hall of Issues" at Judson Church.
I had a nice chat with Phyllis on the phone this morning, and she informs me that wonderful things are happening in a new paradigm "shift toward love" that she detects in the Zeitgeist; a viewpoint you probably won't hear about in our "obsessed with bad news" media. This reminds me of my own "Love Project" I created in 2005, a year long series of dialogues that took place in Greenwich Village cafes, Symposia bookstore in Hoboken, and in a penthouse apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. One result of my humanizing love project was that I got to meet, befriend, and have lunch with one of my intellectual heroes, bell hooks, an incredible, life changing, possibility opening event that nurtured my intellectual growth and gifted me a new, agency enriched sense of who I was and who I might yet become. Thank you again for this bell.
Hopefully, by the time I write my next blog post, I'll have delivered my first "return to my pedagogical roots" themed lecture somewhere in the NYC metro area. A possibility for the title might be "Liberate Your Voice to Achieve Your Dream." Ok, that's enough for now.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Let us now escape constriction in the banal, the routine, the everyday
Welcome to the first articulation of my new blog, column, book, lecture--or possibly all 4--which is my way of "making sense," through language, of our complex, often confusing, overly fast paced society in which hyper-corporatization is not only smothering democracy and destroying our beautiful natural world, but, just as nefariously, has created widespread boredom, a loss of authentic community, and a "flattening out" of human identity and personality.
It is my belief that only by actively resisting these trends, by creating some kind of authentic, healing, and truthful space (a "non-marketing" humane space), one that combines linguistic, pscyhotherapeutic, aesthetic, and political elements--either in the form of writing or dialogue or both--that soullessness and bland one-dimensionality can be transcended and real human identity nurtured into existence.
I put my money where my mouth is. As an English professor I unleash the miracle of human dialogue in classrooms and watch with joy as souls deadened by authoritarian, bureaucratic school systems percolate back to life. I've taught in this radical, experimental, outside-the-box manner--even though it's really ancient and classical, i.e. Socratic--at Rutgers, Montclair State, the City University of New York, Stevens, New Jersey City University, Essex County College, and a few other places. This spring, I'm delighted to bring my liberating pedagogy to Audubon Terrace in Washington Heights; a strangely beautiful, oddly juxtaposed marble outpost designed in 1908 to be Manhattan's very own "Greek Acropolis."
Following "the call of dialogue," as a disciple of philosopher Martin Buber and psychologist Carl Rogers, I've taken the "dialogic ball" (so to speak) and run with it, opening spaces of authentic human communication not only in classrooms, but in bookstores, cafes, living rooms, seminar spaces, and, for the past 5 years, in a television talk show I co-produce with my darling wife Claudia called Public Voice Salon.
Our guests have included such intellectual and cultural luminaries as public intellectual Stanley Aronowitz, Living Theater founder Judith Malina, historian Thomas Bender, and economist Richard Woolf. We've also featured many lesser known but deeply talented artists, writers, poets, thinkers, and citizens who we allow precious media space to enrich the public discourse with their innovative ideas, creativity, and stories. Sometimes I dialogue one-on-one with our guest, and, at other times, we assemble a "group dialogue" just like an old fashioned Salon--a la Gertrude Stein!
Similar to my teaching, the pedagogic goal of our tv show is to allow space for the human voice to "come to life" in a supportive dialogical space, to nurture a spirit of collaborative inquiry and encourage the telling of stories. Such dialogue, my hope is, will be enriched by talk of the various arts that have touched our lives in the past or more recently. I'm amazed at how easy it is to do this! Simply say, "You know, that reminds me of a similar situation (or character, or theme) in a novel I'm reading, or a film I once saw."
I wonder now, as I bring this essay to a close (yes, I do like to think of it as an essay!), if the erosion of human conversation in the public square these days--witness the new specter of "silent cafes" filled with sad and lonely laptoppers incapable of conversing with the stranger so close by yet so far away--is not, at least in part, the result of an educational and media complex that seems to grow more and more sterile, scripted, and non-dialogical with each passing day. Could it be that the bored channel surfers of the evening are the same alienated and silent cafe dwellers of the daytime hours?
It is my belief that only by actively resisting these trends, by creating some kind of authentic, healing, and truthful space (a "non-marketing" humane space), one that combines linguistic, pscyhotherapeutic, aesthetic, and political elements--either in the form of writing or dialogue or both--that soullessness and bland one-dimensionality can be transcended and real human identity nurtured into existence.
I put my money where my mouth is. As an English professor I unleash the miracle of human dialogue in classrooms and watch with joy as souls deadened by authoritarian, bureaucratic school systems percolate back to life. I've taught in this radical, experimental, outside-the-box manner--even though it's really ancient and classical, i.e. Socratic--at Rutgers, Montclair State, the City University of New York, Stevens, New Jersey City University, Essex County College, and a few other places. This spring, I'm delighted to bring my liberating pedagogy to Audubon Terrace in Washington Heights; a strangely beautiful, oddly juxtaposed marble outpost designed in 1908 to be Manhattan's very own "Greek Acropolis."
Following "the call of dialogue," as a disciple of philosopher Martin Buber and psychologist Carl Rogers, I've taken the "dialogic ball" (so to speak) and run with it, opening spaces of authentic human communication not only in classrooms, but in bookstores, cafes, living rooms, seminar spaces, and, for the past 5 years, in a television talk show I co-produce with my darling wife Claudia called Public Voice Salon.
Our guests have included such intellectual and cultural luminaries as public intellectual Stanley Aronowitz, Living Theater founder Judith Malina, historian Thomas Bender, and economist Richard Woolf. We've also featured many lesser known but deeply talented artists, writers, poets, thinkers, and citizens who we allow precious media space to enrich the public discourse with their innovative ideas, creativity, and stories. Sometimes I dialogue one-on-one with our guest, and, at other times, we assemble a "group dialogue" just like an old fashioned Salon--a la Gertrude Stein!
Similar to my teaching, the pedagogic goal of our tv show is to allow space for the human voice to "come to life" in a supportive dialogical space, to nurture a spirit of collaborative inquiry and encourage the telling of stories. Such dialogue, my hope is, will be enriched by talk of the various arts that have touched our lives in the past or more recently. I'm amazed at how easy it is to do this! Simply say, "You know, that reminds me of a similar situation (or character, or theme) in a novel I'm reading, or a film I once saw."
I wonder now, as I bring this essay to a close (yes, I do like to think of it as an essay!), if the erosion of human conversation in the public square these days--witness the new specter of "silent cafes" filled with sad and lonely laptoppers incapable of conversing with the stranger so close by yet so far away--is not, at least in part, the result of an educational and media complex that seems to grow more and more sterile, scripted, and non-dialogical with each passing day. Could it be that the bored channel surfers of the evening are the same alienated and silent cafe dwellers of the daytime hours?
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