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.
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