ODYSSEY PART 20 - II: The idea of an alternative think tank – Part II

In a recent column you began discussion for the need for a new breed of politician. In your last column you also began to explain your efforts to create a new kind of think tank. These efforts emerged from your participation in various University of Wisconsin bodies examining roles in higher education.

Q. How did these initial university experiences end up with your working on the far-out idea of organizing a national conference in New York to create a “New Synthesis Think Tank?” (This is the second of two columns.)

A. Soon thereafter, Gordon Davidson and Corinne McLaughlin visited us. They were on a national tour for their new book, “Builders of the Dawn: Community Life-Styles in a Changing World.” As founders of the Sirius community in Massachusetts in 1978 and having previously lived at Findhorn, they were among the most knowledgeable students of communities in America. They had visited and researched 100 intentional communities (including High Wind), they had consulted with governmental agencies and corporations and were familiar with Heritage and other think tanks. One of the key themes in their book: intentional communities are “laboratories for researching and testing … components of a new cultural vision, … training places for creative participation in the unfolding of the future. They are schools for change, for transformation.”

We all agreed that before planning a conference or considering the more grandiose venture of creating an alternative think tank, we needed a preliminary gathering to examine in depth what we were trying to do. We also invited leaders of the International Center for Integrative Studies (ICIS) in New York, which had contacts with scholars, scientists, business executives, and educators worldwide. Over a two-week period in February 1986, my university department sponsored a seminar co-hosted by High Wind, Findhorn, Sirius and ICIS on the subject, “Toward an Alternative Think.” We invited 40 people from the Milwaukee area including elected officials, business representatives, and civic leaders. What developed was a trenchant dialogue. The conclusion: there is a need for “intermediate structures” that bring together in a new synthesis the best of the mainstream experience of contemporary culture with the best of the new alternative movement. There was recognition of the abundance of knowledge and skills and resources available in today’s mainstream society, but there was also recognition of the need for new models and fresh thinking for intractable problems, which were being pioneered by alternative groups.

Gordon and Corinne lined up ideal conference space at the United Nations Plaza across from U.N. headquarters in New York, again co-hosted by our same organizations. They assembled an incredible list of people – a veritable “who’s who” cross-section of alternative organizations in the 1970s and 1980s from the landscape of cutting-edge thinking and action in American life. Sixty people came from the media, government, business, academia, as well as from alternative communities and groups.

For the two-day session in October 1987, titled “New Synthesis Think Tank: Laying the Groundwork – An Invitational Dialogue,” we sent a letter that began: “We would like to invite you to participate in creating a major new think tank with a select group of influential thinkers and doers … The purpose of the think tank will be to serve as a bridging structure to identify successful holistic ideas and models for mainstream use as potential solutions to current societal problems.”

Several of us had written papers on the kinds of problems and projects the New Synthesis Think Tank initiative could address, which were published in a monograph and discussed at the conference. Some were reprinted in “The Forum,” an ICIS magazine whose circulation included a select worldwide audience. I also presented my own published paper, “Toward a New Kind of Think Tank,” at the conference.

The response from some influential “Forum” readers, including Robert Muller, assistant secretarygeneral of the U.N., and the enthusiasm displayed through the intense dialogue at the conference, convinced us that we had entered an endeavor that could have far-reaching potential.